Another View: UCs must address `administrative bloat' - Pasadena Star-News
ALMOST a week after students, educators and administrators from Cal State Fullerton to Mt. SAC to UC Berkeley protested the cuts to higher education, their message is still relevant.
The issue of declining support from the state for higher education is real.
Thirty years ago, 10 percent of the general fund went to the University of California and California State University and 3 percent went to prisons. Today, nearly 11 percent goes to prisons and 7.5 percent goes to our public universities.
But given California's deep economic and budgetary crisis, it is not enough to demand that the state just increase higher education funding.
Higher education advocates need to show that they understand the state's financial situation and are responding to it.
A prime area for action: the unrelenting growth of administration - an ever-wider assortment of associate and assistant vice presidents, deans and directors. Some refer to this growth as "bureaucratic accretion," others as "administrative bloat."
Elsewhere, this growth has jokingly been referred to as a proliferation of "deans of dean services," but it is no laughing matter. Administrators are among the highest paid people on the campuses, typically earning $100,000 or more.
