Mark G. Yudof
Re “To help UC, first slow bloat at the top” (Editorial, Feb. 28): Growth in nonacademic personnel is a tempting target in these days of budgetary shortfalls at universities across the nation.
In the case of the University of California, the inconvenient truth is much of the growth has been in the parts of the system that are not funded by the state – the medical enterprise, research and auxiliary services.
It’s easy to miss the bull’s-eye by underestimating the scale of the total UC enterprise, as The Bee did in an editorial as it sought to compare the pace of administrative growth vs. the growth in enrollment.
During the past decade, a period of significant changes within the UC system, the greatest growth in nonacademic, full-time equivalent positions has been in teaching hospitals (52 percent of total growth), followed by auxiliary services, such as residence halls and parking services (10 percent) and research (9 percent).
And the system launched the first new public university of the 21st century, UC Merced.
One-fourth of UC employees – and a roughly equal proportion of administrators – work at five medical centers and associated teaching hospitals. The Bee lumped these employees together with academic administrators. Similar distinctions should have been made for the research universe, which constitutes about a third of the enterprise.
We can’t move money around. The truth is when we receive a dollar in a research grant or a dollar for patient care, we can’t move it to another account. Making administrative cuts to our medical centers or research enterprises will not yield the desired savings.
There are also misconceptions about the functions performed by personnel within the category of managers and senior professionals, which can also result in a distorted view of “administrative” growth. This personnel category includes, in addition to managers, high-level computer programmers, doctors and dentists, nursing supervisors, pharmacists and engineers. And this category makes up only 5 percent of all UC full-time equivalent positions.
That said, it’s not wrong for anyone to emphasize the need to search vigilantly for administrative efficiencies. As stewards of the University of California, we owe it to the California taxpayers to look constantly for ways to make the best use of UC resources, and we have been doing so for some time – even before the most recent state funding reductions.
In an institution of this size and scope, there’s always more to do. And we’re on it.