State Superintendent calls for 'immediate freeze' on raises for CSU executives
In a strongly-worded letter to the California State University Board of Trustees today, the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, derided recent pay raises for two incoming campus presidents and called for a freeze on executive compensation when hiring for five other open campus president positions.
Last month, the CSU Board of Trustees approved the maximum allowable pay increases for incoming presidents at the system's Fullerton and East Bay campuses. The system will also be conducting president searches for at least five campuses including San Bernardino, California Maritime, San Francisco, Stanislaus and Monterey Bay.
"As I understand it, the executive compensation policy adopted recently by this board states that incoming
'Nobody is going to the CSU to be a president to get rich,' spokesman says
California State University spokesman Mike Uhlenkampf gave a bit of background on the executive compensation issue this afternoon after California's Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson sent his fellow Board of Trustees members a letter today calling for a freeze on more raises for incoming campus presidents.
Torlakson, who is also a trustee, was not at the January meeting in which the trustees established a policy to limit the amount of pay for presidents and established an acceptable range. Torlakson was also absent at last month's meeting where the board voted to approve the maximum salary increase for incoming presidents at
Snapshot: CSU has lost $1 billion in state funding in 4 years; tuition doubled
The California State University system has been hit with about $1 billion in state funding cuts since 2007-8. At that time, state funding accounted for about 67 percent of the overall $4.5 billion operating budget, said CSU spokesman Mike Uhlenkampf. Fast forward to 2011-12, and the state provides about 50 percent of the nearly $4 billion budget.
The system has tried to compensate for that loss by nearly doubling tuition, bringing it up from the $2,772 per year for a full-time undergraduate in 2007-8 to $5,472 in 2011-12. Along with such tuition increases the system cut programs and instituted other cost-saving measures such as leaving positions unfilled, Uhlenkamp said. That has allowed it to recoop about half, or $500 million of those cuts, he said.
Tuition is set to go up again for the 2012-13 school year. It will cost undergraduate students $5,970 per year,