Change at UC - For a new direction, Dynes needs to step down

The audits just keep coming. The whopping revelations just keep mounting. The University of California just keeps shelling out, mired in a longtime culture that has to change.

Examples from the just-released report of the state auditor illustrate the problems, past and present.

Eight years ago, UC San Francisco granted the senior vice chancellor for finance and administrative services loans totaling $1.2 million on sweet terms, including buying back his house near campus for $643,000. Just two months ago – with the pay controversy roiling, UC Board of Regents in high dudgeon and UC President Bob Dynes promising reform – UCSF approved another $1.2 million loan for this official to partially repay the previous loans and renovate another home.

In February, the state auditor notified UC San Diego in February that it has overpaid Vice Chancellor and Dean of the School of Medicine Edward W. Holmes $5,000 a month since 2001 as recompense for outside earnings UC policy forbade him to retain. This “complex arrangement that circumvented policy” has exceeded the value of those earnings. Dynes' office says it should continue.

Also in February, Dynes personally promised legislators to inform the regents of all exceptions to their pay rules. A week later, without telling the regents, he approved a sweet $823,500 loan to his administrative adviser.

This audit is replete with examples of compensation beyond salary paid to the already highly paid few; compensation that is questionable or inappropriate and misreported, under-reported or unreported to the regents in violation of their rules. The auditor ferreted these examples from records that should be but are not clear, accurate or standardized throughout the UC system.

The auditor pegs it as “a culture of non-compliance,” which runs down to the bookkeepers' cubicles but starts at the top with chancellors more concerned with finding ways to woo and keep executives than monitoring the money. And with a President's Office that has yet to convey system-wide the urgency of complying and being seen to comply, or else.

This culture hardly began with Bob Dynes. With broad support from faculty, he has led the system since 2003 into ever-more academic excellence, braved a thicket to preserve UC's contract to run the national lab at Los Alamos, and probably Livermore. Yet Dynes did not as chancellor at UCSD tackle a culture that puts hiring and keeping executives by “gentleman's agreements” ahead of following rules. And as UC president, he comes late, and under pressure, to the realization that the UC system is a major corporation with the duty of extraordinary stewardship and transparency in its use of public funds.

The regents' proposal to add a chief operating officer or a compliance officer would help any corporate president. The presidency itself, however, demands conviction to a new course, the energy to direct it, the will to enforce it. They are not among Dynes' strengths. He has given much to the University of California, has left it better in many respects. It's time he resigned the office, and left the new course to a new president.

College Education ping.

Or is it corrupt education ping?

Let JamesP81, Jalisco555, or me know if you want on or off this college education ping list.

My husband, also a professor, thinks that schools should get rid of all administrators who have nothing to do with the students....now that would save some bucks, and professors, as one group, would love to have fewer adminstrators. Especially those who make so much more than they do....

In a very serious way, the wave after wave of scandals that sweep through these schools are caused by a culture of breathtaking elitism and disdain. When I first became a professor, many of my mentors came from the same humble stock that I did. Most of them taught with the idea that they would teach well to students who, they hoped, would learn something and move up in the world. (Some were elitist jerks of course and some were just jerks period.)

Now, however, academics have selected themselves on becoming the arbiters of ethics, politics, morality, religion and so forth. There is, in this, a great injustice. There is surely a great difference between educating someone so that they can appreciate the subtleties of some subject and setting oneself up as the final judge of what is right and what is wrong.

My first department had a bowling team--and that was at one of the largest schools in the nation. Now, however, the members of that department would regard such as too lowbrow. Similarly we academics all too often dismiss those who do not agree with us as being simply not of sufficient quality to "get it." I can well remember a professor of English telling me that there was "too much democracy" in America and that she and others really knew what "what best."

So if the professors are the arbiters and if the hoi-polloi's opinion can only be that of the dull uneducated, then, all too often, the concerns of the average parent or taxpayer disappear in the grandiose schemes for the "better sort."

Drives me nuts.

McVey

And as UC president, he comes late, and under pressure, to the
realization that the UC system is a major corporation with
the duty of extraordinary stewardship and transparency in its use
of public funds.

Heck, the UC system sounds like it's neither a major corporation OR
a respected educational institution.

Instead, it's an sort of a replacement for New Orleans in terms
of a cash-sucking machine.

Thank you for you insights, Prof. McVey, and hang in there.

Any chance of your writing a book about the distortions in textbooks?

The climate seems ripe, with Horowiz'(sp?) book, also Rape Of The Masters and other exposes of academia.

With the awarding of the Pulitzer to such inferior works, American literature is in a sad state. And nobody will say a word about it, not a word.

English classes are assigned such 'literature' as The Color Purple and Poisonwood Bible, etc. Boosting sales for the authors and convincing students that this IS literature, therefore 'literature' is boring and pedantic, and they give up, and cease to read, and go to visuals.

So write already!

Thanks for the encouragement! I have a major study coming out in November which hits this on the head. The problem is that I am really not a very good writer (by Ph.D. standards) and stick mainly to statistics. I have tried to convince my co-author that we really do need to go after a book with what we have (we measured how political bias affects judgment in academics.) She is understandably skittish. To remove me would take some doing (although students in the past have been suborned to do the dirty work on other professors.) She, however, is in a less enviable position.

Still, when we release this, I am going to find a way to post it on FR and see what happens. I am not certain that the MSM can cover this up, but who knows?

McVey

Here is the semi-inside skinny--

Several things contribute to the culture of non-compliance in the UC system. In addition to the elitism previously mentioned, we have

* UC trying to maintain its world-class research institution status, but can't compete with industry for salary and raises

(There is some truth to this, especially with the low pay raise schedules over the years, so the tendency is to front-load at hiring time)

* UC + california state has a ballooning pension problem

They can't afford their own retirement benefits; they have offered many faculty and staff buy-outs for early retirement; Los Alamos has been cut loose in association with Bechtel, a notorious penny pincher on employee and retiree benefits (Livermore is next on the chopping block)

* cost-of-living compensation is out of whack with the rest of the country

(Some truth to this too, although it is in large part due to legislative mismanagement and attrition of industy tax base due to onerous state requirements, eg workmen's compensation, Cal EPA, etc., etc.)

* Gray Davis legacy on the Board of Regents

(Leftist elitists abound, as one might imagine) This gives rise to an effective lack of adequate oversight by the Regents.

* historical independence of Regents from legislative oversight

The UC system is wired to be independent by the California Constitution. Think of it as a little fiefdom where everyone is used to doing their own thing without having
to worry about consequences and oversight. This has been this way for several decades, to my knowledge (at least since the mid '70s).

Hoping this lends some perspective to the magnitude of the problem.

I think that Encounter Books, the publisher of Rape of the Masters, would be interested in such a study as yours. (By the way, I think I've seen two posts with Roger Kimball and Rape of the Masters mentioned today alone....hurray!)

Tell your colleague to take heart and be courageous. I think we (on FR) are just itching for such a fight. Fire a fine, publishing professor because he or she is conservative, and watch the nation go ballistic.

Of course, I hope that doesn't happen to you all and that you get praised (and prizes) for great, ground-breaking research.

Oh, wait....there's another woman conservative out there! Man, we REALLY need to band together. :)

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