Charlie Schwartz is back with a bunch of new data documenting the astronomical growth of the administrative apparatus of the UC. Previously, we only had data for the decade running from 1996-2006, but now the range has been extended to 1991-2010. The results are even more dramatic. Schwartz is especially interested in the growth of the manager class -- those who take in, on average, $122,000 per year. In other words, we are not talking about our friends and allies who staff, for example, academic departments and work directly with students and faculty on a daily basis. We're talking about what Schwartz calls the management "excess":

Table 1. Campuses Ranked by Management Growth 1991-2010

UC Campus	% Growth in Management Personnel	% Growth in Total Employees	“Excess” Management                FTE
Berkeley	336%	22%	778
Santa Cruz	324%	61%	197
San Francisco	257%	56%	776
San Diego	242%	63%	568
Los Angeles	234%	45%	1,035
Davis	223%	51%	473
Santa Barbara	188%	28%	184
Irvine	171%	47%	327
Riverside	163%	59%	91
OP	63%	-17%	273
TOTAL UC	220%	47%	4,647

“Excess” Management FTE  is calculated as follows:
(2010 Mngt FTE) – (1+% Growth in Total Employees)x(1991 Mngt FTE)

The conclusion is clear: "With an average compensation for MSP staff of $122,000 per year, this total Excess costs the University around $560 Million per year." And for Berkeley campus in particular:

A rough estimate of Berkeley’s cost for Excess Management: over $100 Million per year. In a recent report to The Regents, Berkeley officials state that they are in the process of eliminating 240 management positions, with an estimated savings of about $20 Million. My data says that they need to do a lot better than that.

One final note: these kinds of investigations demonstrate convincingly why the administrative argument about the supposed transparency of the budget (recently seen in this debate, for example) is bullshit. Schwartz dedicates his time to doing precisely this kind of analysis and even he finds it difficult to figure out the numbers provided by the administration at every level. For example, referencing UCOP compensation reports, Schwartz notes that they are not transparent but instead organize the data in ways that seem designed to make it difficult to tease out, for example, the sources of money used to pay the salaries of those in management positions.

The UC administration makes the budget vague, obscure, and inaccessible for a reason -- their only raison d'etre is to tell us what it says. Fuck that -- abolish administration, we'll make the budget!

"Zach." From thosewhouseit. Background here:

Marika Iyer and Alex Barnett, two of the nine protesters on the Wheeler ledge, take to the Daily Cal:

On March 2, a national day of action to defend public education, 17 people were arrested for refusing to leave Wheeler Hall. Less than 24 hours later, nine students locked themselves to a ledge atop the building, four stories above ground, with four demands:

1. Stop the $1.4 billion in cuts to California public education.
2. Allow democratic decision making in the budgetary process.
3. An end to student repression through a politically motivated student conduct process.
4. An immediate end to Operational Excellence (OE), the campus's budget cut program.

UC Berkeley sophomore Jessica Astillero recounts her experience: "I was sitting in one of the doorways studying, when all of a sudden riot police rushed up the steps and told us to move. As we did, they started shoving us and the next thing I know, I get hit with a baton in the face and then another officer maced me right in the eyes ... it was a ridiculously excessive use of force for such a peaceful demonstration."

Several questions have been raised about last Thursday's action:

What was accomplished? What does this demonstrate? This action witnessed the first concrete victories since protests began in fall 2009; specifically: one, a decisive end to past and present conduct charges which the campus has used to intimidate students from engaging in political action, and two, a meeting between Chancellor Birgeneau, the chair of Operational Excellence, and the students and workers on campus who are directly affected by its proposed implementation. The events of March 3 also clearly demonstrated the value and necessity of direct action. The administration has proven that they will not respond to anything but the most spectacular expressions of student dissent. Once again, this has exposed the administration's complete disregard for the collective will and well-being of students and workers and has brought to attention the authoritarian logic governing the campus.

Why is there so much scrutiny on UC Berkeley administrative decision-making, when all energy could be directed towards the cuts coming out of Sacramento? The concrete situation we are experiencing on our campus and systemwide has as much to do with the administration's prioritization of funds as it does with cuts at the state level. Operational Excellence - our university's internal restructuring program - comes out of last year's $3 million contract with consulting firm Bain & Company. Not only is it irresponsible for our administration to pay out that much in contracting costs in these conditions but also the move emphasizes their utter inability to "administer" the campus (the job they claim requires a six-figure salary) as well as their exclusion of those most affected by the restructuring from important decision-making processes.

Additionally, OE is branded as eliminating excessive bureaucratic and managerial layers, yet staff have already buckled under the added strain resulting from last year's layoffs. Rather than eliminating unneeded positions, OE is eliminating vital positions and reallocating that work to the remaining staff members; this is nothing short of exploitation. Top administrative ranks, however, remain untouched. We also shouldn't be quick to forget the university administration's use of promised fee increases as construction collateral as well as their opting for riskier investments which cost the university $23 billion in the 2008 recession. The administration does not have its hands tied as it would like us all to think - it very much has control over the allocation of what funds are at its disposal.

What's next? Chancellor Birgeneau should be meeting regularly with concerned students, not least the departments and programs that are being affected by such unilateral decision-making. He must be accessible. He cannot hide in an office or a house - we must have these conversations, and they must be public. The administration's attitude echoes that of President of the University of California Mark Yudof - "being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: There are many people under you, but no one is listening ... "

We are here to tell the administration: We are not corpses. The chancellor, provost, vice chancellor, dean of students and any other unilateral decision-maker on our campus must realize: This action was a response to their consistent refusal to make themselves accountable to those who work and study on campus. As students, we will not tolerate this any longer.

For more information, check out reclaimuc.blogspot.com and thosewhouseit.wordpress.com.

At the request of State Sen. Leland Yee, the UC system will face investigation by California's Bureau of State Audits. The California Aggie reports:

"In light of all the fee increases to students, the continual executive compensation scandals and the seeming disregard for the lowest paid workers at the university, this audit clearly needed to take place," said Adam Keigwin, chief of staff for Yee.

One of the main reasons for the audit request was to challenge the luxury and privileges awarded to UC executives. The system lacks transparency and accountability, and the top executives continue to receive raises while student fees are increasing, Keigwin said. If student fees are increasing, then executives should not be receiving wage increases.

"[The executives] treat [the university] as if they can do whatever, however they please with no accountability and no transparency," Keigwin said. "It seems that the university has a complete disregard for the students and for the public -- the taxpayers. They don't like to do things with transparency and then they keep enriching themselves virtually... You don't expect that at a public university that is made to serve our students of California."

[...]

It will be unclear whether there is fraud or not until the audit results come in, but there is evidence of conflicts of interest, Keigwin said. For example, UC has an investment advisory committee made up of individuals who were handing over contracts to their friends and family. Additionally, there are regents that own investment companies that have been giving contracts to UC.

"The conflicts of interests are real, whether it goes beyond that in terms of fraudulent behavior, we don't know because the system is just so closed and we don't get to see their book," Keigwin said.

Another large issue presented by Yee was the wages of the lowest paid workers in the university. The university says that it does not have enough money to provide livable wages for its lowest paid workers, but it always has money to pay its top executives, Keigwin said. Currently, many of the workers with these wages rely on public assistance programs.

Additionally, Yee's office is concerned with the increase in auxiliary organizations in the system, Keigwin said.

"We know there's an increase in foundations and auxiliary organizations popping up on campus, which are not subject to a California Public Records Act," he said. "So we don't even know how much money are in these foundations and where that money is going, and if the executives are getting money out of there as well."

Keigwin said that any public institution must have transparency and accountability measures set in place.

"Unfortunately, it's kind of been a black hole when it comes to what's happening within the university," he said. "The university constantly just says 'trust us, we're taking care of things,' but that's not how things work in a public institution. You don't just trust: you verify, you review, you hold people accountable. Without the transparency, it's impossible to hold anyone accountable. That's what this audit will do."

The results of the audit will most likely be made public in April.

The website Iupileaks has obtained a private email sent by the president of the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR), José Ramón de la Torre, in which he calls the students protesting the $800 tuition increase "bandoleros" (bandits) and likens the conflict to a hyperbolic fight to the death:

Felicidades: Yo de guardia las 24 horas. Para mi no hay navidades. Esto es lo que me ha tocado. Nadie me va a intimidar voy a dar la pelea contra viento y marea aunque los Bandoleros me quieran liquidar. Que Dios les bendiga. JR

[Congratulations: I'm standing guard 24 hours a day. No Christmas for me. This is what I must do. Nobody will intimidate me I'm [sic] going to fight against wind and tide even if those Bandits want to liquidate me. May God bless them. JR]

 
As the editors of Iupileaks point out, this is not the attitude of someone who wants to resolve a conflict but someone looking to impose his will no matter what. Of course, this doesn't come as a surprise to those of us in California who have seen government and administration officials refer to student protesters as "intruders," "illegal occupiers," "vandals," and even "terrorists." At the same time, these characterizations help explain the ease and speed with which these administrations repeatedly turn to heavily militarized police and violence to suppress political dissent.

(The Iupileaks project. modeled explicitly on Wikileaks, is worth taking a look at. They've posted some very interesting documents, including a letter dated December 10 and signed by 25 faculty members demanding the incursion of the police onto campus.)

Updated [Tuesday 10/26]: The hearing will take place in the Krutch Theater (building 14) of Clark Kerr campus. Get there between 1-1:15 or during a break to minimize disruptions.


If all goes according to plan, updates will be published on the Reclaim UC twitter feed.

Update [Wed 6:06pm]: We've been live tweeting the hearing. Check out @reclaimuc; most of the tweets have a #ucstrike and/or an #occupyca hashtag. Also check out @joshwolf's twitter feed.

Update [Thurs 1:32am]: The hearing panel left to deliberate at about 11:30, returned at about 12:15 to announce that they couldn't come to a decision. Deliberation and sanctioning will be postponed until the week of November 8. Also, for a pretty complete record of the hearing check out this twitter list.

An eight-part investigative report on the UC Regents and their financial conflicts of interest, written by Peter Byrne, is being published in the Berkeley Daily Planet. The first part appeared yesterday:

Our eight-month investigation reveals that some members of the regents’ investment committee, who are also Wall Street heavy-hitters, have modified long-standing investment policies in a way that benefited their own financial holdings. The fallout: multiple conflicts of interest.

The changes can be traced to 2003, when regents Gerald Parsky, Richard C. Blum, and Paul Wachter—all financiers by trade—took control of UC’s investment strategy. Sitting on the board’s investment committee, the three men steered away from investing in more traditional instruments, such as blue-chip stocks and bonds, toward largely unregulated “alternative” investments, such as private equity and private real estate deals. According to UC internal reports, the dramatic investment change has led to an “overweighting” of investments in private equity. One concerned regent has likened the change to “gambling in Las Vegas.”

The changes did not stop there.

By-passing the university treasurer’s in-house investment specialists, the regents investment committee hired private managers to handle many of these new kinds of less-regulated transactions. This action theoretically placed some distance between the personal financial holdings of regents and the investments made on behalf of the UC endowment and retirement funds. But it also served to increase management costs, and to limit the transparency around UCs investments, since these “external” managers are not subject to the same public disclosure laws that apply to university operations.

Unfortunately, many of these deals, while potentially lucrative, have lost significant amounts of money for UC’s retirement and endowment funds, which were worth $63 billion at the end of 2009. (These losses ultimately reduce the amount spent on education, since the endowment supports teaching activities.) And the non-transparency of these private deals enabled multiple conflicts of interest to arise without challenge.

Specifically, our investigation shows that, under the new regime on the investment committee, UC placed $2 billion into a series of private deals and publicly held enterprises with significant ties to the business activities of four regents: Wachter, Blum, Sherry Lansing, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Read the whole thing, and keep an eye out for the rest of the series.

from occupyca:

BERKELEY, California – A California Public Records Request has revealed a 300+ page pdf of email correspondence between UC Berkeley deans, chancellors, public relations officers, cops on how to stop the building occupations in Fall 2009.

Read up here.

Choice quotes below the fold. Feel free to add your own findings in the comments.

By now we've all seen Bob Meister's work documenting the UC administration's use of student tuition -- and the promise of future tuition increases -- as collateral for construction bonds. But what about the rest of the budget? Here, Bob Samuels takes a close look back at the notes from the Regents' meeting on November 18, 2009:

What I suspect is going on is that the UC is basically laundering its money by placing funds from many different sources, including student fees and state funds, into its investment accounts. By using this structure, the system is able to hide its unrestricted funds and to redirect money from its investment accounts into its chosen priorities, which is mostly increasing the compensation of the star administrators, faculty, and coaches. The end result of this process is that the UC declares that it is broke, while it raises record revenue and redistributes income from the poorest students and workers to the wealthiest employees.

From Bob Meister, professor of Political and Social Thought at UC Santa Cruz and president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), a damning exposé of the priorities of the UC administration. Here's the quick version:

How does UC sell $1.3 billion in construction bonds immediately after declaring an “extreme financial emergency,” slashing funds for teaching and research and cutting staff and faculty pay? By using your tuition as collateral. Higher tuition lets UC borrow more for construction even while it cuts instruction and research.

You’re often told that your tuition goes up because the state pays less for higher education, but you’re almost never told that UC isn’t obliged to use your tuition in the way it uses public money. Unlike state funds, your tuition money can also pay the interest on construction bonds and be used as bond collateral.

UC has in fact promised its bond trustee (Bank of New York Mellon Trust) and the companies that rate bonds (S&P and Moody’s) that bondholders have first claim on your tuition in the event of default. It has also promised bondholders that it will raise tuition as needed to avoid bond default. Most importantly, UC has pledged to do nothing to lower the ratings on its bonds. Your tuition is not only pledged to Wall Street, Wall Street could demand the next tuition hike by threatening to lower UC’s Aa1 bond rating.

Harvard, the world’s richest educational corporation, curbed construction when endowments fell because its people and programs came first. Its bond rating, slightly higher than UC’s, does not seem to have suffered. UC, however, seems to have the opposite priorities. It started borrowing against your tuition in spring 2004 -- when Gov. Schwarzenegger gave it a green light to raise tuition, and claims the ability to do this in every prospectus for bonds partially backed by your tuition.

By June 2008, UC’s pledged collateral has jumped by 60% (from $4.2 billion to $6.72 billion). Tuition, a large and growing component of that collateral, will have risen by 109% since 2004 if this year’s increase happens. The Regents have approved another $2B in projects that they plan to fund primarily with tuition-backed bonds, because this is where their debt-bearing capacity will grow. When these new bonds are issued, after your tuition hike is a done deal, debt service on all tuition-backed bonds will have risen to around $430M, nearly double what it was last year. Your tuition and fees make up the largest component of this debt service and the only component that UC has pledged to increase.

Increasing the collateral for bonds and paying more in debt service are clearly among the reasons why the Regents want to raise your tuition. But students would be more likely to resist if they knew this. By describing tuition increases as a simple substitute for state educational funds, UC avoids the question of how much goes for construction, rather than instruction. Don’t be fooled by the argument that UC is simply emulating the great private universities. The ones I know now use their endowment income to subsidize tuition for students who would otherwise need loans: UC, by contrast, now pledges its ability to drive you and your families deeper into debt so that it can increase its leverage on Wall Street. This is what it looks like to privatize a great public university.

Will you go along with this November’s 32% tuition increase, now that you know the money is being promised to Wall Street? It will happen unless you stop it.

The full version is here.