UCSC Faculty Association to Yudof on Cuts and Emergency Powers

Santa Cruz Faculty Association / American Association of University Professors
SCFA/AAUP 343 Soquel Ave #333 Santa Cruz, CA 95062
AAUP/SCFA 15 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, CA 94704
scfa@aaup.org

July 1, 2009

President Mark Yudof
University of California
Office of the President

Dear President Yudof,

Thank you for soliciting comments from the Santa Cruz Faculty Association/American Association of University Professors Chapter, the only accredited union for Academic Senate Faculty in the U.C. system, concerning the three Proposed Furlough/Salary Reduction Plan Options in the letter from you, President Yudof, dated June 17th.

As you know, a tremendous amount of faculty energy is currently being expended in response to your request for commentary. We also weigh in, below, commenting on those assessments.
That said, we take this opportunity to make some points addressing larger issues of context and planning. The gist of our comments is that whatever alternatives are adopted in the short term (2009-10 and perhaps 2010-11), the University must rethink its long-term organization and M.O. if it is to accomplish its historic goals of producing teaching and research of the highest quality, and in the 21st century; and that the faculty are willing to be called upon to have a much larger voice and more creative part in that re-thinking. Your leadership in this matter could energize and enable the faculty to rise to the task, which is necessary if the U.C. is to maintain its historic reputation in new economic and technological conditions and circumstances of knowledge-production.

1. Even if one of the three alternatives you propose “worked” in the sense of closing the gap in funding for U.C. during 2009-10, any of them would have immediate and deleterious effects on faculty morale and therefore on our ability to recruit new faculty and retain the outstanding faculty we have. Many letters to you from individuals, departments, and Senate committees outline this point. They would have worked only in the very short-term; longer-term thinking is required.

2. A short-term solution to the shortfall is for you to take all income to the university that is not legally encumbered income and use it to mitigate any salary decrease. Several proposals have estimated that salary cuts, if this were done, would be in the range of 3% rather than 8%.

3. On the Public Relations front, you suggest that we should all “share the pain” equally, which sounds good in the abstract. But as Aristotle pointed out, to treat unequals as if they are equals is itself unequal. In that spirit, we suggest the following:

3.a. The highest administrators, including both the SMG and the MSPs, should take visibly larger cuts in both salary and perks. That would send a message that the leadership and higher bureaucracy of the University are committed to the well-being of faculty and students, not simply to themselves. The savings generated might be substantial even if not huge, but the sacrifice would be real on the administrators’ part, and the symbolism would be enormous. Faculty morale would improve, and the taxpayers of California and the members of the State Legislature would be impressed.

3.b. Conversely, asking the very lowest paid staff and faculty to “share the burden equally” by cutting their salaries is obscene. We recommend there be a cutoff-point below which the salary decreases would be 0% regardless of the method chosen to cut salaries. It should be a minimum of $65,000, and at least those salaries between the cut-off and another point – somewhere between $100K and $150K - should be graduated.

On a related note, we view the practice of balancing the budget on the backs of the lowest-paid employees, especially staff employees who see students every day and whom the faculty and students rely upon is extremely destructive and counter-productive to the academic enterprise, helping to destroy the fabric that holds the enterprise together. Faculty rely on these staff
and part-time staff for myriad small tasks demanded by the bureaucracy and technology of teaching and research, and knowing we have these staff members allows us to attend to our research and the creative aspects of teaching and program-building, which are what has made U.C. famous and (historically) the people of California grateful.

3.c. If you are serious about sharing sacrifice, you should note that some campuses and units already are sacrificing. U.C.S.C.’s faculty salaries, for instance, are the lowest in the U.C.system . The oldest and largest campuses not only have the highest salaries in the system, they also have two structural advantages we and other newer campuses lack: endowments and
many decades’ worth of alumni to be tapped; and they also have the advantage of the formula created in the early 1990s that provides them with higher base funding than the other campuses. The SCFA suggests that these structural differences should be noted and compensated for when
sacrifices are being asked for.

4. Long-term planning that puts Instruction and Research at the center and as the focus of the enterprise is needed. No one is better suited or situated to help you plan than the faculty.

4.a. The U.C. is involved in many enterprises and has many complex bureaucratic structures that do not directly support the quality and viability of either instruction or research, and many are tangential. These enterprises may be doing useful or harmless things, and some may be
making money. But the funds they generate may not be poured back into I&R. Some are actually losing money, draining it from the possibility of being used for I&R. Compounding these issues is the very common practice in the U.C. bureaucracy of promoting people through “Reclassification,” which requires that more people report to one. This promotion criterion over time tends to result in many people who report and few on the bottom doing the work. Again, it drains funds that could be used for I&R into the salaries and benefits for employees many of whom do not contribute directly to the academic enterprise.

a note on data and analysis: The U.C. Davis Administrative Task Force has written a report addressing Administrative growth in response to Regent Blum’s call for U.C. to become more
“strategically dynamic.” The report contains many wise recommendations. Although the report is about U.C.Davis, we have no doubt that its findings, and its recommendations, are relevant to other campuses and to UCOP. At UCSC, for instance, using data available on the UCOP web
page, faculty members at UCSC have calculated that UCSC has 137 employees in the MSP and SMG categories more than what would be expected if the bureaucracy had grown only proportionally to faculty, students, and direct support staff. Assuming that each has a salary at a
minimum of $100K, that means around $15 Million dollars is spent on their salaries, and with benefits, closer to $20M –a substantial amount of money for this campus.

The SCFA recommends that you draw on faculty with expertise in bureaucratic control and analysis, of which there are many and from many different disciplines, to analyze and recommend changes to the M.O. of bureaucratic growth at U.C., both at UCOP and on individual campuses. And we suggest that you take this issue very seriously. The issue is not simply to cut positions: it is to create a way of determining the relevance of positions and units to the support of the academic enterprise and a way to institute feedback from and to relevant faculty-controlled bodies about those non-academic positions and units.

4.b. Many faculty members feel hindered in creating knowledge and programs appropriate for the 21st century in the U.C. system. This is not the place for details, but we will say that the funding models used to distribute moneys to divisions, departments, and other units, and the lack of cross-divisional administrative leadership and support and even de facto discouragement of organizational innovations across divisions and departments, frustrate some of the most innovative, exciting, and relevant possibilities for I&R that the faculty would like to build and provide. It is our research and our teaching on which the U.C.’s historic reputation is
based.

The SCFA recommends that you take advantage of the outpouring of faculty energy, intellect, and commitment to U.C. that you have seen in the huge response you have received in your recent call for comments, in order to re-think, with faculty help, the administrative structures and divisions that directly support I&R. We are talking about things like enabling structures and institutes that are cross-disciplinary and crossdivisional, and changing funding structures that pit departments or divisions against one another. The faculty has many ideas about more
rational structures that could enable more high-quality and innovative research and teaching. Right now, many younger faculty are demoralized not only because of the economic difficulties and possible pay cuts but by the fact that it appears that this is not a good place to build a career in the long term.

Faculty research and teaching are the basis of U.C.’s enviable reputation. If longterm planning to enable it to be carried out in a satisfactory way is lacking, U.C. will decline, even if short term funding gaps are filled.

Cordially,
Shelly Errington
Chair of the Executive Board, Santa Cruz Faculty Association/AAUP
Joel Primack, Physics
Elizabeth Abrams, Writing
Kirsten Gruesz, Literature
Norman Locks, Art
Members of the Executive Board, Santa Cruz Faculty Association/AAUP

***

Addendum: Commentary on the Three Options:

Before commenting on the three options, we would like to express our concern about the context and timing of this proposal.

First, the adoption of any of these proposals will be legalized by the Draft Amended Standing Order 100.4, which allows the President of U.C. to declare emergencies—whether physical or financial--and grants him extraordinary powers which have never in the history of the University of California been deemed necessary, in spite of wars, a depression, and various previous fiscal crises. The faculty throughout the U.C. system and various Senate bodies and committees are nearly universally opposed to the adoption of this Amended Standing Order. Presumably the Regents intend to pass this Amended Standing Order immediately prior to granting you the powers to institute your choice of the Draft Presidential Furlough/Salary Reduction Guidelines. We find it disturbing that both are being treated as a fait accompli, most especially in light of the
extremely wide level of opposition to both items and skepticism about their wisdom.

We are also dismayed at the brevity, the lack of analysis, and the lack of information about either details or rationales for these alternative guidelines. We are also dismayed by the unseemly rush to adopt them, which gives both individuals and Senate bodies very little time to comment and very little time for you to make a considered judgment about larger issues of fiscal planning and
trade-offs. We are puzzled at the rush: it was known in Fall of 2008, if not before, that the country and California would be suffering severe economic hardships.

Strategic planning concerning alternatives if worst-case scenarios should occur – as we see they have—should have been done and publicized, with transparent and accessible data provided and widespread planning by faculty bodies solicited and enabled. The univrsity’s academic mission of teaching and research should have been at the forefront of discussions to set priorities and goals., and the long-term effects on these assessed and bolstered with data and historical analysis.

As it is, we are being asked to make a judgment between three very bad alternatives, in the space of a couple of weeks, with little space or time for considered judgment and analysis. Many faculty believe that other alternatives for solving or mitigating the university’s financial shortfalls could be more viable, and it is our understanding that various system-wide Senate bodies are working on at least one alternative.

That said, we believe that all three proposed alternatives, if adopted, will do harm to the University’s faculty and students, most particularly the two involving pay cuts, for these reasons among others:

1. Cutting pay without a concomitant cut in duties sends a message to the Legislature and to the public, as well as to higher Administrators, that the faculty and support staff can do the same amount of work for less pay.

2. It also does not have an automatic “sunset clause,” and it could easily become the new base pay.

3. Because U.C.’s salaries on many campuses are lower than those with whom we compare ourselves, and radically lower on several campuses (such as U.C.S.C., the lowest in the system), adopting these alternatives may well send us into a downward spiral. It will be more difficult to
recruit and retain outstanding faculty, and we will lose programs and personnel that have taken decades to build. It is far easier to cut and then rebuild bureaucratic and administrative functions and entities than it is for teaching and research functions. Losing academic personnel will be very very hard to recover from, compounded by the inevitable decline in morale and confidence in academia generally that U.C. is a stable, wellrun, university that values its faculty, its students, and its research and teaching mission.

4. As proposed by you in the Draft of June 17, 2009, the salary cut alternatives are unacceptably regressive. As our UCSC CPB’s letter pointed out, to dock 4% of the pay of people making less than $46,000/year is unconscionable. We believe that lowest-paid faculty and staff should have a 0% cut, and that the cut-off for that should be people whose salary is less than about $70,000/year. Any cuts above that should be progressive, with the highest-paid administrators and SMPs setting the example of solidarity in pain for the rest of the University employees.

5. Any salary-reduction plan must be worked out with explicit measures for mitigating the impacts on leave accrual, service credit, and retirement benefits. Historically, these benefits have allowed U.C. to compete for faculty hiring against higher-paying comparable institutions. If both salary and retirement benefits decline, it will take many years, perhaps decades, for U.C. to recover its former stature and therefore ability to recruit outstanding faculty and graduate students.

The alternative you propose concerning furloughs has its own logistical, logical, ethical, and perhaps legal issues. It does have the one advantage of making the sacrifices visible.

Cont: Furlough Plan Analysis Shows Bias Against Low-Wage Workers

Fellow Workers (and others),

I have spent some time over the last two evenings analyzing Mark Yudof's proposal for UC pay cuts/furloughs. What I have found is troubling. The proposal tilts heavily against low wage earners. I think there are obvious better solutions, two of which I propose here.

Graduated Approach Biased Against Low Wage Earners


Although the proposed cuts are "graduated", an unnecessary burden is placed on those with lower salaries. Cutting more from the top makes more sense all around.

1. When your monthly gross salary is around $1,600 (Tier 1), a $70 pay cut is significant. It can force decisions like whether to buy food or pay an electricity bill. As we will see below, UC doesn't really need to take those $70 from you.

2. If, on the other hand, your monthly salary is anywhere from $16,000 to $40,000 (medians in Tiers 6 and 7), what difference would the cut make? Maybe your part time personal chef will have a "furlough" day as well, or you might have to spend your vacation in Athens rather than Paris.

3. The graduations are weak: Those making 10 to 25 times more than the lowest tier only have 2.2 to 2.4 times the pay cuts, proportionally.

Other Solutions are Available

For the sake of this analysis, let's assume that salary cuts (i.e. furloughs) are the appropriate response to this financial problem. One can make a convincing argument against that idea, but for now I will leave that aside.

I have created two alternative proposals, as examples of how the same shortfall could be accommodated with much less effect on people's lives.


Note how easy it would be for the higher salary tiers to absorb most of the cuts proposed for the lower tiers, without much effect on the lives of those with higher tier salaries. An extra $300/mo from a salary of $10,500/mo, or $800/mo from a salary of $37,000/mo, could drastically reduce the effects on lower wage earners. Even those in Tier 4 can be cut less, if those with extravagant salaries will put in a bit more.



In fact, the first three tiers in Yudof's proposal could avoid pay cuts altogether if the upper 4 tiers would accept modestly higher monthly cuts. There is little reason to cut the wages of those with lower salaries.


See For Yourself

You can obtain the spreadsheet I used to make these calculations from the email address below. Feel free to play around with the numbers. You will quickly see that Yudof's proposal masks unfair cuts with a language of fairness.

I welcome your thoughts, but I suggest that action is better. Contact UCOP. Better yet: If you're represented by a union, use it.

Answers to Predictable Questions/Arguments

"But we need to be fair."

• It takes only a few seconds of thought to realize that the proposed cuts will have a much larger effect on the lives of lower wage earners than on those of higher wage earners. We should not confuse fairness with a numerical/statistical illusion of fairness.

"But we need to stay competitive."

• As I demonstrate in my proposed alternatives, the extra sacrifice by high wage earners would be almost unnoticeable.
• I'm sure most of us realize on some level that the myth of the "highly valued executive" is reaching its end in our society's collective consciousness. Let's face it: Highly paid administrative positions don't require rare talent. They would still be highly paid, and there will always be people who want the jobs.
• As for other very high wage earners, e.g. coaches and certain medical professionals: They would still earn a lot. Just slightly less.

"30 days of furlough is too many."

• Yudof already proposed 24-26 for the highest tiers. And I submit that temporary salary cuts may be more appropriate than furlough days, especially for high wage earners.

"This is unamerican."

• Red baiting is so passé.

Data Methods and Caveats

1. I used the Sacramento Bee's data on UC salaries in order to measure the number of employees in each of Yudof's proposed tiers. In order to approximate the number of employees in each of Yudof's tiers, I linearly interpolated the ranges in the Bee's data. (The Bee has totals for those earning <$30K, $30-40K, $40-50K, $50-60K, $60-70K, $70-80K, $80-90K, and >$100K. I hand-counted the number of people in the $100-240K and >$240K tiers. See spreadsheet for details.)
2. Estimates of savings and salaries were made using the median of the low and high ends of each salary tier. This assumes a normal distribution of salaries within the range, which may (for example) slightly underestimate the actual savings from Tier 1 cuts. It may also underestimate savings from higher tier cuts as well. But on the whole the numbers are meaningful, especially given how little Yudof's Tier 1&2 salaries affect the budget in general.
3. I chose an upper limit of $750K for the highest tier somewhat arbitrarily. Some people earn more than that, but not too many. The goal was to make the median of the highest tier more representative.
4. The estimates mentioned most certainly introduce some element of error into the calculations; however, the foundation of the analysis is strong, and any errors introduced are unlikely to be significant.

--
Jeffrey Bergamini
Programmer/SysAdmin, Hart Interdisciplinary Programs, UC Davis
bergamini@ucdavis.edu / 530-752-9332

UCLA Professor Proposes More Progressive

Does anyone else see something wrong with the progressive furlough/salary reduction scale for those at higher salaries? That is, those with higher salaries are taxed at the same rate as those making MUCH less money.

Remind the Regents that an increase in percentage reduction of larger salaries would solve MUCH more of the deficit!

In the Yudof proposal the categories for salary reduction are in these increments:
5%: $40-46,000
6%: $46,001-60k
7% $60,001-90k
8% $90,001-180k
9%: $180,001-240k
10% >$240,001k

Why not increase the salary reduction by one percentage point
for every increase of $15,000 in salary?
6%: $46,001-60,000
7%: $60,001-75k
8%: $75,001-90k
9% $90,001-105k
10%: $105,001- 120k
11% $120,001-135k
12% $135,001-150k
...
15% $180,001-195k
...
20% $255,001-270k
...
25% $330,001-345k
...
30% $395,001-420k
...
35% $470,001-495k
etc

Salaries of employees of the State of California, including UC, are available from a Sacramento Bee newspaper site. Search by job title, salary range or agency. For UC employees, 2007 data is still the most recent available. All UC employees making less than $20,000 - mostly student workers - are excluded.

Explanation of data

Furlough Ambiguity

Thanks to Ann Adams for this material:

The Yudof letter states:

"You will be able to take the furlough days at a time of your choosing, in consultation with your manager and/or if your location designates certain closure days throughout the twelve month period. This gives the University flexibility to help manage operations and gives employees flexibility to manage personal time off."

However, the Appendix B to his statement to the Regents is a little less clear:

"The Plan is created to achieve the greatest possible payroll savings while allowing necessary flexibility for the work force to minimize disruption of essential services and work throughout the Plan term."

"...By way of example, an Included Employee (staff) is given 18 furlough days reflecting a seven percent salary reduction for the Plan term. Some of these 18 days may be used during formally scheduled furlough days that will be directed by a campus or the Office of the President throughout the year. The remaining days can be used at the employee‚s discretion as floating days off of work, subject to supervisor approval."

Either way, teaching labor is going to be disrupted: Furloughs taken on "non-class" days seriously cut into class preparation time, every bit as essential to our teaching mission as the time spent in the classroom with out students.

UCLA Sociology Department Statement on Budget Contraction

The Sociology Department at UCLA would like to contribute to the deliberations concerning the budget crisis being faced by the University of California, UCLA and the Division of Social Sciences. We realize the need for emergency steps as well as the need for long term adaptation to changing conditions.

In facing the crisis, one single, simple principle should prevail: maintaining academic excellence must be the over-riding consideration, guiding all major decisions. The University of California has long been the premier public institution of higher education in the world, with UCLA one of the centers of innovation, creativity, and social progress. Academic excellence is why UC and UCLA have been such wise investments for the state and the people of California, yielding scientific innovations that have been the cornerstone of new industries, attracting huge quantities of federal research dollars which in turn have supported the university and employed many Californians, and, of course, educating the highly skilled labor force on which a 21st century economy depends. Academic excellence is the future of both the university and the state. Under good times, excellence is compatible with many other goals. In bad times, normally laudable objectives -- political pragmatism, community outreach, faculty morale – may conflict with the pursuit of excellence. Under these circumstances, maintaining academic excellence must prevail. In recognition of existing resource constraints, our main goal should be how to achieve excellence on a smaller scale than we have known in the past.

This statement is divided into two parts. We begin by outlining several principles to guide restructuring at system-wide and campus levels. We then address the concrete issues raised by President Yudof’s recent proposal to cut salaries.

General principles:

• Targeted cuts are always preferable to across-the-board cuts: Cross-the-board cuts have the appearance of equity; in fact, their main effect is to subject all to the risk of mediocrity. While cross-the-board cuts are sometimes justified as minimizing damage to faculty morale, they often have the opposite effect, making faculty feel that the administration is sacrificing sound judgment for expediency. We understand that when UC's funding drops, it must cut costs. However, the cost-cutting strategy adopted by the university does not recognize the implications of the extraordinary and growing nature of the current crisis, which requires, not business as usual, but a total rethink. President Yudof and the Regents are asking us, not simply to accept an 8% salary cut, but demand that we concur in a long‐term but rapidly accelerating de‐funding of the university. Funding for UC has dropped from 8% of state budget in 1965 to 3% in 2008, and in real dollars per student has fallen by about 1/2 since 1980. Simply passing on budget cuts across the board is not a strategy, but a long‐term retreat from the university’s mission. We need to rethink what the University of California can realistically do in this new environment and how it can best retain the commitment to excellence that has been its outstanding characteristic throughout its long and proud existence.

• Targeted cuts should be distributed through an academically informed strategy for restructuring: Weaker academic units should be eliminated rather than buoyed up. Tough decisions, even unpopular ones, should guide policy with appropriate faculty vetting, though vetting should not be paralyzed by any lack of consensus. This restructuring should take place at all levels. All administrative divisions, departments, ORUs, IDPs, centers (small c and large C), should be evaluated for major reallocation, recombination or elimination. We realize that there is a tension between decisiveness and recklessness and between accountability and autocracy. We believe there is no contradiction between strong leadership and accountability.

• On the system-wide level, the premier campuses (UCB, UCLA, UCSD) should be recognized as qualitatively different from the others: De facto, the State of California has already abandoned the goal of sustaining ten superior university campuses; however, rather than recognizing the new reality, imposed by resource constraints, business is continuing as usual, with the result that all campuses are being lowered to a level of mediocrity. The better response to this unfortunate reality is to preserve the highest level of excellence at a selected number of the strongest campuses: Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego. We recognize that there are superior, nationally recognized programs at other campuses: these should be protected. Likewise, weak programs at UCB, UCLA, UCSD should be downsized or even closed. Greater division of labor among campuses should be considered, evaluating individual programs on the basis of offerings at other campuses. When programs with limited demand are found on multiple campuses, the university should designate which campus should prevail. Furthermore, every effort should be made to use new technologies to take advantage of research and advanced instructional resources across all campuses. But immediate steps must be taken to preserve excellence on the campuses where it is strongest.

• The undergraduate student body should be recalibrated to match the shrunken size of our resources:

• The size of the undergraduate student body should be brought in line with resources. Reducing the size of the faculty (both ladder and non-ladder) without reducing the size of the student body enfeebles the undergraduate program by pushing the student/faculty ratio to an unreasonable level and increases the size of courses. We offer our department as a case in point: in the last three years, we have reduced the number of ladder faculty by more than a quarter and laid off long term lecturers but with no relief in the number of students we teach. Our default upper division lecturer class has doubled from 75 to 150.

• Enrollment by out-of-state students should be increased to cross-subsidize California residents: Given the decline in direct state support for the University of California, we have no choice but to admit more out-of-state students. Doing so will help offset the decline in funding from Sacramento and will inherently provide resources to California residents by helping to maintain professor-to-student ratios and to reduce or eliminate the planned cuts to teaching assistant and temporary (lecturer) funds. We note that this is the strategy successfully followed by the University of Michigan, a campus which is so far faring better than the University of California, despite the depth of Michigan’s economic crisis.

• Downsizing should be based on a combination of program elimination and explicit targeted unit size for remaining units. Continuing units and programs should be given targeted sizes based on excellence, historical size, recent trends in faculty turnover, and student demand.

• Start planning for a recovery now: The University’s planning process should include plans to redress the anticipated loss of salary and benefits to preserve the academic excellence at UCLA and system-wide. We recognize that painful measures must be taken now. However, the furloughs and/or pay-cuts do nothing but buy time until deeper structural changes can be made. It is well known that UC faculty are already 20-30 per cent behind our peers in compensation even before such a cut, and will take a further pay cut soon when contributions to our unstable pension system resume. If the level of faculty pay falls further below market rate, an exodus of top faculty when our competitors recover from the worst of the slump is likely to ensue. Moreover, the faculty most likely to leave are those with the greatest capacity to raise external funds; hence, their departure will have severe spillover effects, further weakening the university’s financial base.
We realize that structural changes take time, especially if they are made on the basis of full information, carefully considered criteria, and faculty accountability. But faculty morale can be sustained under these difficult circumstances, if it is clear that that the necessary long term changes are in progress while we are bearing up to short term suffering. Thus we support initiatives such as those proposed by Scott Waugh’s Tool Box Task Forces, though it is very disheartening to observe that one of their first recommendation—that cuts be targeted, not across the board—has already been ignored.

Reactions to President Yudof’s proposal:

• A furlough is preferable to a pay cut:. Salary reductions are impossible to recover from either in salary terms or in retirement benefits. Salary reductions are therefore likely to stimulate a mass exodus from UCLA, further damaging the mission of academic excellence.. A furlough with preservation of retirement credit and benefits can save significant money while communicating the message that the University will recover from this crisis. We cannot recover without some strategic decision-making and some prospect of hope for the future. The administrative procedures and costs of implementing a furlough have been addressed by many peer institutions. It is hard to see why other universities can figure out how to implement furloughs but the University of California cannot.

• A furlough should be finely graduated with gradations based on marginal rates. There are very few UC employees – whether faculty or staff – who can easily absorb cuts of the magnitude that are proposed. Nonetheless, considerations of equity and concern for less well-paid members of the faculty and staff lead us to recommend that reductions be progressive, with higher cuts directed at better paid staff and faculty, and a finer set of gradations than the simple 4%/8% cut proposed by President Yudoff. In making this recommendation, we underline the distributional consequences: as opposed to the two-level plan, a progressive salary reduction with finer gradations will have a greater impacts on UCLA than on numerous other campuses, where a smaller proportion of the faculty is off-scale; at UCLA, a progressive salary reduction will have a greater impact on the social sciences than on the humanities; across the university, a progressive salary reduction will have a greater impact on senior faculty – who have invested their careers in the campus – than on more junior, recently arrived faculty. In our view, these sacrifices are necessary; but they are only justified if the university simultaneously affirms its commitment to excellence and takes the steps needed to restore its long-term viability.

• We recommend that employees whose salary comes from federal grant and contract funds not be subject to salary reductions. Any reduction in these salaries reduces funds that come in to the University through indirect costs and in to the State. In fact the intent of the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act is to stimulate the economy by increasing employment. Reducing the salaries of employees supported by grants flies in the face of this federal stimulus policy and will damage the research mission of the University. Apart from employees whose salaries comes from federal grant and contract funds, the question of whether employees funded by other non-state sources be furloughed should be evaluated in the light of implications for overall excellence.

• Furloughs should result in a reduction in non-essential services provided. Units should have the option of shutting down on days that staff are furloughed. Perhaps the total number of days that classes meet should be reduced. At the same time, faculty and staff should have their retirement benefits and leave service credits maintained at 100 percent effort.

• Protect especially vulnerable faculty and staff from severe financial hardship. Some personnel have financial commitments that they will not be able to meet if the proposed pay reductions become a reality. Among the faculty those most likely at risk are our younger colleagues, many with families, who have decided to build careers at the University of California, despite all the difficulties entailed in starting out in this state. These faculty are our future; harming them will yield irretrievable consequences in the future.
  

• Newly hired faculty should be exempted from the pay cuts. To subject faculty who are just coming on board to these pay cuts would violate the terms of their recent offer letters, an especially egregious breach of faith.

• Make an immediate contribution to the UCRP, either in dollars or as an IOU: The process through which UC's once-robust retirement plan has slipped into perilous condition is disheartening in the extreme. It has been known for several years, well before the market collapse of last fall, that it would be necessary to resume employer and employee contributions. Yet contributions are not scheduled to resume until next spring, and then only at a level that will cause UCRP to sink into a deeper hole. As the Task Force on Investment and Retirement of the University Committee on Faculty Welfare has stressed, it is imperative to raise UCRP contributions as soon as possible to the full recommended contribution under the Regents' own Funding Policy. "Doing so avoids far higher contributions in the future, and also ensures that non-state sources pay their fair share of the unfunded liability and the additional pension benefits that are earned each year. Every dollar of contributions made on behalf of employees whose salaries are paid from state funds is matched, on a two-for-one basis, by the contributions that will be made from other fund sources, on behalf of employees who are not paid from state fund sources"

We realize that these are extraordinary times in which the need for administration and faculty to pull together can contradict the need for decisive and effective action. When resources diminish, individuals who are dependent on the resources will maneuver to minimize the damage they experience. We realize that all must share the pain. We are prepared to do our part; indeed, we have already experienced considerable downsizing. As a department, we have a strategy for maintaining excellence, and we are convinced that we can do so, even under these difficult circumstances. But we need a future. We call on the university to make the tough and effective decisions that will help this department, and others on our campus, move forward at our reduced scale, doing so in a way that will not only maintain the level of excellence that we have achieved in recent years but allow us to aim even higher.

Ladder Faculty Signatories:
Rogers Brubaker
Cameron Campbell
Steven Clayman
Nicky Hart
Gail Kligman
Michael Mann
Robert Mare
Jeffrey Prager
William Roy
Abigail Saguy
Emanuel Schegloff
Judith Seltzer
Megan Sweeny
Stefan Timmermans
Roger Waldinger
Andreas Wimmer
Min Zhou
Lynne Zucker


Appendix: Reservations stated by individual faculty members about the Sociology Department Collective Statement:

I am generally supportive but I disagree with two items. First, incoming faculty should get the same treatment as everyone else, if they are really our colleagues, and not privileged by escaping the pay cut/ furloughs. Second, ditto with those on outside research grants. The savings from their reductions should go into department or university funds. Again, it is a question of equality of sacrifice.
_____________________________________________________________________________

I agree with most of this letter but not all of it. I believe that the right protection to offer staff/ faculty on low incomes is the variable cut/furlough; I do not agree with the additional proposal that new faculty be protected from the cuts. I accept the principle of universality with protection for the most vulnerable.

_____________________________________________________________________________
The one reservation I have concerns a cap on the graduated scale of salary/furlough cuts: I favor a graduated scale, but with a fixed maximum percentage in the 10%-12% range or a maximum absolute amount. It would also be helpful to know when the reduced income would become effective -- in the next several months? next academic year?

UC San Diego Faculty Statement on Budget Crisis

June 15, 2009
Dear

I write on behalf of an array of departmental chairs from all parts of the campus – the physical and biological sciences, the social sciences, engineering, the humanities, and the arts, plus the chair of the department of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, to express our collective sense of dismay, frustration, and anger at what is being done to the University of California. For years our budget has lagged behind our needs, and the university has suffered from a slow degradation in its quality, and in the quality of education it offers to the citizens of California. The cuts to our operating budget have essentially been spread equally across campuses and units, without much pretense at selectivity, depriving the excellent along with the less so, damaging morale and the very fabric of an institution that makes extraordinary contributions to our state and nation. The plans we have heard outlined for 2009‐10, 2010‐11, and the next five years, go far beyond what we have experienced so far. We believe that if these plans are implemented, the University of California as we know it will be dead – reduced to a mediocre shell of what it once was. If we are lucky, we will end up as just one of many mediocre state university systems.

The proposed actions presented to us at the June General Campus chairs’ meeting essentially amounted to throwing in the towel. Rather than discussing entrepreneurial solutions that might mitigate the budget damage, coupled with intelligent and selective cuts designed to protect the core mission of the university, these proposals continued the policy of incremental pain under the guise of “everything is on the table”, ratcheted up to the point where excellence will vanish at the university. These proposals guarantee that as soon as the economy improves private universities will take our very best faculty, save those close to retirement, and those contemplating retirement will do so. That will, of course, have permanent and catastrophic effects on our academic reputation, from which we shall never recover. To recover from this blow would require, in the first instance, attracting the best people to what will (rightly) be seen as an inferior institution, which will require paying over the odds (financially and otherwise) – and we know that will be impossible. In any event, the plans to shrink permanent faculty by almost 25 per cent to balance the books means that these people will simply not be replaced.

Such an outcome will produce a steadily tightening vicious circle, because we shall simultaneously be experiencing a reverse multiplier effect: our best and brightest will take their major grants with them, so indirect cost recovery will diminish sharply, which will further exacerbate both the reputational and budgetary problems, which will further the exodus of the next tier of faculty. That problem will intensify as services on campus are cut, damaging the necessary support for research, affecting our teaching mission, worsening the day‐to‐day environment, and impelling those of us who have choices to bail out. It does no good to point to others’ current misery, and suggest that as a result all will be well. The depressed state of the economy and the stock market is not permanent, but our losses will be. As soon as we see an economic rebound, the exodus will begin . And the excellence that has always characterized the University of California will slowly (or not‐so slowly) erode into mediocrity.

The first option that was laid before us was a possible 5 per cent pay cut, which, so we were told, would net the campus $20million, and Academic Affairs half that, or $10million, out of $90million. (Today, rumors suggest that cut may be as much as 10 per cent.) It is well known that UC faculty are already 20‐30 per cent behind our peers in compensation even before such a cut, and will take a 2 per cent pay cut soon when contributions to our unstable pension system resume (another reason to leave). More importantly, as was pointed out at our meeting, to begin at pay cuts as the first solution is to admit defeat and invite the vicious circle. Add in the proposal that the faculty/student ratio decline by a third and the prospect of increasing numbers of graduate students will disappear and our predictions of faculty departures probably err on the low side.

We know the response to all this will be “we live in hard times, and politically difficult times, so what do you propose instead?” We propose that we engage in some radical rethinking. What follows are a few such ideas, some of which may require refinement or could be replaced by better ones.

1. Immediately enroll 500 more out of state students per year for the next four or more years. The increased tuition money would stay on this campus, and four years out would amount to $44 million per annum, almost half our deficit. This step should not be done stealthily. It is very important, to the contrary, that we proceed transparently. We must explain to the California taxpayers why we are forced to take this step, and educate them about the magnitude of the cuts we have taken in state support over the last decade; the potentially fatal impact of these new rounds of cuts on the very thing that makes a UC education special for their children, the opportunity to be taught by world‐class research faculty; and the contributions such a step can make to keeping the university in the forefront of knowledge creation and in preparing the highly educated workforce that is the state's ultimate salvation. We note that in fall 2008 only 5.9% of our undergraduates were non‐resident, compared to 9.7% at Berkeley and 9.5% at UCLA.

We also note that in fall 2008 at the well‐regarded University of Michigan, 35% of undergraduates were non‐resident. Admitting more out‐of‐state students will cross‐subsidize California residents by helping to maintain professor‐to‐student ratios and to reduce or eliminate the planned cuts to teaching assistant and temporary (lecturer) funds. Admitting more students from other states would also enhance UCSD's national reputation and it will benefit California in the long run since a significant number of American students who go to university out of state end up settling in the state where they attended university. It is in California's interest to attract some of the best and the brightest high school graduates from around the country, to provide them with a world‐class education and then to reap the tax revenues that result when these university graduates enter California's workforce. We recommend that over the summer you convene a committee to develop a plan to enroll significantly more out‐of‐state undergraduates next year.

2. Generate defensible estimates of our strictly economic contribution to the state’s economy, via an educated workforce, spin‐off companies, federal funds attracted, etc, etc, and repeat that number relentlessly to force it into the consciousness of the public and the politicians. That is the golden egg that is in jeopardy. We find it surprising that this has not been done already. Every official in the UC system, every media report, every media release should have included this same number over the last year. To drive home the point the numbers begin to make, the campus could also compile a list of 5‐10 pieces of faculty research in the past decade that have transformed our knowledge and improved human welfare, and supplement that with a similar list of spin‐off corporations and technologies (Qualcomm obviously prominent among them) that have transformed the economy of the region and the state. Again, these lists must be hammered home over and over again, like an annoying advertisement that enters everyone’s consciousness.

3. Establish different budget priorities for the profiles of different UC campuses. Every state system of public education save California manages to sustain (at best) one flagship campus. Many, including such states as New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, do not manage even that. We pretend we have ten such campuses. In better times, there were in reality four flagships (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and – in its highly specialized way, UCSF). Rather than destroying the distinctiveness and excellence at Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD by hiring temporary lecturers to do most of the teaching (and contribute nothing to original research, nothing to our reputation, nothing to the engine of economic growth a first rate research university represents), we propose that you urge the President and Regents to acknowledge that UCSC, UCR, and UC Merced are in substantial measure teaching institutions (with some exceptions – programs that have genuinely achieved national and international excellence and thus deserve separate treatment), whose funding levels and budgets should be reorganized to match that reality.

We suggest, more generally, that in discussions systemwide, you drop the pretence that all campuses are equal, and argue for a selective reallocation of funds to preserve excellence, not the current disastrous blunderbuss policy of even, across the board cuts. Or, if that is too hard, we suggest that what ought to be done is to shut one or more of these campuses down, in whole or in part. We have suffered more than a 30 per cent cut in our funding from the state, and we can thus no longer afford to be a ten campus system – only a nine, or an eight (and a half) campus system. Corporations faced with similar problems eliminate or sell off their least profitable, least promising divisions. Even General Motors, which for decades resisted this logic, to its near‐fatal cost, is lopping off Hummer, Buick, GMC, Opel, Saab and who knows what else.

On a systemwide level, more substantial sums could be raised, though not immediately, by expanding an existing resource: the UC Education Abroad Program has been highly successful academically, and study abroad is increasingly attractive to this generation of students. Yet this asset, built up over decades, now seems increasingly neglected and run down. It could, with a modicum of entrepreneurship, be translated into a source of revenue. Syracuse University, for instance, which opens its programs to outside students, charges very profitable fees to those it enrolls. Why can’t UC do the same? We suspect that, if the ingenuity and knowledge of the faculty were tapped, other sources of raising revenue or cutting costs could be uncovered. Why not ask for ideas, and actively investigate those that seem promising? We are, after all, in this together, and collectively the intellectual resources of this university are almost unmatched. Some final remarks: when the previous budget cuts were announced, we were told that priority was being given to protecting the core academic mission of the university. That presumably is the faculty, teaching, and the necessary library resources that are the domain of Academic Affairs (plus Scripps). Yet it transpires that Academic Affairs, which accounts for 49 per cent of the campus budget, absorbed 49.5 per cent of the previous rounds of cuts. This is clearly not protecting the core academic mission of the university! Specifically, we recommend that the percentage of cuts to academic affairs (including the department of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography) be decreased significantly to protect the core academic mission of the university. If this does not happen, talk of protecting the core is essentially meaningless. We would also like a better understanding of why this decision was made in the first place.

We suggest that all professional schools have to stand on their own, raising fees as they need to and can, with no subsidy from Academic Affairs. We know that, despite assurances to the contrary, both Skaggs pharmacy and the Rady business schools had to be funded in part by subventions from Academic Affairs. However desirable and worthy those enterprises are, they cannot be regarded as the central mission of the University of California, and they ought, if necessary, to charge market rate tuition to fund their operations.

In sum, we urge you to break from the pattern of across the board, incremental cuts. Politicians typically choose this option to avoid complaint. It is far easier to announce a certain percentage cut across units rather than to make the hard decisions of eliminating something completely. It is simply not the case that all campus entities are of equal value to our goals. But such an across the board strategy strikes a mortal blow to a university. The core – not 65% of everything ‐‐ must be saved at all costs; without it, the University of California as we know it, will die.

We respect the fact that dozens if not hundreds of University employees have been working hard to create solutions to this crisis. We also know that many discussions may have centered on the ideas that we have expressed here. But the actions we have seen implemented and proposed to date are extremely troubling to the faculty. We are told that “everything is on the table” but that is only a half truth: what is on the table seems to have already been prioritized, and simply awaits to be implemented in an order that the faculty are kept in the dark about, and to which we have no input.

The faculty knows that the fiscal crisis is real. The faculty knows that things cannot move forward as before. And the faculty knows that they will be required to make some difficult choices in their own institutions. But the faculty do not know the overall strategy being implemented by the University, and are deeply troubled by positions and actions that do not seem to protect the core mission of the university, despite assurances of the contrary. What they see is that the future of this great institution is in peril, and that this institution is likely to die a slow death from a thousand cuts, the inevitable result of continuing down the pathways we have heard outlined to date.

Instead, we must genuinely make it a priority to maintain UCSD (and UC) as world class institutions; explore ways to generate new resources, which obviously will not be forthcoming from the state and taxpayers; and insist that cuts must be targeted rather the result of a meataxe approach, focused on sustaining the things that make this an institution to which many of us have devoted our careers. It is time to fight for our future.

Yours sincerely,
Andrew Scull
Distinguished Professor and Chair, Sociology

Supported and endorsed by the following General Campus chairs:

Rand Steiger
Chair, Department of Music
Anirvan Ghosh
Chair, Neurobiology Section
Director, Neurosciences Graduate Program
Paul Linden
Chair, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Clark Gibson
Chair, Department of Political Science
Director of International Studies
John Wixted
Chair, Department of Psychology
Lawrence Larson
Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Kenneth Vecchio
Chair, Department of NanoEngineering
Robert Continetti
Chair, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
John Moore
Chair, Department of Linguistics
Rick Firtel
Associate Dean for Operations
Division of Biological Sciences
Gilbert Hegemier
Chair, Department of Structural Engineering
David O. Brink
Chair, Department of Philosophy
Shankar Subramaniam
Chair, Department of Bioengineering
Julian Betts
Chair, Department of Economics
John Marino
Chair, Department of History
Stephen Hedrick
Chair, Section of Molecular Biology
Brian Maple
Chair, Department of Physics
Dan Hallin
Chair, Department of Communication
Marta Kutas
Chair, Department of Cognitive Science
Douglas Bartlett
Chair, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Keith Marzullo
Chair, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Amanda Datnow
Professor and Director, Education Studies

UC Berkeley faculty opposing current UCOP Salary Cut Proposals

June 29, 2009

Dear Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George W. Breslauer:

We write in response to the invitation to comment on President Yudof's draft options for furloughs and/or salary reductions. We are aware of the magnitude of the financial challenges confronting the University and are committed to working with the President to surmount them.

We applaud his commitment to the principles of broad consultation and responding to the crisis in the most equitable manner possible.

However, we find ourselves unable to support any of the three presented options. We have not been provided with sufficient information, nor given adequate time for meaningful consultation with the Office of the President, the Berkeley administration, or our colleagues.

Informal discussions with colleagues have left us with many questions and concerns:

• Compliance: The Standing Order authorizing the President to implement a furlough/salary reduction plan in a state of financial emergency requires, among five conditions, that “other reductions of University expenditures through established University regulations and procedures are insufficient to stabilize the financial position,” and that “the contemplated actions are an essential element of financial savings under the current conditions.” In the absence of a full and transparent account of the budget and of all possible cost-cutting measures, how can we know whether these conditions have been met?

• Duration: Although the furloughs/salary reductions are proposed for a one-year term, they are subject to renewal by the Regents. By what process would a decision to extend these furloughs/salary reductions take place?

• Equity: We are concerned that the proposed cuts are not as progressively structured as they would have to be to realize the stated goal of equitability. Why are structures of multiple tiers, slowly graduated rises between tiers, and a threshold for total exemption from furloughs/salary reductions not considered? In light of the high cost of living in the Bay Area, and the fact that many employees are barely scraping by to pay their mortgage/rent, why should a cap on reductions for our highest earning employees come at the expense of a living wage for our lowest earning employees?

• Other consequences of reduced compensation: What are the implications of furloughs/salary reductions for our pensions and other benefits? The University's website says that “it may not be possible in all situations… to protect benefits and leave accruals… [T]his issue continues to be evaluated and no final decisions have been made yet.” In the absence of such information, how can we adjudicate the options?

• Deferred compensation: Are there alternatives that could be considered in lieu of either furloughs or salary reductions? For example, could savings gained from a salary reduction be treated as an advance from employees whose lost earnings would be restored upon recovery of the economy?

• Workload and tenure/promotions criteria: Under the furlough proposal, how are teaching and administrative duties reduced to achieve a workload commensurate with reduced pay? Are tenure, promotion, and job performance criteria adjusted accordingly?

• Recruitment/retention of faculty: Academic careers are exceptional in that they typically involve enormous early financial sacrifice (for graduate students), early job insecurity (for junior faculty), and forfeiture of high salaries and easy mobility in exchange for job security (for senior faculty). Furloughs/salary reductions would undermine prospective faculty's confidence that terms of employment that are offered will be honored. How would this affect our future ability to recruit the best scholars from around the world?

• Maintaining educational excellence: Our dedication to teaching at Berkeley also depends upon its unmatched (and historical) combination of academic excellence, its diverse student population, and its tradition as a public university. The proposed furloughs/salary reductions are coupled with a raising of student fees, which endangers that tradition.

We are fully committed to our University and its mission, and we would like to participate meaningfully in decisions about the University’s budget and explore alternatives that do not endanger faculty excellence and student access.

We realize that the roots of the budget crisis ultimately lie in precarious public support for public education and that, in the last instance, we are accountable to the residents of California. What is the University doing to persuade California taxpayers, legislators, and the media to support UC? Two bills currently before the California legislature—ACA 24 and SCA 21—would place before voters a constitutional amendment repealing UC’s historic constitutional autonomy.

What is the University doing in response to these bills? How might we move from a reactive stance to a pro-active strategy?

We need to respond to the current budget crisis in a way that respects and draws upon the good will of students, staff, faculty, donors, and alumnae. Their expertise, energy, and devotion to the University are its best resource.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Abel, Professor, English
David Ackerly, Associate Professor, Integrative Biology
Robert Allen, Adjunct Professor, African American Studies/Ethnic Studies
Robert Alter, Class of 1937 Professor in Hebrew and Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature
Charles Altieri, Professor, English
Miguel A. Altieri, Professor, Environmental Science, Policy & Management
Paola Bacchetta, Associate Professor, Gender & Women Studies
Ann Banfield, Professor, English
Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education
Patricia Berger, Associate Professor, History of Art
Irene Bloemraad, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Jean-Paul Bourdier, Professor, Architecture
Mark Brilliant, Assistant Professor, History/ Program in American Studies
Karl Ashoka Britto, Associate Professor, French/Comparative Literature
Thomas F. Budinger, Professor, Bioengineering
Judith P. Butler, Maxine Elliott Professor, Rhetoric/Comparative Literature
Richard Candida Smith, Professor, History
Claudia J. Carr, Associate Professor, Environmental Science, Policy & Management
Marianne Constable, Professor, Rhetoric
Kiren Chaudhry, Associate Professor, Political Science
Pheng Cheah, Professor, Rhetoric
Raveevarn Choksombatchai, Associate Professor, Architecture
Renée Y. Chow, Associate Professor, Architecture and Urban Design
Margaret Chowning, Professor, History
Timothy J. Clark, George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair, History of Art
Catherine Cole, Professor, Theater, Dance & Performance Studies
John Connelly, Associate Professor, History
Galen Cranz, Professor, Architecture
René Davids, Professor, Architecture and Urban Design
Prachi Deshpande, Associate Professor, History
Robert Dudley, Professor, Integrative Biology
Vasudha Dalmia, Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor, South & Southeast Asian Studies
Ian Duncan, Professor, English
John M. Efron, Koret Chair in Jewish History, Department of History
Laura Enriquez, Associate Professor, Sociology
Marian Feldman, Associate Professor, History of Art/Near Eastern Studies
Louise Fortmann, Professor, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
Anne-Lise Francois, Associate Professor, English
Catherine Gallagher, Eggers Professor, English
Hannah Ginsborg, Professor, Philosophy
Peter Glazer, Associate Professor, Theater, Dance & Performance Studies
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Professor, Ethnic Studies/Gender & Women's Studies
Mark Goble, Associate Professor, English
Steven Goldsmith, Associate Professor, English
Marcial Gonzalez, Associate Professor, English
Kevis Goodman, Associate Professor, English
Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Associate Professor, History of Art
Suzanne Guerlac, Professor, French
Chris Hallett, Associate Professor and Chair, History of Art
Timothy Hampton, Professor, French/Comparative Literature; Acting Chair, French
Kristin Hanson, Associate Professor, English
Gillian Hart, Professor, Geography
Cori Hayden, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Mark Healey, Assistant Professor, History
Lyn Hejinian, Professor, English
Ronald Hendel, Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies
David Henkin, Professor, History
Charles Hirschkind, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Elizabeth Honig, Associate Professor, History of Art
You-tien Hsing, Associate Professor, Geography
Lynn Huntsinger, Professor, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
Michael Iarocci, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Alastair Iles, Assistant Professor, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
Shannon Jackson, Professor & Chair, Theater, Dance and Performance Studies
Sheri L. Johnson, Professor, Psychology; Director, Cal Mania (CALM) Program
Andrew F. Jones, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages & Cultures
Victoria Kahn, Professor, Comparative Literature/English
Elaine H. Kim, Professor, Ethnic and Asian American Studies
Niko Kolodny, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Jake Kosek, Assistant Professor, Geography
George Lakoff, Professor, Linguistics
Jean Lave, Professor Emerita, Graduate School of Education
Gregory Levine, Associate Professor, History of Art
Song Li, Associate Professor, Bioengineering
Samuel R. Lucas, Associate Professor, Sociology
Colleen Lye, Associate Professor, English
Saba Mahmood, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies
Beatriz Manz, Professor, Geography/Ethnic Studies
Leslie Martin, Lecturer, French and Comparative Literature
Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Professor, History
Francine Masiello, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese/ Comparative Literature
Rebecca McLennan, Associate Professor, History
Line Mikkelsen, Assistant Professor, Linguistics
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Professor, Rhetoric and Gender & Women's Studies
Minoo Moallem, Professor, Gender & Women's Studies
Kathleen Moran, Senior Lecturer, Program in American Studies
Rachel Morello-Frosch, Associate Professor, Environmental Science, Policy & Management
Davitt Moroney, Professor, Music; University Organist
Alva Noe, Professor, Philosophy
Richard B. Norgaard, Professor, Energy & Resources Group
Geoffrey G. O’Brien, Assistant Professor, English
Todd P. Olson, Associate Professor, History of Art
Aihwa Ong, Professor, Anthropology/Southeast Asian Studies
Samuel Otter, Professor and Chair, English
Kevin Padian, Professor, Integrative Biology; Curator, Museum of Paleontology
Céline Pallud, Assistant Professor, Environmental Science, Policy & Management
Beth Piatote, Assistant Professor, Ethnic and Native American Studies
Joanna Picciotto, Associate Professor, English
Gautam Premnath, Assistant Professor, English
Kent Puckett, Associate Professor, English
Paul Rabinow, Professor, Anthropology
Leigh Raiford, Assistant Professor, African American Studies
Harsha Ram, Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures/ Comparative Literature
Isha Ray, Assistant Professor, Energy & Resources Group
Raka Ray, Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies, Sociology
José David Saldívar, Class of 1942 Professor, English/Ethnic Studies
Debarati Sanyal, Associate Professor, French
Alex Saragoza, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies
Daniel Sargent, Assistant Professor, History
Scott Saul, Associate Professor, English
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology; Head, Doctoral Program in Medical Anthropology, Department of Anthropology
Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education
Katherine Sherwood, Professor, Art Practice
Whendee Silver, Professor, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
Jeffrey Skoller, Associate Professor, Film Studies
Mary Ann Smart, Gladyce Arata Terrill Professor, Music
Sandra Susan Smith, Associate Professor, Sociology
Katherine Snyder, Associate Professor, English
Janet Sorensen, Associate Professor, English
Dan Stamper-Kurn, Associate Professor, Physics
Andrew Stewart, Nicholas C. Petris Professor of Greek Studies, History of Art and Classics
Laura Stoker, Associate Professor, Political Science
Jill Stoner, Associate Professor, Architecture
Chenxi Tang, Associate Professor, German
Elisa Tamarkin, Associate Professor, English
Alan Tansman, Professor, East Asian Languages & Cultures
Barrie Thorne, Professor, Sociology/Gender & Women's Studies
Charis Thompson, Associate Professor, Gender & Women's Studies
Khatharya Um, Associate Professor, Ethnic and Asian American Studies
Kate Van Orden, Professor, Music
Paula Varsano, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages & Cultures
Sophie Volpp, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature/East Asian Languages and Cultures
Anne Wagner, Professor and Class of 1936 Chair, History of Art
Richard Walker, Professor, Geography
Anne Walsh, Associate Professor, Art Practice
Michael Watts, Class of '63 Professor, Geography
Laurie A. Wilkie, Professor, Anthropology
Robb Willer, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Joanna Williams, Professor, History of Art and South/Southeast Asian Studies
Sau-Ling Wong, Professor, Ethnic and Asian American Studies

California's 'Gold Standard' for Higher Education Falls Upon Hard Times

By JOSH KELLER

San Francisco

Few documents in higher education have enjoyed the influence or longevity of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the 1960 law that transformed the state's public colleges and served as a blueprint for public systems across the country.

Even today, almost 50 years after it was written, the master plan retains a mythic status in California, where it continues to provide the foundation of public debate about higher education. Californians routinely invoke the plan's promises of minimal fees and universal access as the basis for nearly any argument about the state's colleges.

Oppose tuition increases? Cite the master plan. Decry cuts in state support for student-aid programs? Cite the master plan. Support, or reject, changes in admissions policies at the University of California? Cite the master plan.

But as California grapples with one of the worst financial crises in its history, the master plan faces criticism that it is irrelevant to the needs and means of the state. Many scholars and college leaders argue that the hallowed document that has served the state so well for decades needs to be rewritten.

"There's probably only one thing that's worse than a public policy that fails, and that's a public policy that succeeds and outlives its usefulness," says Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, in San Jose, Calif.

By any measure, California's colleges are still some of the most diverse and highest-quality public institutions in the country. But Mr. Callan and others point to indications that the state's higher-education system, once the gold standard for institutions from community colleges to research universities across the country, is having trouble adapting to California's changing needs.

Compared with other states, California's educational capital is declining, a phenomenon that predates the current recession. In 1990, California ranked 17th in the proportion of its residents ages 25 to 34 who hold bachelor's degrees or higher. By 2007 it ranked 25th, well below other big states like New York, Illinois, and Virginia. (See box at end of article.)

In a report often cited by college leaders, the Public Policy Institute of California estimated this year that the state would fall one million college graduates short of its work-force needs by 2025. The nonprofit group's report suggested that the state's inability to move through college enough Hispanic residents, its fastest-growing group, was a key cause of the shortfall.

Those issues are a far cry from the ones California faced in 1960, when 90 percent of the population was white, the state was flush with cash, and the main challenge was designing a higher-education system that could absorb a tidal wave of new students in the baby boom. The architects of the master plan responded with a promise to provide access to higher education to all high-school graduates who could benefit from it.

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Sharing the Pain: Cutting Faculty Salaries Across the Board

Broad Pay Cuts Make Deep Dents in Morale

By AUDREY WILLIAMS JUNE

Greensboro College has many of the intimate hallmarks of a small, private, liberal-arts college.

Professors give their cellphone numbers to students and routinely provide extra help to those who need it. Classes at the North Carolina institution average 14 people. And one of the students featured on the college Web site is a biology major who plays on the tennis and volleyball teams and says she is grateful that professors are willing to work around her hectic schedule. The college motto is "You belong here!"

But in mid-April, faculty and staff members got some news that cast a pall on the close-knit campus. At a hastily arranged meeting in the chapel where worship services are held every week, President Craven E. Williams announced layoffs and a temporary, across-the-board pay cut of 20 percent for salaried employees. In addition, sabbaticals were shelved and many benefits were cut.

The institution needs $5-million to stay afloat until the fall, when tuition payments roll in. "It's very difficult to tell somebody that you're cutting their pay 20 percent," said Robert Stout, chairman of Greensboro College's Board of Trustees. "But the important thing is to make sure the college survives."

Some colleges, slammed by the nationwide recession, have begun to eliminate specific programs and departments. But those cost savings often take time to materialize. Greensboro and other colleges instead turned to across-the-board measures that could be put in place quickly and have an immediate effect on the bottom line. Pay cuts often fit the bill.

Still, the move has been devastating to the faculty. "People were not expecting that at all," said a faculty member who did not want to be identified by name because, like many of the 75 full-time professors at Greensboro, she now fears for her job. Many are contract employees, there is no faculty senate, and many worry that the administration, which they say blindsided them with the news, is looking for reasons to get rid of more people. In fact, the cuts did not save everyone's job. Seven staff members and one professor were laid off.

"People had already made their sabbatical plans," said the faculty member. "Other people were in tears because they thought they would lose their house. We had no inkling it was this bad."

Sharing Hardship

Other institutions taking the broad-cut approach include Belmont Abbey College, also in North Carolina, where salaries are slated to be cut by 3.5 percent by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, senior administrators must cut programs, operations, and staffing by 5 percent by the end of this month.

Many who do this say spreading hardship around saves jobs. "Our goal is to keep as many people whole as we possibly can," said Brian Friedrich, president of Concordia University, in Nebraska, which instituted pay cuts, froze hiring, and cut back on adjuncts, among other things, earlier this year. "If that means sharing the pain, we preferred to go that way collectively, as opposed to eliminating this particular area or this group of individuals."

Mr. Friedrich's pay took a 7-percent hit, his leadership team took a 5-percent pay cut, and faculty and professional staff members lost 3 percent of their pay. Beginning July 1, Mr. Friedrich said, his pay cut will increase to 10 percent, and hourly staff members, whose income the college had tried to protect, will end up with a 3-percent cut in pay.

But the "share the pain" approach can harm an institution in the long run, warn some experts. Programs that were once strong are weakened after years of across-the-board cuts. And salary cuts, particularly ones as steep as Greensboro College's, can push people to look elsewhere for work.

In addition, deep pay cuts are not sustainable, said Thomas C. Longin, an independent consultant who specializes in college finances.

"Now you have to think about where you're going to get the money from to build those salaries back up and move forward so you won't lose people," Mr. Longin said. "If you've just dug yourself deeper in the hole, now you have a whole bunch of recovery to do" before you can take advantage of new opportunities.

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