STATE NEWS ‘mdash; When the UC Board of Regents held a teleconference for its annual fee-raising powwow in May, students stormed the call for a courtesy 20-minute question-and-answer session. They shared stories of financial difficulties, begging the regents to keep fees low.
But once board members had grown impatient with the pity input session, they hastily wrapped up the conversation and voted to hike student fees. Though they’d never publicly admit it, they made one thing crystal clear that day: Students have no influence over administrative decisions at the University of California.
But a new bill ‘mdash; introduced last Wednesday by state Senators Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) and Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) ‘mdash; could potentially shift a lot more power to students.
The legislation proposes to remove the 130-year-old statute that grants the UC system immunity from legislative control by 2011, meaning the state could pass laws regulating university policies and pay practices. Sure, this wouldn’t necessarily mean you and your lab partner would be deciding Chancellor Marye Anne Fox’s salary, but it would certainly establish more public accountability between California voters, the officials they elect and the state’s flagship higher-education system.
After recently hiring two new chancellors for the UC San Francisco and UC Davis campuses with annual salaries over $400,000, it’s questionable whether UC President Mark G. Yudof and the crew can keep themselves from offering their higher-up pals exorbitant benefits. More state control could do the UC system right by ensuring more frugal hiring decisions in times of crisis, or ‘mdash; at the very least ‘mdash; preventing already overinflated salaries from being hiked during a recession.
State legislators may have an equally bad (if not worse) history of irresponsible budgeting, but at least they are under strict laws to ensure that public officials’ compensation is fair and transparent.
Currently, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox earns $382,416 a year ‘mdash; quite the pretty penny when compared to the $212,179 annual salary Arnold Schwarzenegger chooses not to accept for his gubernatorial duties. Though overseeing UCSD is probably a cool breeze compared to running the entire state of California, that hasn’t stopped the UC Board of Regents from boosting the pay and bonuses of many administrators well above those of our elected state officials.
Although Yudof and other opponents of the bill think regulating the university is too extreme a step ‘mdash; they say academics and politics shouldn’t mix ‘mdash; they’re exaggerating the legislation’s potential effects. The law would authorize enforcing the state’s speech policies and pay practices at the university, but would have no real influence on academic decisions.
The California State University system, which isn’t immune to state law like the University of California, doesn’t deal with state legislators who want to regulate specifics in their curriculum. Rather, CSUs have benefited from legislation (proposed by Leland, uncoincidentally) that bans trustees from raising executive salaries during years when state funding has been cut.
Whether or not the amendment passes, it should be a wake-up call to the regents: Students are fed up with their executive power trips. Even though the regents’ 20-minute input session was a sweet attempt at pretending they care, students need more solid reassurance that those up top are spending precious (and rising) tuition revenue wisely.
Additional reporting by Alyssa Bereznak.
Readers can contact Michelle Chin at [email protected].