If your point is we should get rid of the best Dr’s and all of our sports coaches even when they have nothing to do with the state budget then that makes a lot of sense. The logic being, well since some of our programs will go down the tubes why not make all of them go down the tubes. I mean we are already undermining the medical centers is all sorts of other ways, why not stick it to them one more way in the hopes they take the whole thing private and quit taking medicare and hmo patients altogether.

It is really not clear where these arguments come from. Do you think no one at UC should make $1,000,000? This is a lot less money than he could make doing almost anything else. Surely the treasurer could be at an investment firm losing money for people and making $800K as her bonus instead of her total salary.

I have no idea about sports coaches but I highly doubt anything more than the very base salary is coming out of state funds and even that is doubtful.

Look at the list below of the top ten earners in the UC system from 2007. First you will notice their huge total compensation, and then, you may note that they are all coaches, medical faculty, and administrators. But, what is really important is that base pay makes up only a small part of their total pay. This mean that Yudof’’s plan to only cut base pay and not total compensation will result in an anti-progressive tax. 2.3% of the UC workers make over 900 million combined a year.
(All salaries info at: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/salary-uc-irvine-2238213-employees-pay)

1. Campus
BERKELEY
Employee Name
TEDFORD, JEFF
Title
HEAD COACH-INTERCOLG ATHLETICS
Gross Pay
$2,831,653.50
Base Pay
$225,000.00
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$2,606,653.50

2. Campus
SAN FRANCISCO
Employee Name
LEBOIT, PHILIP E
Title
PROF OF CLIN -MEDCOMP-A
Gross Pay
$1,979,361.78
Base Pay
$153,021.03
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$1,826,340.75

3. Campus
SAN FRANCISCO
Employee Name
MCCALMONT, TIMOTHY H
Title
PROF OF CLIN -MEDCOMP-A
Gross Pay
$1,945,717.31
Base Pay
$130,942.37
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$1,814,774.94

4. Campus
LOS ANGELES
Employee Name
BUSUTTIL, RONALD W
Title
PROFESSOR-MEDCOMP-A
Gross Pay
$1,570,896.82
Base Pay
$282,932.97
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$1,287,963.85

5. Campus
LOS ANGELES
Employee Name
TABSH, KHALIL M
Title
HS CLIN PROF-MEDCOMP-A
Gross Pay
$1,048,891.00
Base Pay
$147,798.00
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$901,093.00

6. Campus
LOS ANGELES
Employee Name
SHEMIN, RICHARD J
Title
PROFESSOR-MEDCOMP-A
Gross Pay
$1,195,837.17
Base Pay
$169,258.37
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$1,026,578.80

7. Campus
BERKELEY
Employee Name
BRAUN, BEN
Title
HEAD COACH-INTERCOLG ATHLETICS
Gross Pay
$998,569.07
Base Pay
$155,000.00
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$843,569.07

8. ampus
SAN FRANCISCO
Employee Name
VAIL, THOMAS P
Title
ACT PROFESSOR-MEDCOMP-A
Gross Pay
$846,083.00
Base Pay
$125,768.50
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$720,314.50

9. Campus
UCOP
Employee Name
BERGGREN, MARIE N
Title
TREASURER OF THE REGENTS
Gross Pay
$833,437.18
Base Pay
$410,000.01
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$423,437.17

10. Campus
SAN DIEGO
Employee Name
WEINREB, ROBERT N.
Title
PROFESSOR-MEDCOMP-A
Gross Pay
$804,341.04
Base Pay
$329,582.14
Overtime Pay
$0.00
Extra Pay
$423,437.17

Although the tone of Professor Scull’s original letter gave the impression that he was contesting the current UC regime, in many ways the logic of what he proposed coincided perfectly with where the UC was heading long before the economic crisis.

Professor Scull and the other department chairs who signed his letter urged UC President Yudof and the regents to consider “closing campuses and enrolling more out-of-state students, who pay much higher tuition, to minimize long-term damage to the UC’s more accomplished campuses.”

As the privatization of the UC continues (UCSD, for example, is a public university in name only with only 6% of its budget coming from the state), more out-of-state and international students will be admitted. This has been a shift desired by some for several years now. The mission of the UC that says we should be serving the people of California is sacrificed on the altar of revenue flow. UCSD becomes a finishing school for affluent foreigners.

Once the three “elite” UC campuses make the transition to being exclusively private schools, working class and minority students will slowly disappear from their classrooms. Again, this is already happening due to increased tuition (which Scull supports) and enrollment caps. But if UC were to adopt Scull’s plan and wipe out the campuses with the most underrepresented students–Riverside and Merced–you accelerate the process. Of course, this has already happened at the professional schools where blacks and chicanos can be counted on one hand. In Scull’s scenario, by 2030 when Latinos will make up a majority of the state not just the professional schools but the entire UC will be closed to all but a handful of them (although large numbers of them will be academically qualified).

Scull basically proposes a “disaster capitalism” solution in which the crisis allows those at the top to maintain their privilege, facilitates privatization, and further fetishizes the notion of “excellence.” Elite sectors of each campus will become more exclusive as rich, i.e., externally funded, departments will become gated communities surrounded by the mini-ghettos of underfunded departments that are unable to produce their own revenue. It’s curious to see that so many department chairs at UCSD whose own programs could be negatively affected signed on to the letter, e.g. History, Communication.

President Yudof’s contention that if the university could only explain to the people of California how much the UC does for them they would rally to its defense founders on the shoals of powerful stereotypes about “lazy ‘radical’ professors” (see readers comments to the San Diego Union Tribune article of July 11: “UC employees face furloughs to bridge deep budget divide”). If this crisis does nothing else, it hopefully will destroy once and for all the fantasy that “Marxist professors” are running the University of California.

The UC is a giant corporation replete with over-payed executives, a cadre of increasingly entrepreneurial and hyper-professionalized faculty, and an army of over-worked staff and instructors. Milton Friedman would approve; Marx most certainly would not. Who will be the real losers in all of this?–the hopes and dreams of generations of California students.