Dive Brief:
- When California State University Chancellor Timothy White visited Cal State Bakersfield Friday, he had to defend a plan to give management raises after fighting against the cost of salary increases for faculty, which were begrudgingly approved in the lead-up to a strike.
- The Bakersfield Californian reports White has not decided on a budget for the management raises but supported them as well-deserved and called on faculty to avoid an “us-versus-them” mentality.
- During his visit, White also discussed a “degree drought” that will leave the state 1 million degree-holders short of what it needs to sustain the economy by 2030, a crisis White said would require greater resources from the legislature to tackle.
Dive Insight:
Faculty are routinely pitted against management in salary battles, because there is a finite amount of dollars that can be appropriated in college and university budgets. If more money is going to one area, it is generally the case that less money can go somewhere else. The number of non-teaching and non-research positions on campuses across the country has more than doubled in the last 25 years, and what has been referred to as a trend towards bloated administrations continues to pull larger portions of institutional budgets.
Much attention is always placed on the salary of university presidents. Boards of trustees, however, remain committed to the compensation packages because they say they’re necessary to compete with the corporate sector. Colleges and universities increasingly need successful fundraisers, and while research questions the link between high pay and fundraising revenue, hiring committees routinely expect big returns on the original salary investment.