UC perks part of the problem
Former UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks worried in the Washington Post last week that the battles over provocative speech that defined the end of his tumultuous tenure were “part of a broader assault on the idea of the university itself.” He argued that this especially threatens “public universities such as Berkeley that already grapple with precipitous declines in state funding” and contributes to a “loss of faith ... in values and institutions.”
Speaking of precarious faith in and financing of public universities, it also emerged last week that Dirks will receive the bulk of his half-amillion-dollar administrative salary during a year off before resuming his work as a history and anthropology professor.
Granted, Dirks’ well-compensated leave is far from unprecedented in academia, and it amounts to a small fraction of the campus’ ninefigure budget deficit. But such perks help make California’s premier public university system look a lot tougher on student and family budgets than it is on its own.
A long-standing University of California policy gives chancellors returning to faculty posts a year off at full administrative pay after five years. Having served about four years as chancellor at a salary of $531,900, Dirks is eligible for a year’s leave at 82 percent of that, or $434,000. He is expected to use the time to attend conferences, deliver lectures, write a book about (what else?) higher education, and make the presumably jarring transition from administration to faculty, whereupon his salary will plummet by nearly half.
University of California spokeswoman Dianne Klein said the benefit helps Berkeley compete for qualified administrators even though its chancellor salary ranks in the lower third of members of the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only group of elite private and public research institutions. And the job is a tough one, especially for Dirks, who besides right- and left-wing agitators contended with budget deficits and a spate of sexual harassment cases.
A university survey of other institutions found that most provide paid leave to top administrators returning to faculty jobs. The terms vary, however, and UC’s are among the most generous of the bunch. Moreover, the university has granted extended vacations even to administrators who have resigned in scandal in recent years. As a public system under the social and financial pressures Dirks noted, the university should reconsider what it can afford.