Despite Cuts, UC Berkeley Offering High Pay To Guest Lecturers
BERKELEY (CBS 5) -- A practice by the University of California at Berkeley of paying higher-than-scale salaries to guest lecturers has raised eyebrows among tenured faculty amid staff and program cuts to make up for budget shortfalls.
"There is a problem here," remarked geography professor Richard Walker. "We have administrators and some faculty that should really be taken down a notch so that we can maintain a much more reasonable salary structure."
The university has published rates for pay, yet top administrators admit, they frequently exceed those numbers for candidates in the engineering, business and law schools.
"We are going to pay for the best faculty and we are going to keep that up," said UC Berkeley Executive Vice Chancellor George Breslauer.
One notable example of this practice was the recent hiring of former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and her husband, Daniel Mulhorn, who each teach two classes per academic year. They were paid jointly $300,000; a price university officials believe was appropriate.
"When a governor from a major state decides, after stepping down, that she would to spend some time at Berkeley, that is an opportunity for us to create real excitement and that is what she is doing," said Breslauer.
During spring semester, Granholm taught a course open to 25 students at the university's Boalt School of Law. 21 students enrolled for the class, according to the school's website, making her per-student pay for the term more than $3,500.
By contrast, veteran professors at other schools make far less. Kevin Padian who has been a professor of paleontology for the university for nearly three decades made around $119,000 in 2010. He routinely teaches large lecture classes and multiple seminars, in addition to leading research with his graduate team.
Padian said the cuts the university has experienced have been tough. "We fired 400 people. You can't fire 400 people and not have that affect the overall performance of the university."
At his level, Padian said, frugality is the focus. "There is no waste. We are extremely parsimonious. We take every dollar of research support we can get and we use it extremely prudently," said Padian.
"Where I work, tuition has increased," said Granholm on a show she hosts for Current TV, the San Francsico-based cable network founded by Vice President Al Gore.
Granholm denied requests for interviews made by CBS 5, but did elaborate on her show the importance of the accessibility of higher education at a price students can afford.
"Unless we decide as a nation that students have access to higher education, we will continue to spiral downward," she said on her show.
Despite these sentiments, some faculty members believe the practice of paying high salaries to select individuals is endemic of a university that has unclear financial priorities.
University officials adamantly disagree, arguing that this sort of remuneration is critical to staying competitive. Breslauer said the administration is undeterred in their mission to get top talent. "That means that those who are the most attractive to other wealthier private universities are typically going to have higher salaries," he said.
(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
