Occupy California, Refund Higher Education, and the Question of Violence (Plus Schedule of Events)

On November 15th, faculty and students at UC Berkeley will hold a one-day strike and will attempt to re-establish an Occupy Cal encampment. This action is supported by thousands of students and faculty members throughout the UC system and around the world. One of the reasons for this demonstration is to protest the excessive use of police force that has been used against students and faculty members. People will also be protesting the last-minute cancellation of the UC Regents meeting.

While students, employees, and faculty members have asked educational leaders to sign a pledge to join us in our call to re-fund higher education in California by making the banks and wealthiest 1% pay, the regents have responded by hiding from the public. So the new plan is to track down the higher ed leaders on November 16th when Southern California protesters will converge at the CSU trustees meeting in Long Beach, and Northern California protesters will rally and march in the San Francisco financial district, starting at noon at Justin Herman Plaza. We will once again demand that the UC Regents and CSU trustees sign our pledge, and we will invite them to then join us as we continue the march to the state building in San Francisco. Once there, we will demand that government officials also support our pledge, and we will have a people�s regents meeting.

Setting the Stage
When the UC announced that it had canceled the Regents meeting, it stated that, �they had received information indicating that rogue elements intent on violence and confrontation with UC public safety officers were planning to attach themselves to peaceful demonstrations expected to occur at the meeting.� While the UC did not reveal the sources for these threats, it is important to ask, how does the university define violence?

According to a UC police officer, the university is using the following definition of violence, �"the individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence...I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest." Someone needs to call Gandhi and Martin Luther King to tell them that the whole history of non-violent resistance has been rewritten.

It is of course outrageous for any public university to declare that students and workers can be beaten with batons if they engage in the dangerous act of linking arms, and it is especially absurd for this claim to be made at UC Berkeley, which stands for the birth of the Free Speech movement. If people are no longer able to protest nonviolently, then they may be forced to use other means. (I am not endorsing here the use of violence; rather, I am arguing that the police have to allow for nonviolent resistance)

By shutting down the Regents meeting, the university has also sent the message that the university is not only being privatized on a financial basis, but it is also being privatized on a bureaucratic basis. The regents are now telling the people of California that public matters have to be discussed in private, and the public is no longer invited to witness the dismantling of the �world�s greatest public university.�

Following the day of activities on the 16th, attention will turn to the one-day strikes at CSU East Bay and CSU Dominguez Hills. Ultimately, what is at stake is the future of public higher education in California and around the world. As the refund higher education movement couples with the Occupy Wall Street movement, a new level of organization and energy will emerge.


SCHEDULE FOR NOV 16 STATE-WIDE DAY OF ACTION TO REFUND PUBLIC EDUCTION

10 � 10:30am: free busses leave from Telegraph and Bancroft on Berkeley
11:30am � Noon: gather for a free lunch.
Noon rally at Justin Herman Plaza in collaboration with Occupy SF, 3
blocks from the Embarcadero BART station
1:00pm: March through the Financial District to make the banks pay for
the financial crisis they created
4:00pm: People's Assembly for Public Education at the State Building
to call on Gov Brown to make the banks pay public education, 455
Golden Gate Ave San Fransisco
3:00pm early bus returns to UC Berkeley
6:00pm remaining buses return to UC Berkeley

SCHEDULE FOR NOV15 OPEN UNIVERSITY & STRIKE AT UC BERKELEY
8am-5pm: All day Open University activities (teach-outs, workshops,
public readings, installations, etc.) at Sproul Plaza and surrounding
areas.
Noon: Mass convergence at Sproul Hall and formal inauguration of
day-long Open University.
Noon � 2pm: Teach-outs in Sproul Plaza.
2pm: Rally against police violence and other, related forms of
violence, including dispossession, privatization, and debt.
2:30pm: March to Berkeley High and Berkeley City College.
5pm: General Assembly at Sproul Plaza.

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The Master Plan In Reverse

Bob Meister from UCSC has written an excellent article on the financialization of the university and the death of the Master Plan. Meister�s research shows that as tuition in the UC system continues to grow and in-state students are replaced with nonresident students, Californian students who in the past would have gone to the UCs or the CSUs are now going to community colleges. However, since the community colleges have also experienced budget cuts and enrollment reductions, a lot of the students who used to go to the community colleges are now going to the for-profit colleges, like the University of Phoenix.

One of the results of this system is that low-income, minority students are being forced to pay high-tuition at low-performing for-profit institutions. In turn, these schools, which often have a graduation rate of under 10%, suck up over a billion dollars in Pell Grants a year as students take out high-interest subprime student loans. Moreover, since these loans are usually guaranteed by the federal government, and they cannot be erased through bankruptcy, there are a safe bet for financial speculators.

In this Reversed Master Plan, the defunding of each system results in higher tuition levels coupled with larger student debts and lower degree production. Not only will students have to work twenty years to pay off their student loans, but they will be unable to pay taxes or to contribute to economic growth. Instead of universities and colleges creating social mobility and reducing economic inequality, they are generating higher levels of inequity. To help change this dangerous path, please come to the UC Regents meeting or the CSU trustees meeting on November 16th and call for a new economic and educational model. You can also sign here a petition to protest police violence during the UC Berkeley demonstrations on November 9th.

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UC and the 99%

My last few posts have documented the growing wage inequality in the UC system. Like the rest of America, the university is structured by a divide between the people at the top and everyone else. This type of income disparity has motivated the Occupy movement to call for a fairer system, and we are now seeing a series of protests at the UC campuses, which will culminate in a large action at the next UC regents meeting on November 16th.

Already our actions are having an effect. In fact, the LA Times reports that due to the fight back against President Yudof's planned tuition increases, the system has backed off of its plan to increase tuition again for now. Currently, we have to turn our attention to getting the state to raise taxes on the wealthy so that state funding for higher education can be restored.

As the important book, The Spirit Level, reveals, income inequality not only undermines the productivity of an economy, but it helps to generate a host of social problems. According to global statistics, the developed countries with the highest levels of income inequality, also have the lowest levels of social trust, and the highest levels of crime, infant mortality, heart disease, and illiteracy. Even the rich people in unequal societies suffer from increased anxiety due to their constant drive to increase their wealth.

On the other hand, in countries where there is a lower disparity of income, like the Scandinavian nations, people report a higher rate of happiness and health. As The Spirit Level reveals, when people feel that their society is not divided between winners and losers, they support social programs and promote education and subsidized healthcare. However, when wealth inequality grows, social welfare programs are not protected because people do not feel that they are living in a just society.

In the case of the UC system, the growth in the number of high-earning administrators and medical faculty undermines any sense of a shared purpose. Moreover, as medical incomes increase, the cost of healthcare in California also increases. We can also anticipate that as UC moves to a new compensation system for faculty, we will see even more wealth disparity and a reduced sense of social trust. Likewise as income becomes concentrated at the top in California, we witness a decreased desire to support social welfare programs and higher education. In short, wealth inequality is the driving force behind most of our social and economic problems.

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Wage Disparities in the Professorial Ranks

In a previous post, I presented data on wage inequality in the UC system amongst different types of high-earning employees; what I would like to do now is to discuss inequities in the professorial ranks (these statistics do not include medical, law, or business professors).

One way of approaching this data is to first look at the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors. For instance, in 2010, there were 3,246 full professors, and their average total compensation was $139,633. Meanwhile, during the same time period, we find 1,322 associate professors with an average gross pay of $117,527, and 984 assistant professors with an average total pay of $76,949.

While the system-wide average gross pay for all academic professors was $116,665 in 2010, if we look at this average on the different campuses, we find the following: UCLA - $137,683; Berkeley - $127,607; San Diego - $118,480; Santa Barbara - $115,349; Davis - $101,903; Riverside - $98,107; Irvine - $107,462; Merced - $88,229; and Santa Cruz - $99,797. Excluding Merced, we see that the difference between the average academic professor salaries at UCLA and Riverside is $39,576 or 34%.

Also, looking historically, we know that in 2004, there were 216 full professors making more than $200,000, and in 2006, the number of high earners dropped to 194, but in 2008, this same category jumped to 380, and in 2010, it went down slightly to 372. Therefore, the number of full professors making over $200,000 nearly doubled between 2006 and 2008 and has since stabilized. Meanwhile, if we look at the salaries of assistant professors during this same period, we find that the number of assistants making less than $70,00 stayed almost the same between 2004 and 2008: there were 577 assistant professors making less than $70,000 in 2004; 553 in 2006; 558 in 2008; and 401 in 2010. These statistics tells us that the salary growth for academic professors was concentrated at the top during the period of 2006 and 2008.

It would be interesting to look at the salary disparities in the different disciplines, but this information is not available. Over all, it appears that the biggest wage disparities occur between the campuses with the highest number of graduate students (UCLA, UCB, UCSD), and the ones with the highest percentage of undergraduates (UCR, UCM, UCSC).

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New UC Salary Data: 2010 was a Good Year for Higher Earners

New UC salary data is now available at Jeffrey Bergamini�s compensation database, and it reveals that in 2010, there were 4,237 UC employees making more than $200,000 for a total gross pay of $1.26 billion and a base pay of $744 million. This means that for the over 200k club, more than 40% of their pay came from extra pay; moreover, the over $200,000 earners raked in 12% of the gross pay for the whole system ($9.3 billion), while they represented under 3% of the regular employees and less than 1% of the total number of employees (including student workers).

If we compare 2010 to 2008 and 2006, we find that in 2006, there were 2,464 employees making over $200K with a total gross pay of $680 million, while in 2008, there were 3,643 high earners with a total gross salary of $1 billion. In other words, during the UC�s �fiscal crisis,� we have seen a continual increase of employees entering into the over-200K club.

To further investigate who makes up this class of high earners, we can break down these employees into six major categories: administrators, medical faculty, athletic coaches, business school professors, academic professors (excluding business and law professors), and law professors. These six categories accounted for over 95% of the revenue of the over $200,000 club in 2010.

Starting with the medical faculty, we find that in 2010, there were 2,772 medical faculty making over $200,000 for a total gross pay of $867.4 million. This means that in the period of 2008 to 2010, the medical faculty in the over 200k range increased their numbers by 476, while their total gross pay went up $187.4 million. It is clear that the medical centers are an economic powerhouse that drive inequality in the UC system.

The second biggest group in the over-200k club is the administrators. In 2010, we find 351 bureaucrats making a total of $102 million, while in 2008, there were 397 administrators in the over 200k club making a total of $109 million. In other words, due to the downsizing of the Office of the President, there are now fewer administrators in the over-$200,000 club, but their average pay is higher.

The next biggest group of high earners are the academic professors outside of law, medicine, and business. In 2010, there were 397 professors making over $200,000 for a collective gross pay of $93 million. If we compare these figures to 20008, we discover that this group has been reduced by 18 people, and their collective pay has gone down by $3.6 million.

In the case of the business school faculty, in 2008, there were 372 faculty making more than $200,000 for a collective gross pay of $93 million, while in 2010, 439 high-earning professors had a collective gross pay of $115 million. This statistics show that while the number of general campus, high-earning professors has been decreased, the medical and business professors making over $200,000 has continued to increase.

In the case of law professors, we find that in 2008, there were 85 making over $200,000 for a collective pay of $21 million, and in 2010, this same group consisted of 96 professors making a collective gross pay of $25 million. So we once again, we see a trend of increasing the number of high-earning professors in the professional schools, while the nonprofessional school professors are reduced.

The final group is the athletic coaches; in 2008, there were 24 coaches making over $2000,000 for a collective payout of $12.8 million, and in 2010, this same group has 35 employees at a collective gross pay of $16 million. In other words, the athletic departments continue to do well in bad times.

These statistics show that as the university continues to rely increasingly on undergraduate tuition to fund the system, more of the pay is going to people working outside of undergraduate education. Moreover, since the UC is the third biggest employer in California, we can see how the wage disparities in the UC system contribute to the growing wage inequality in the state.

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Yudof�s Salary Plan: What does it Really Mean?

In August, President Yudof announced a plan for merit increases for non-represented staff making less than $200,000 and for faculty who have been deemed meritorious. The initial idea was to reward people who have not gotten raises during the last few years. Yudof also wants to give the campuses the ability to stop other universities from stealing UC faculty; however, this plan is full of unanswered questions.

Coupled with the new merit-based 3% salary increase, we find a new policy that will allow faculty to use grant money and other external sources of income to increase their base salaries. A good discussion of this plan can be found at Remaking the University, but it is important to stress that in reality, there are four main ways that people in the UC get increased compensation: across the board salary increases, merit pay, special compensation pools, and negotiated compensation. During the last few years, some represented employees have gotten salary increases, while many other employees have continued to receive merit increases. Furthermore, the medical centers and other units have developed their own special compensation pools, while non-represented faculty and administrators have continued to get renegotiated compensation deals.

In fact, except for across the board salary increases, most of the compensation increases are handled on the campuses on an ad hoc basis, and it does not look like this system is changing. Moreover, in the current move to let the campuses keep all of their revenue, it is unclear what Yudof�s salary plan means. Is the Office of the President going to distribute state funds to the campuses in a special merit pool, or is the idea to simply instruct the campuses to allow staff and faculty to compete for a share of their local revenue?

If we look at the facts on the ground, we discover that professors and administrators often get their compensation increases through private negotiations. As the past Academic Council Chair Dan Simmons wrote a few years back in his study, �The Death of the UC Salary Scales,": "At least one campus has provided off-scale salaries to 100 percent of its new faculty appointments. Some campuses are utilizing devices to broadly provide off-scale enhancements to faculty in order to regularize the salary inversions that result from hiring new faculty with off-scale salaries exceeding the compensation of full professors. One or more campuses utilize a shadow salary scale to reflect market level compensation.� In other words, many--if not most--of the non-represented faculty do not get their raises through merit reviews or movements up the salary scale; instead, increases are negotiated through private deals between professors and administrators. In fact, Simmons pointed out that 85% of the professors are being paid off of the official salary scale.

As Simmons argued, the current system has many flaws: �The evolution of a system that compensates faculty who are newly appointed, or who threaten to leave and are retained with off-scale salary increments, replaces the historic peer reviewed compensation system with a system that is individually negotiated with campus administrators who have the discretion to grant or deny a salary increment. A step IV professor in one place is no longer on the same playing field as a step IV professor in another place, perhaps as close as across the hall in the same department. Indeed, the step IV professor might discover that his or her new colleague recently hired as an assistant professor is earning a higher salary.� Not only are some new faculty getting higher pay than faculty members who have been teaching for several years, but the off-scale system circumvents the merit review and peer review process. It also creates collusion between individual faculty members and administrators.

As I have pointed out before, the end result of the current system is incredible inequality within the professorial ranks, with some faculty members getting $40,000 raises and some getting nothing. While we have been told that the faculty senates have been working on this problem, there is no evidence that a new system and culture has been implemented. In fact, the Office of the President has been pushing a market-based system that Simmons previously critiqued in the following way: �The market approach to setting individual salaries says several things to a faculty member who has loyally done his or her job and progressed through the salary ranks on a regular basis. First, you are a fool for not having sought to move elsewhere with a higher salary in order to negotiate an off-scale at home. Not only are you a fool, your work must be worth less than the person across the hall newly hired with an off-scale that is higher. Second, the first thing you should do is look for an appointment at another university. The position might be more attractive in any event than working in a place that does not appreciate your efforts. Third, the University must be more interested in bringing in new superstars with expensive start up packages than maintaining the loyalty of its current faculty base.� Thus, in order to compete with private universities for professors and administrators, the university is forced to renegotiate salaries in a secretive and individualized manner. In this system, certain people are deemed market worthy, while others see their wages stagnate.

By arguing in his letter that the new pool of money should be used to recruit and retain faculty who are being �courted by competing institutions,� Yudof is signaling to the campuses that they should continue to negotiate secret deals with their stars and potential stars. While some may prosper from this system, many will actually see their compensation go down as they pay more for healthcare and pension. However, since everyone wants to be a star, no one will rock the boat, and the majority will suffer. Like our national economy, wealth inequality grows because the majority of people think they will profit from a system that screws them.

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UC Announces New Pension Rates

At the next UC Regents meeting, the Office of the President will ask the Regents to endorse new pension contribution rates. According to this proposal, starting in July 2013, current employees will pay 6.5% of their salary into UCRS, and the UC will put in 12%. For people hired on or after July 1 2013, they will pay 7%, while the UC will pay 12%. Of course, these changes will have to be negotiated for represented employees.

One interesting aspect of this is that the university has decided to contribute 12% for the people in both the new and old plan. This means that while people in the new plan will receive a reduced benefit, the university does not have an immediate incentive to fire current workers and replace them with new hires, which often happens when a new pension tier requires a lower employer contribution. However, over time, the people in the new system will cost the university less.

Ultimately, new hires will be paying more and getting less, and this inequality will help to reduce the university�s long-term liability. Moreover, for the next three years, much of the increased contributions from employees may be matched with new salary increases, and so the university will not increase its revenue from these changes. In fact, the move to a 12% employer contribution coupled with a 3% salary increase this year and a possible additional 3% next year will mean that the UC will see its compensation costs increase by 11% in the next two years (the UC currently contributes 5% to the pension plan). The long-term plan is to increase the employer contribution by 1% each year until they reach 16%.

Once the UC starts paying 16% of covered compensation, it will cost the university over $1 billion a year to fund the normal cost of the pension plan. Furthermore, the UC still has to deal with escalating retiree healthcare costs and the fact that the state still does not contribute to the pension plan. I predict that the university will seek savings by continuing to shift more of the cost for healthcare and retiree healthcare to the employees. Without a significant change to recent healthcare legislation, workers inside and outside of the university will continue to see their total compensation decrease.

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