Protect Access to Higher Education for Californians

November 24, 2007


Lt. Governor John Garamendi
Capitol Office:
State Capitol, Room 1114
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Lt. Governor Garamendi:

As Chair of the Lambda Letters Project, a statewide organization that advocates on behalf of several disenfranchised groups, including poor and working class citizens of California, I am writing to thank you for calling for a halt to student fee increases in California’s public institutions of higher education, particularly the CSU system.

I have witnessed first-hand the difficulties local students face in trying to pay for their education while often also trying to help their families survive financially. I am particularly concerned that low-income CSU-eligible students, many of whom are students of color, are either denied admission to CSU due to “impaction” (which is being exploited to transform some CSUs into elite, so-called “world class,” institutions) or are forced to drop out of CSU because of financial hardships.

I concur with your perspective that “We’ve been creeping down … [the] road toward privatization for years, slowly shifting the cost of running our public universities from the public at large to students and their families.” I also believe that CSU has lost sight of its mission to provide an affordable, quality four-year college education to eligible California students. Indeed, I believe that CSU has grown increasingly—and arrogantly—out of touch with the public it was designed to serve.

As more and more California students find themselves shut out of the CSU because of spiraling tuition costs, declining educational access, and reduced educational funding, a recent legislative audit has detailed how CSU administrators have been playing fast and loose with public funds. Given the CSU’s success in lobbying the Governor to veto AB 1413—which would have enacted stricter accountability guidelines and restrictions for executive compensation and benefits—I don’t have any confidence in CSU’s post-audit pronouncement that the system has “already begun to address the recommendations in the report and will implement other suggestions as soon as it is feasible." The Governor’s veto and the non-binding legislative audit give CSU executives a green light to continue conducting business behind closed doors and giving themselves generous compensation packages, while cynically closing CSU access to low to middle income students. Allowing CSU to self-regulate changes nothing; without true and meaningful oversight, CSU will simply continue to bleed money at the top of the system, leaving less money available to educate our students.

I hope you will persist in your call for a "freeze" on tuition fees at 2007-2008 levels. I also hope you will call for a freeze on administrative compensation packages until such time as the flawed compensation practices first exposed in the media and now reaffirmed by the California Legislative Audit are overhauled and corrected. Until this occurs, every dollar CSU executives give themselves in secretly negotiated compensation packages is a dollar not being used to make the state university system affordable and accessible to middle and low income college eligible students.

Sincerely,

Pat Washington, PhD

Pat Washington, Ph.D.
Chair, Lambda Letters Project

cc: California Legislature & advocates for access to higher education in CA
Lt. Governor Garamendi Blasts Proposed CSU Executive Pay Increase

Top CSU execs handed raises of as much as 18 percent
The governing Board of Trustees of California State University gave approval Wednesday for executive pay increases ranging from 9 percent to 18 percent for Chancellor Charles Reed, his four top deputies and 23 campus presidents.
...Two trustees voted against the salary hike. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, an ex officio member of the board, called the raises offensive and untimely. Ricardo Icaza, of Los Angeles, said it was absurd to raise executive salaries while some students are working more than one job to pay for their education.
"The board's vote today for executive compensation is unconscionable and further increases the wage disparity between CSU executives, and faculty and staff," said Garamendi. "At a time when students have seen a 94 percent increase in fees since 2002, the CSU Board of Trustees have given the executives another lavish pay raise."
Student fees were $1,428 in 2002; this year they are $2,772.
"Just last January, I was the sole vote against a 4 percent retroactive increase for these same 28 executives," Garamendi said. "I think this policy is wrong-headed, ill-timed and will ultimately lead to further increases in student fees."
He said there has been no indication in recent years that "any executive is leaving for lack of pay or that we're having trouble finding quality executives at the presidential level or the system level."
The board's action came one day after Garamendi appealed to his fellow trustees to delay their vote on executive pay until after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decides whether to sign reform legislation that aims to increase public scrutiny of the CSU's executive pay decisions, including the award of contracts and extra compensation after executives leave their jobs.
Reed, whose salary will go from $377,000 a year to $421,500 (plus a $30,000-a-year retirement bonus), said the latest salary increases are needed to begin to bridge a salary gap with other comparable institutions, public and private.
As of now, Reed's salary is more than double that paid to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who earns $206,500 annually. The governor's pay will go to $212,174 in December.
The trustees voted 14 to 2 to adopt the pay increases, which average 11.8 percent and will be retroactive to July 1. The majority also signaled its intent to raise executive pay by a total of 46 percent in the next four years.
To bolster the case for pay raises, Reed and trustee chairwoman Roberta Achtenberg have often cited a 2006 salary study by San Francisco's Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which has compared the salaries of 20 colleges nationwide, including elite private colleges such as Tufts University and the University of Southern California.
The Mercer study concluded that the salaries of top CSU executives lagged behind their counterparts at public and private colleges by 46 percent; but when the total compensation packages - including salaries, retirement benefits and perks such as free housing - were compared, CSU executives only lagged by 12 percent.
....Speculation that students would protest the pay raises failed to materialize. Only a handful of student leaders and faculty members spoke against the plan.
The California Faculty Association agreed last spring to a four-year contract totaling 24 percent in pay increases. As part of that deal, the faculty has thus far received about 7.75 percent in salary increases, including a 3 percent raise that was made retroactively effective on July 1, 2006.
Garamendi pointed out that a $40,000 or so salary increase for a top executive is greater than the annual pay of a non-tenured assistant professor or a groundskeeper at the university.

By Jim Doyle, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer