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Editor's note: This is last in a three part series about compensation and salaries at UCLA.

Competition: It happens when there is a small pool of candidates who have the skills to lead a university. And it’s driving salaries up for everyone in that pool of highly qualified administrators.

That has been the mantra of University of California officials such as UC President Robert Dynes in recent years. But that position has generated criticism among student leaders and higher education researchers.

Dissent is often emotional, as salaries and perks for administrators continue to increase.

Student leaders point to what they see as unfair executive privileges in a time of increasing student fees and tuition. University officials counter with the argument that higher salaries are needed to recruit and retain the best teachers, researchers and leaders. Current and former administrators say that in a complex organization like the UC, the proven ability to lead is a valuable commodity.

This debate has its roots in a shift in the philosophy of university administration to what two higher education researchers called a more corporate model. But the competition, they say, is more perceived than real.

David Longanecker, executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, said he has seen executive salaries grow dramatically nationwide over the last decade.

At UCLA in 2004 and 2005, for example, Medical Center CEO David Callender and Michael Schill, dean of the UCLA School of Law, were recruited with the help of salaries that exceeded those of their predecessors as well as substantial relocation allowances. Callender, who was recruited halfway through 2004, was given a base salary of $508,041 in 2005, while Michael Karpf made $441,474 in 2004 when he was director of UCLA’s health system. Schill was given a $270,000 housing allowance when he was recruited last year.

The university’s rationale for compensating its top administrators has drawn sharp criticism in recent months from student leaders.

Jeannie Biniek, external vice president of UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Association Council, and UC Student Association President Anu Joshi, have criticized the UC for what they see as prioritizing executives over students.

Longanecker said the rationale doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Competition for administrators has been bolstered by the search firms universities employ to recruit their administrators, he said. Such firms exist because of competition. And the search firms – commonly called headhunters – are compensated based on the salary of their recruits. The headhunters’ recommendations for higher executive salaries are supported by corporate members of trustee boards who think university executives need to be compensated like CEOs.

But Longanecker said the view of competition promoted by headhunters and board members is not supported by the evidence about executive compensation.

“The business model, if you will, applied to education is responsible for this change in philosophy,” he said.

Longanecker said he has observed that some top administrators’ salaries, such as that of the president of Ohio State University, have increased much more quickly than those of some top UC administrators. He interprets this to mean that top-tier salaries don’t necessarily carry the same importance for recruiting good leaders at universities as they do in the corporate world.

Mercer Human Resources Consulting, which advises the UC on salaries, has contributed to the belief among UC officials that highly qualified executives are a rare breed.

Mercer has repeatedly advised the UC Office of the President and the UC Board of Regents to raise executive salaries in order to bring them level with those at comparable universities. In a 2005 report to the regents, the consulting firm recommended that the board raise executive compensation levels in order to better recruit and retain the best administrators. The firm also ignited a firestorm of criticism by suggesting that the university use private donations to bolster executive pay.

But the need for experienced leaders gives value to the idea of competition, said some UCLA administrators who moved up from the faculty.

“When you are looking for someone to run a complex organization, you want some indication that they have the ability,” said Judy Smith, UCLA vice provost for undergraduate education. Smith was a faculty member, a department chairwoman and an Academic Senate chairwoman during the more than 20 years she spent at UCLA before she became an administrator.

Smith said the growth of administration as a career path at universities and the presence of headhunters have increased competition for executives. But the increasing complexity of universities such as UCLA has also created a need for people who have proven they can lead, she said.

“The scope of the job is tremendous. ... You’re asking one person to do a tremendously complex job,” Smith said. “It’s hard to predict administrative skill. ... You want people with proven records in complex organizations.”

To illustrate the diverse tasks an administrator must handle, Smith described her experience setting up the freshman cluster program. Freshman clusters are yearlong general-education series taught by interdisciplinary groups of professors.

As part of that effort, Smith had to find funds to support the cluster program, get those funds approved, set up training sessions for cluster faculty, set up an organization system for the program and keep it all on track, she said.

Smith believes seasoned administrators are necessary, but that view has its detractors among higher-education researchers.

John Curtis, director of research for the American Association of University Professors, said search firms and career administrators have created the false perception of a need for administrative professionals. “There seems to be developing a separate administrative career track,” Curtis said.

Until a few decades ago, faculty would take on administrative positions for several years at a time and then return to their previous positions, Curtis said. But more recently, leaders have begun to move onto administrative tracks, moving from university to university – and staying for less time – as they move up in rank.

This development increased competition for these individuals to the point where today, many universities want a dean or a president who has already held that position somewhere else, Curtis said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, some UCLA administrators did rise from faculty positions and then return after their administrative offices. John Sandbrook, UCLA executive officer of business and administrative services, remembers that when he was a student at UCLA in the late 1960s, the registrar was a mathematics professor. He also recalls that William G. Young, a chemistry professor, oversaw the construction of the chemistry building and spent a year as a vice chancellor.

Now most searches for new administrators – from deans up through chancellors – are nationwide, though some current UCLA administrators, such as Smith, began their careers as faculty at UCLA.

Some faculty members choose to become administrators for good, but for some, tickets to UCLA’s administrative headquarters at Murphy Hall are one-way.

Norman Abrams, a UCLA law professor who spent 10 years as the associate vice chancellor for academic personnel and did a stint as the interim dean of the UCLA School of Law, said becoming an administrator can be a difficult move for a faculty member – and one that can be difficult to reverse.

Faculty members who become administrators often have to give up their research and teaching, and they see their relationships with their colleagues change, Abrams said.

“When someone moves across the street (to Murphy Hall), one sort of changes in the eyes of one’s colleagues, and all of a sudden there is a distance that didn’t exist before,” he said.

But despite the varied elements that contribute to competition, student leaders don’t buy into the argument that it is necessary.

Biniek said that regardless of the justifications for increasing executive compensation, for her the issue is a question of accessibility.

“It comes down to the fact that students are being expected to contribute more and more to the cost of their education at a public university,” Biniek said. “No matter what the justification is for paying these high salaries, they are rather high, and when students keep seeing their fees increase, it is a problem.”