The End of an Era

S’long chief!

Gone will be the calls to “Lay off Yudof!” and the endearing paintings of the feces-smeared Mark G. “Poo-dof.” UC President Mark G. Yudof announced last Friday that he will step down from his position at the end of the summer. Yudof, who has been president since 2008, has had quite an eventful stint at the helm of the nation’s largest (and best, if we can be impartial) university system.

As president, Yudof oversaw a series of budget cuts, tuition hikes, library closures and student protests and received the student-given fecal nickname as punishment for the poor state of the UC system.

Negative sentiments toward the 68-year-old will linger long after the search committees finalize an appointment and the inevitably over-paid replacement takes over.

It’s not a secret that the UC system has seen some really difficult times recently. Tuition is essentially double what it was in 2007, even though students and their parents lost jobs or saw smaller paychecks in the same period. Never in California’s history has attending a UC been harder than in the years during and after the Great Recession.

But why the anger directed at Yudof himself? Many were angry that the UC Board of Regents voted to increase student fees every year between 2008 and 2011. Others were enraged that Yudof took an annual salary of nearly $600,000 a year while many students were forced to take out five-digit loans just to be able to pay tuition. At UCSD, campus-specific budget cuts forced the shutdown and consolidation of major libraries in 2011.

Yudof’s salary is nowhere near the highest in the nation for heads of public school systems. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s top salaries for university presidents exceed $1 million (the winner, E. Gordon Gee of The Ohio State University makes nearly $2 million including bonuses).

Yudof oversees 10 campuses — Virginia Tech president Charles W. Steger brings home over $730,000 a year for overseeing one. What’s more, Yudof’s successor as chancellor of the University of Texas system, Francisco G. Cigarro, makes $750,000 a year.

It’s apparent that the former law professor was not here just for the money. While not quite as valiant as the $1 salary that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took during the rRecession, Yudof could have been making significantly more money elsewhere.

Tuition hikes hurt everyone, especially the middle class. While it was impossible for Yudof to unilaterally decide to raise student fees, he was the face of the regents during a tough time for students.

But Yudof also oversaw the launch of several notable campaigns intended to help students meet these rising costs.

Under the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, students with family incomes below $80,000 paid no tuition. UC Vice President of Budget and Capital Resources Patrick Lenz recently noted that half of students at UC campuses qualify for the program. The Project You Can campaign, an initiative begun in 2009 seeking to raise $1 billion to help fund students and activities, garnered over half of its goal amount in private donations in only three years.

Additionally, Yudof got behind Speaker John A. Perez’s AB 1500 and 1501 — two bills that would have closed a corporate tax loophole on out-of-state businesses to fund scholarships for middle class students at UC and California State University campuses.

While ultimately unsuccessful in Sacramento, Yudof’s dedication to making a UC education affordable peeked through the clouds of the torrential downpour of fee hikes. Yudof will leave the UC system in a promising state. California’s budget has finally achieved a surplus, according to Gov. Brown, and the freshman class beginning in the fall will likely pay the same amount as the freshman class of 2011.

The tides are turning toward brighter days in California’s most distinguished universities, though the term “cautiously optimistic” comes immediately to mind. The system’s prestige will rely on the ability of Yudof’s successor to maintain order during the transitional period while bringing the UC system back toward the California Master Plan for Higher Education. The daunting task of picking said successor is now up to the Board of Regents. We can only hope that the replacement can improve on the affordability efforts that Yudof began and reverse the trend of increasing fees that he presided over.

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