In discussing the fiscal problems of the University of California with the Chronicle of Higher Education, President Mark Yudof argued that driving the budgetary problems for the university is the high cost of instructional salaries. According to this common argument, many costs of universities can be reduced, but the high salaries of tenured faculty cannot be lowered, and so the only solution is to find a less expensive way of delivering courses.
In the case of the UC system, the proposed solution is to turn to distance education. Unfortunately, the entire UC strategy is founded on two lies; the first untruth is that instructional costs are high, and the second misrepresentation is that the fiscal crisis is being caused by rising costs and decreased state funding.
To prove that the university is making most of its decisions based on false and misleading information, I analyzed the university’s own salary data from 2009, and I found that less than 9% of its total compensation is spent on undergraduate instructional positions.
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