Embattled UC should cancel its scheduled tuition increase
With angry legislators all but reaching for their torches and pitchforks, University of California officials have taken pains to signal a serious response to the latest damning state audit of the system. The UC Board of Regents, which voted last week to hire a consultant to look into one of the audit’s most troubling findings, plans to hear directly from the auditor this week and is considering further measures to strengthen oversight. UC President Janet Napolitano noted in a Chronicle Open Forum piece Thursday that her “straightforward” management style dictates that, “When problems surface, you fix them.”
But university officials have yet to accept the sort of significant financial consequences that the revelations warrant. Since the audit found that the president’s office accumulated as much as $175 million in a secret slush fund, more disturbing details have trickled out of State Auditor Elaine Howle’s office. UC can preclude the unappealing but increasingly likely prospect of further legislative encroachment on its invaluable independence — and show students and the public its willingness to take responsibility — by rescinding its planned 3 percent hike in tuition and fees.
The tuition increase, approved by the regents in January, is expected to produce about $74 million in new revenue, according to a legislative analysis. Even by Napolitano’s account of university finances, which differs markedly from Howle’s, her office already has more than half that much in reserves. By the auditor’s reckoning, the office’s undisclosed stash is worth more than twice the tuition hike.
While the university and the auditor have bitterly disputed the size and purpose of the fiscal cushion, it’s clear that the president’s office repeatedly requested more than it needed from the regents and the system’s 10 campuses — and therefore from students and taxpayers — accumulating funds that could be spent out of the board’s view and the public’s.
The audit also found that the system spends, pays and employs more than other state agencies and comparable systems do. Gov. Jerry Brown, whose newly revised state budget withholds $50 million from the university to force compliance with the audit, concurred last week that university administrators’ salaries are “way too high.”
Moreover, Napolitano’s office managed to make a major controversy out of what otherwise would have
been a minor aspect of the audit. University officials mounted a heavy-handed intervention in an auditor’s survey of campuses meant to rate the central office’s services, prompting three of the campuses to offer significantly rosier assessments. Napolitano eventually apologized for the blunder and explained that her staff was merely trying to organize the campuses’ responses, but emails among administrators detailed by The Chronicle point to a deliberate whitewash. The consultant authorized by the regents last week will focus on the allegations of interference with the audit.
The Chronicle also reported last week that the president’s office spent some of its off-the-books budget on a variety of social events, including a $13,000 dinner for two departing regents. That hardly tempers concerns about UC’s hidden surplus or the board’s capacity to provide arm’s-length oversight.
Board of Regents Chairwoman Monica Lozano noted in an interview that beyond accepting the auditor’s 33 recommendations, she is proposing that the board hire an independent expert to validate compliance and commission an outside audit of the president’s office. “We are committed to ensuring that proper oversight of the office of the president is in place,” Lozano said. “We are being very responsive to what the auditor is recommending.”
At the same time, Lozano described the university’s reserves as standard, called the tuition increase “relatively modest” after six years without one, and defended Napolitano as leading the university with “determination and resolve.” “That’s her style,” she said. “This is a woman that acts with conviction.”
But as long as students are being asked to assume another financial burden and university officials are not, that conviction can be reasonably questioned.