UCs fight to stay competitive

Published: Tuesday, December 1, 1998

Tuesday, December 1, 1998

CAMPUS: Keeping salaries competitive with peers helps attract top-quality faculty to California schools

By Lawrence Ferchaw

Daily Bruin Staff

While peer pressure can force college students to drink or smoke, it can also encourage universities to give raises to administrators and faculty.

UCLA and the other UC schools use a list of eight peer universities - four public and four private - to compare faculty and administrators' salaries, as well as other aspects of the university.

"It's been sort of a traditional list that's been around for some time," said Chancellor Albert Carnesale. "(The list includes) four first-rate publics and four first-rate privates, because we understand it can't just be publics."

The list includes Harvard University, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Illinois and the University of Virginia.

Carnesale said the list helps to answer the question, "Where are we in comparison to institutions that look sort of like us?"

The list is for all UC schools, so UCLA does not compare itself to UC San Diego or UC Berkeley, according to Carnesale.

"It's used all the time in presentations to the regents, when presenting them with data. The first thing they want to know is 'How do we compare to other places?'" Carnesale said.

The list was most recently used in a study of the compensation for chancellors and vice chancellors in the UC system compared with the eight peer universities.

The study found that UC chancellors on average earned about $70,000 less per year than their peers.

The UC Board of Regents has since voted pay increases for all the chancellors and a number of other officials. The raise, effective Oct. 1, brought Carnesale's annual salary to $271,400 - up from $230,000. By comparison, Harvard's president is paid $270,057, and the University of Michigan's president is paid $287,375. Stanford's president earns $357,735.

Despite the increase, UC chancellors still lag behind their peers at the eight institutions by 17 percent.

"There is a very limited pool of qualified senior managers in American higher education, and the growing compensation gap has made it more difficult for UC to remain competitive in recruiting new leadership," said Judith W. Boyette, UC associate vice president for human resources and benefits.

The study, conducted by an independent consulting firm, also looked at vice chancellor salaries and found that executive vice chancellors lagged 31 percent behind their counterparts at the eight peer universities.

Rory Hume, UCLA's executive vice chancellor, is paid $204,000. The average base salary for a chief academic officer in the UC system before the increase was a little more than $164,000, while the average for the same position in the eight peer universities is about $216,000.

The lag for other vice chancellors ranged from 5 percent to 32 percent.

"The idea is not that we should pay more than any of these comparison schools," Carnesale said. "It's, 'Are we in the ballpark?'"

The comparisons are also used for faculty salaries, since UCLA competes with many of the schools in the peer group for faculty members.

"Would we like our faculty to be more qualified, less qualified or comparable to the faculty at Harvard?" Carnesale said.

Despite the fact that UCLA is not often equated with Harvard and Yale, it does compete with the universities for staff and faculty. The same is true for another of UCLA's peers, the University of Michigan.

"The top publics compare to the top privates because we compete with them all the time," said Paul Courant, associate provost and a professor of economics at the University of Michigan.

Courant said UCLA is often on the list of universities it considers its peers, as well as Harvard, Yale, UC Berkeley and Stanford.

The comparison process for Michigan is on a case-by-case basis rather than the more strict list that UCLA has, according to Courant.

UCLA's other peers report a similar practice of maintaining less formal lists.

"We don't have a fixed list," said Gila Reinstein, a spokesperson for Yale University. "We consider all the premiere institutions in the U.S. and the world to be our peer institutions."

Reinstein said UCLA is sometimes on the list of Yale's peer institutions, depending on the area of comparison.

Harvard's group of peers includes many of the Ivy League schools, as well as a number of other private schools, but schools like UCLA and Berkeley can sometimes be included.

"I wouldn't be surprised if UCLA was on some of the lists for faculty," said Merry Touborg, director of communications for the office of human resources at Harvard.

The list of peer institutions, while primarily used for comparing salaries, is also used for non-monetary comparisons.

"People tend to use the list for other purposes, but I don't think it's used officially for other purposes," Carnesale said.

Other purposes may include a comparison of the quality of facilities, the amount of space available per person, or the quality of academic programs.

"These comparisons are relevant," Courant said. "(But) comparisons when you get to the labor market are more directly relevant than comparisons of square feet per student."

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