UC Regents Award Pay Raises to Chancellors, Senior Vice Presidents

By KENNETH R. WEISS

Sept. 18, 1999 12 AM PT

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TIMES EDUCATION WRITER

SAN FRANCISCO — The UC Board of Regents on Friday awarded raises of $20,000 or more to each of its nine campus chancellors and about $40,000 apiece to senior vice presidents, but dropped a proposal to let its staff set salaries of $200,000 or less.

The big boost in salaries, on top of a decision earlier this year to sweeten executives’ retirement benefits, will add about $20,000 a year to Senior Vice President Wayne Kennedy’s $130,000 annual pension when he retires next year.

The combination also means that UC President Richard C. Atkinson will be able to retire with an annual pension of $157,000--up $27,000 from last year--and Senior Vice President C. Judson King with a $206,000 annual pension--a hike of $76,000, according to UC formulas.

The regents voted 10 to 3 on Friday to approve the raises, saying they need to offer salaries competitive with those at leading private universities to maintain UC’s status as the nation’s premier public university.

But Regent Peter Taylor, a banker who represents UC alumni on the board, said he opposed the raises because the regents were not furnished with sufficient information to justify all of them.

“When you are paying salaries with student fee money--and some of those salaries are paid by student fees--we need to know if these raises are appropriate,” he said. UC staff did the studies, he said, “but didn’t share them with us.”

Another no vote came from student Regent Michele Pannor, who said she thought the $2.7 million in executive raises “wasn’t the best use of our money.”

“I don’t think top-level administrators come to work for the University of California for the salaries,” she said. “They come for the excellent faculty, staff and students. That’s what we should be investing our money in.”

The regents’ action approved salaries for 140 executives and senior managers who make more than $160,000--a threshold slightly higher than the $157,143 salary of Gov. Gray Davis.

Board Chairman John Davies had proposed that his colleagues no longer bother with any salaries of $200,000 or less. Setting such salaries, he said, would best be left to UC staff.

But he dropped that idea, he said, after the governor and other regents objected that a $200,000 salary is “too big” to avoid scrutiny of the regents, who are appointed by the governor as guardians of the public purse.

Davies said he thought this year’s raises were justified, given the enormously competitive market for talented university executives.

A study of university leaders found that the average salary of UC chancellors lags 17% behind the average salary of their peers at 26 comparable institutions. The list includes private institutions such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford, as well as the public universities of Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois.

“This salary gap puts UC at a real disadvantage in recruiting and retaining top leaders,” said Judith W. Boyette, an associate vice president for human resources.

With raises approved Friday, UC chancellors now lag 8.1% behind their peers. The chancellors’ new salaries, which will take effect Oct. 1, range from $250,000 at UC Riverside to $335,000 at UC San Francisco.

The regents did not get similar market studies for other senior managers, prompting Taylor’s complaint about a lack of data.

The regents discussed executive raises behind closed doors and gave them preliminary approval, which they are permitted to do under a special exemption in California’s open meeting law. Then they took the final vote in public, without comment.

But they got an earful from university employees before the final action.

Robert Brower, a UC Davis computer specialist, said he was incensed that the university claims there is “no money” for cost-of-living wage increases, “but UC has money for big shots. Where did the money come from?” he demanded.

Frank Pinto, who builds museum exhibits at UC Berkeley, said “the suggested raises are equal to the entire salaries of some workers. I make $30,000 a year, and I live on that. I have no problem with a pay differential, but how much does someone need?”

Mary Higgins, a clerical worker at UC San Francisco, complained that the university was being unfair by lavishing money on top managers but refusing her a raise for two years, while her rent has climbed from $1,000 to $1,350 a month.

“This place can run without chancellors; it cannot run without clericals,” she said. Her comment brought applause and whistles from her colleagues at the meeting.

UC officials are handing out an average raise of 3.5% this year to most of the university’s 154,000 employees. But some workers haven’t received them because of stalled union negotiations or because they have been passed over for merit raises.

The faculty received raises about 1 percentage point higher than the standard 3.5% this year. The extra pay was designed to bring their average salaries in line with those of their peers at other leading research universities.

The senior managers, deans and executives got even more, with this year’s raises ranging from 8% to 18.5%. Some regents privately expressed concern that the salaries of officials at the UC headquarters have far outpaced the market.

Regents Secretary Leigh P. Trivette, for instance, will see her annual salary increase to $130,400, more than twice the pay of the average assistant professor. UC professors from all ranks make about $84,120 a year.

Regent Velma Montoya, who also voted against the executive pay increase, said the university should direct salary increases to assistant professors, particularly the talented black and Latino professors who are the hottest commodities in higher education.

“When we identify minority hires, we make offers and then lose them to counteroffers,” she said. “This is where we should be focusing our money. I’m more concerned about growing the top teachers and researchers at the university than paying top executives even more money.”

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UC Salary Raises

The University of California regents on Friday raised the salaries of chancellors by an average of 8.1% and of senior vice presidents by an average of 18.5%. Here are the salaries of top executives before and after the raises:

Position/executive: VP, Clinical Services, University of California; William H. Gurtner

Old Salary: $347,000

New Salary: $376,000

Position/executive: President, University of California; Richard C. Atkinson

Old Salary: $310,900

New Salary: $337,300

Position/executive: Chancellor, UC San Francisco; J. Michael Bishop

Old Salary: $323,300

New Salary: $335,000

Position/executive: Chancellor, UC Berkeley; Robert M. Berdahl

Old Salary: $271,400

New Salary: $294,500