Sacramento Business Journal has posted a non-scientific poll. The Journal is asking their readers “What should the UC and the CSU systems do first to handle the state budget cuts. According to the results as of this writing, cutting the “pay and benefits for faculty and staff” is the second most popular response (see below). What the responders have in mind when furnishing this answer is obscured by the very poor wording of the answer. Some may think that staff salaries should be cut but not faculty. Others may want faculty salaries cut but not staff salaries. Or they may want them all cut. We will never know because of the way that the answer is phrased.
That nit-picky issue aside, le
ts assume that the responders assume that the increasing cost of a college education is attributable to faculty costs. Those folks need a few facts:
Since 1975 the percentage of CSU employees classified as “managers and administrators” has increased by 229%. The number of faculty increased 28%. And that “increase” is composed of low wage lecturers, since the percentage of full time faculty dropped by about 10%.
Over the last 10 years the salaries of CSU presidents has doubled. Faculty wages have increased about 28%.
San Diego State University provides a case in point. The LA Times reports today that the incoming president of San Diego State University will receive an initial salary of about $400,000. The proposed salary, the Times points out, “is only a little shy of that of Cal State Chancellor Charles B. Reed, who receives $421,500 in salary, as well as $30,000 toward his retirement from the Cal State University Foundation.”
What was my answer to the poll? Other, of course; and with two parts: 1) trim the number of administrators, especially at the CSU system level, and 2) restore the $650,000,000 that was cut from the CSU budget.
Neither of these answers were options in this poll. I guess the person behind the poll never took a “non-essential” course in social science research methods. Who would ever need to take that?! Sheesh!
