Not All Classrooms

Here in the University of California, we're caterwauling about state budget cuts that will destroy our ability to educate students, as though every penny of state funding goes to the classroom. But our campuses are a great deal like cities, with city problems and city solutions.

My campus, UCLA, is expected to come up with $40 million in budget cuts. If you think that money can only come out of the classroom, take a look at this laugh-out-loud funny recruiting flyer for the UCLA Police Department. Our annual Clery Report shows plainly that the UCLA campus is a low-crime environment (for a community with a daytime population around 40,000), while the UCLA PD's 62 sworn officers earn a starting salary that clocks in just over $65,000. But keep going, because it gets better:

Benefits:
• 3% at 50
• 3/12 and 4/10 work schedules
• Three weeks paid vacation
• 13 paid holidays
• 12 sick days a year

So that's a three-day workweek minus three weeks paid vacation and another 25 days off with pay for campus police who respond to fairly few serious crimes. But keep going, and take a look at this UCLA website with more detailed information on campus police pay and benefits:

• POST certificate pay: Intermediate $175/month, Advanced $275/month
• Specialty pay incentives for Field Training Officers ($250/month), Detectives ($175/month), Lead Officers ($175/month), and Traffic Collision Investigators ($175/month)
• $725 annual paid uniform allowance after one year
• Numerous special event overtime opportunities
• University of California Safety Retirement plan (3% at age 50, maximum of 100%-highest 3 years), currently fully paid by employer

So, sure: Clearly we pour every penny into the classroom, and there's no other place on campus to cut costs.

And I could go on:

I could talk about the positively Soviet inefficiency of our hiring and personnel management system, for example, or the campus Fire Safety Division (with firefighters who wear a UCLA uniform) that has its offices within a half-mile of two well-staffed Los Angeles Fire Department stations, or the campus health inspectors who do a job that county health inspectors could do without difficulty, eliminating a separate system of administration and personnel.

But isn't it much more gratifying to whine about having to cut $40 million from our $3.4 billion budget?

My two-stop answer to the University of California's budget crisis: Stop elevating professors to campus administration, and hire a smart city manager to run the place -- and empower that person to restructure campus services outside the classroom. Then send an RFP to the Sheriff's Department. If that doesn't get you halfway to $40 million -- without the slightest impact on the university's quality of instruction -- let's discuss it again in a few months.