<p>"...For example, in 2009 the base salary of UC Berkeleys vice chancellor for equity and inclusion was $194,000, almost four times that of starting assistant professors. And by 2006, academic administrators outnumbered faculty..."</p>
<p>UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau hits back at George Will</p>
<p>[UC</a> Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau hits back at George Will - San Francisco Business Times](<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2012/06/14/uc-berkeley-chancellor-birgeneau-hits.html]UC”>http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2012/06/14/uc-berkeley-chancellor-birgeneau-hits.html)</p>
<p>They really are shameless. I guess promoting equality requires giving yourself obscenely high salaries. Then again, the same thing happens with all sorts of charities and non-profits.</p>
<p>I have rarely agreed with George Will, but this time I do. I was shocked to learn the salaries at my son’s school.</p>
<p>I’m not so sure Will is suggesting that individual salaries are necessarily out of whack, but many have questioned why Berkeley, which has a majority of minorities, needs a $200k Administrator of diversity/inclusion. On its face it looks like an unnecessary position. (But behind the scenes, that move earned the Chancellor big bonus points with the Democratic legislature.)</p>
<p>I also don’t typically agree with George. However, if what the article states is true - that there are now more administrators than faculty members, then you have to question the purpose of these institutions.</p>
<p>typical case of rich becoming richer while everyone else is status quo’d</p>
<p>not sure why everyone is surprised it’s been this way for long time now</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s surprising or even at all abnormal, but it’s wasteful, self-serving, and reprehensible.</p>
<p>The same sort of administrative waste occurs throughout education. In the local high school, for example, we have an administrator for “community service,” who is responsible to toting up everyone’s hours now that community service is no longer voluntary. This position didn’t exist 5 years ago I am sure there are tons of other examples.</p>
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<p>Except that a lot of this overhead is required by federal/state/local rules and regs…since community service is not voluntary, someone has to add up the hours.</p>
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<p>It seems to me that Birgeneau doesn’t satisfactorily address the points that Will made. </p>
<p>Specifically, while the nearly-$200k-salaried vice-chancellor of equity & inclusion may indeed be a distinguished astrophysicist, not only does that not exactly answer the question of why he needs to be paid so well for a position for which he is not obviously qualified (for how exactly does a background in astrophysics provide you with expertise in equity and inclusion?), but more fundamentally, fails to address the question of why such a position is even necessary at all, particularly during a harrowing budget crunch.</p>
<p>Maybe the astro-physicist is a man of many talents. Besides, I doubt he’s allowed to double-dip - ie get salary as a faculty member AND as a vice-chancellor. I think that’s the point Birgeneau is trying to make.</p>
<p>I’m sure other private peer schools have such positions so why is George focusing on UC? California is a lot more liberal in its politics than most of nation so that may be a reason for both the ‘need’ for such a position and George’s criticism of UC. </p>
<p>Although UC’s are mostly minority, from a purely political point, its not. Majority of UC students are Asians and whites. Hispanics come in a distant third and blacks barely register. Asians are not considered minorities in a classical sense. So it would be easy for UC to make an argument that the need for such position does exist. Regardless, I do wish they’d be more fiscally conservative in how the public funds are spent.</p>
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<p>And you just answered your own question: UC is facing a large-scale budgetary crisis that the top private schools are not. </p>
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<p>I don’t think anybody has ever once accused anybody of double-dipping.</p>
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<p>Huh? Seriously? What about the history of railroads? What about ‘coolie labor’? Did you miss the part in WWI where Japanese Americans were shunted off to concentration camps after all of the possessions were dumped?</p>
<p>Perhaps what you meant to write was that Asians are not Under-represneted minorities. And indeed, they are the majority of several UC campuses.</p>
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<p>Name one other top school where a minority population is the majority on campus?</p>
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<p>Which several? I can only find Irvine which has majority (>50%) Asian American undergraduates, although some others have plurality Asian American undergraduates (Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego).</p>
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<p>UC certainly isn’t alone among publics with budgetary ‘crisis’.</p>
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<p>George’s article mentioned the VC position as an example of waste. Birgeneau clairified that the position is held by a faculty member. So where’s the waste? Seems like a pretty good deal to me.</p>
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<p>Asians aren’t considered ‘minorities’.</p>
<p>Quoting is a pain on this board.</p>
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<p>I think most would disagree with you, and that that font of all knowledge, wiki, certainly does.</p>
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<p>[Minority</a> group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group]Minority”>Minority group - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>But in the economic sense, Birgenou made a mistake. If the esteemed Prof is indeed teaching and conducting research, the Admin % of his job is a lot less than $190k. So the Chancellor had a choice to make: admit that his new Vice Chancellor of inclusion was only a part-timer, or spin it like it was a new, full-time position (sucking in the politicos, which is what he did). Of course, the latter makes it easy for folks like Will to take pot-shots against, what is reality, only a part-time Admin position (and partly funded by Admin dollars).</p>
<p>This is the esteem astrophysicist pay history. Obviously he didn’t work for equity and inclusion for free.</p>
<h1>Year Campus Name Title Base Pay Overtime Pay Extra Pay Gross Pay</h1>
<ol>
<li> 2008 BERKELEY BASRI , GIBOR VICE CHAN (FUNCTIONAL AREA) $200,000.04 $0.00 $0.00 $200,000.04</li>
<li> 2009 BERKELEY BASRI , GIBOR VICE CHAN (FUNCTIONAL AREA) $200,000.04 $0.00 $-6,000.00 $194,000.04</li>
<li> 2010 BERKELEY BASRI , GIBOR VICE CHAN (FUNCTIONAL AREA) $200,000.04 $0.00 $-12,000.00 $188,000.04</li>
<li> 2007 BERKELEY BASRI , GIBOR VICE CHAN (FUNCTIONAL AREA) $144,279.17 $0.00 $29,648.87 $173,928.04</li>
<li> 2005 BERKELEY BASRI , GIBOR PROFESSOR - ACADEMIC YEAR $92,600.04 $0.00 $24,037.93 $116,637.97</li>
<li> 2006 BERKELEY BASRI , GIBOR PROFESSOR - ACADEMIC YEAR $94,025.01 $0.00 $11,372.31 $105,397.32</li>
<li> 2004 BERKELEY BASRI , GIBOR PROFESSOR - ACADEMIC YEAR $92,600.04 $0.00 $8,334.00 $100,934.04</li>
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<p>Uh, so? Just because other public schools may also be facing budgetary problems means that it’s fine for you to spend inefficiently, as per Will’s premise? I believe that Will would counter-argue that if Berkeley improved its efficiency while other public schools in crisis don’t, then Berkeley will recover from its crisis faster than those other schools. Isn’t that what we all want? </p>
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<p>Um, the source of the waste is that the faculty member in question is being paid extra (and significantly so, by sunfish’s numbers) for taking an administrative task that, at least according to Will, may not even need to be filled at all. </p>
<p>The premise of Will’s argument is that - in a time of horrific financial turmoil - can Berkeley really afford to fund an Office of Diversity, with its own Vice Chancellorship (even if part-time) and a full staff? You can choose to disagree with Will’s argument, but we should all be clear about what his argument is.</p>