UC Corruption

The highest-paid officials of the University of California have decided that they're not being paid enough.

Specifically, 36 of the top 200 earners in the UC administration have recently threatened to file suit if their retirement packages are not recalculated to avoid a $245,000 federal limit. Because these workers earn more than that, they feel they should be entitled to have their retirements recalculated based on their current incomes rather than this federal cap. They are demanding this despite the financial chaos of the last few years, which have seen a 32% increase in UC feeds in 2009, and an 8% increase in 2010. And they want the money retroactive to 2007.

The average wage in 2009 was $49,777; a retirement benefit above $245,00 would be, therefore, almost five times what the average worker makes.

Such superstar compensation might make sense if these leading UC administrators were actually doing a good job. If they had, for example, used their political contacts and influence to prevent the state of California from cutting its education budget, then they would have earned their salaries. Police union representatives certainly earned their salaries, as they were so successful in preventing cuts to bloated law enforcement budgets. But it seems no one is there to help defend education. Not only did these administrators fail to force Sacramento from making its draconian cuts, it seems as if they hardly even tried.

A more just and equitable system would be this: Let the salaries and retirements of the top 200 UC administrators from this point forward come entirely as bonuses paid from the funds they prevent from being cut. If Sacramento cuts the UC budget, they receive nothing. Perhaps this would motivate them to take the battle to Sacramento with the same enthusiasm Sacramento has displayed for destroying public education in California.

Those executives would argue that such a salary structure change would, as they put it in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, "jeopardize the system's ability to recruit top employees." The unasked question is--are these really the "top" employees, when they so miserably fail to protect their system? And what is it they do, anyway, that justify such salaries?