Yudof at KPCC 3Systems Summit Jan 13

7/29/2019 Yudof at KPCC 3Systems Summit Jan 13

1/9

Larry Mantle: Going back to the 1960s, Californias Master Plan, tiers of public highereducation, were the model to which everyone aspired. For extremely low, or even no tuition,students had access to one of the three systems. Community colleges took anybody. Stateuniversities educated most of the states teachers, and provided four-year degrees to millions ofresidents studying a wide range of subjects. The university of California provided the highest

echelon education to the states highest performing students. Now, its much more challenging.Community colleges are overwhelmed with more students than they can handle, CSUs cantoffer enough courses to get students out in four years, and UCs like the other two systems, haveseen large tuition fees and increasing numbers of out of state students, who subsidizeCalifornians by paying full freight. How will these systems weather the years to come? Imjoined by the President of the University of California, Mark Yudof, the Chancellor of theCalifornia State University system Timothy White, and the Chancellor of the communitycolleges Brice Harris. Gentlemen thank you all for coming, we appreciate it very much.

So lets start with tuition. Is the historic California promise of a cheap, quality college educationnow impossible to afford? President Yudof, lets start with you.

Mark Yudof: Okay, I, theres a lot of concern about tuition. I was at the governors (State ofthe State address?) and he got a standing ovation when he said he didnt want tuition increases.We did not have tuition increase this year, we probably wont next year. My perspective is alittle different. We had a billion dollars in reductions and 38 percent of it was made up in tuition.This tuition is 12,000 dollars a year. Almost half of our students are poor, or they receive PellGrants. A large numbers of languages other than English is [sic] spoken in the home. We do abetter job of educating low-income students, I think, than just about anyone out there, and theaverage tuition is less than 6,000 dollars that is what people pay. The debt, upon graduation, is19,000 dollars, and we have some of the highest graduation rates of any public university in thecountry. But its a problem; its a big problem particularly for the middle class. So were trying

to modulate it, were going to try to keep the tuition down, frankly were going to have to re-engineer how we to deliver some of our educational services, and this year for the first time sinceIve been president, we have a modest uptick in state support, so Im hoping we can get thatdone.

Mantle: Okay, so youre saying in some sense you think this is still possible, but obviously itsnot the extraordinary value it was in the past.

Yudof: Well Id argue its still a great value, but, you know, free is better than 12,000. EvenIcan understand that.

Mantle: Well then what percentage has it increased in the last five years?

Yudof: Very substantially. But the problem is its like a drug store. You go to the drug storeand you have a co-pay of 20 dollars, and all of the sudden it goes to 40 dollars. Your cost hasincreased 100 percent. That doesnt mean the price of the drug has increased it means that theinsurance company doesnt want to pay. And our problem is the state of California didnt wantto pay. So, its going way above the rate of inflation, and its going up much more rapidly thanId like, but theres a fundamental underlying problem its not costs; we are not healthcare,


2/9

thats not the issue. Fundamentally, the cost problem is the disinvestment of the stategovernment.

Mantle: So, when you say costs arent the issue (and both you gentlemen please jump in onthis), is, are you saying that the cost per pupil the real cost of educating the students, its gone

down?

(One of the other men (White?) jumps in and says that the cost of UCs and Cal States has gonedown, and that Community Colleges have stayed the same it is that students and families whoare paying a might higher proportion.)

Mantle: So how is that possible, with cost of living increases for faculty, with the cost ofresearch being greater than in the past, how do you do that?

Yudof: Ill tell you how its possible. You dont pay for the research. You get five milliondollars in outside research money; you get 2.6 billion from the state of California, almost twice

from other services. But its easy. When you go from a 16 to 1 student-faculty ratio to a 25 to 1student-faculty ratio, then your costs go down, because the faculty, essentially, has not grown.

Mantle: But has the quality suffered in doing that?

Yudof: Well Im worried about that, and I think we need to be more self conscious about howwe deal with large classes. My view is weve hit a wall were going to have to deal with thelarge classes, were going to have to deal with online learning. I dont see any sort ofrestoration. And by the way, our costs have gone up some; I want to say that, but largelybecause of the pension issue. When I arrived in office we contributed zero to pensions, as didthe employees. But the pension system was in great danger, and today we make hugecontributions to the pension plan. Thats been our primary cost driver over the last five years.

Mantle: What about professors salaries though? Because my sense is, at least for star faculty,maybe this doesnt apply across the board theres been a kind of race to getting the top talent.UC wants to get the very best and the brightest, as professors youve got to compete with private,as well as other really public institutions. So, has the cost of faculty salaries not risen faster thanthe rate of inflation? What used to be a very middle class job, hasnt that become a verydistinctly upper middle class job?

Yudof: There are a lot of parts to that question, Larry.

Mantle: But theyre all related.

Yudof: The first question, I dont know exactly, in relation to the inflation. Second point iswere a solid 10, 15 percent below our peers, both public and privates. So I would say we have avery public-spirited faculty. If you teach at UCLA, to me, or Berkeley, or certainly Riverside orwhere [former Chancellor] Tim [White] was, you are reaching, half your kids are poor; you arean agent of economic mobility.


3/9

Mantle: Im not disputing the mission.

Yudof: So I think people accept lower salaries thats what Im saying. I mean, were notwholly competitive, but they have gone up, I dont deny that. And it is a star system. We have60 Nobel laureates. Id prefer they not leave our campuses.

Mantle: But someone has to pay for that. Its a wonderful thing youve got them, but they costmoney.

Yudof: Thats true, and some of its private. Remember, the state is paying $2.6 billion on a 24billion dollar budget. And the research funds are not coming from the state of California. Andthen there are gifts and other things. So, its a complicated question to answer. Yes the salarieshave gone up, yes we need to be competitive, but were really not competitive in salaries withthe Ivy Leagues and other places like that.

Mantle and Tim White discuss, Mantle and Brice Harris discuss, a break.

Mantle: University of Texas, your former system, President Yudof, has been ground zero in thisbattle between those who believe that maybe some of these elite public universities have becometoo elitist, and no longer affordable for states to fund them in this age of belt tightening. So, isthis question over whether we can still afford a University of Texas or a University of Californiawith all of its overhead, with all of what goes on is that a legitimate debate in your mind tohave? Or are things just great, these institutions need to be protected as is?

Yudof: I dont think they need to be protected as is. I think theres an old Chinese proverb thatin life you should be like bamboo you should bend, but not break. And I think the idea thatyoure accessible, that your [sic] wonderful graduate program, that you have pathbreakingresearch in medicine and elsewhere, is important. But we cant stick with the old model. Werenot going to have a 14 to one student faculty ratio. And I dont know what this elitism charge is;these are fine educational institutions and Wisconsin and Michigan and Texas and Florida andCalifornia, and Washington have wonderful public institutions, in my judgment. And we need topreserve them. And weve got a lot of simple minded solutions, like its easy to say a 10,000dollar degree, but how many years will it take to get, what will the quality of the instruction be,do you get those cognitive skills, are you prepared for the labor market?

Mantle: Youre talking about the Florida proposal, from Florida and Texas.

Yudof: Yes, Florida and Texas both have that. And I do know Rick Perry I think Ive metGovernor Scott I think theyre writing a book on the governors I have known. ArnoldSchwarzenegger, and Governor Brown, and Jessie Ventura . . .

Mantle: Thats right, the University of Minnesota and the Ventura administration.

Yudof: Thats right I can give one chapter to each and have a best seller. But I do think weneed the change. I dont want to be in that camp because I do think the world is different.People come to my office every day and say Youre the envy of the world at the University of


4/9

California, Were in Asia, we want to be like you, Were in Latin America and we want tobe like you, Were in Europe and we want to be more like you. I dont particularly thinkwere broken. Just our financial model is broken, and we need to fix it.

Mantle: No one is saying the University of California is not upholding the values of quality.

The question is whether, for the number of students the system is able to take in, given the hugedemand at the community colleges and CSU systems, whether its affordable, and whether taxpayers can pick up the costs they historically have.

Yudof: I dont think they can. I think we need other financial models.

Mantle: So what would be an example of that?

Yudof: Well, Ive suggested to the Board of Regents that you ought to be able to gain entry intothe University of California by taking online classes for a year or two and then transferring in,just like community college students transfer in. I think that we have to look to the faculty to be

more ingenious about how we handle larger classes, because that saves money larger classes.Maybe we need to have even larger classes and even smaller classes. We can raise more moneyfrom the private sector. We have indirect cost recovery. But if youre sitting there at Berkleyyoure getting 240 million dollars from the state of California, and the faculty is bringing in 800million dollars of research, would you, Larry I have a question would you give up the 800million?

Mantle: Well, no. And if research is actually making money, or paying for itself, why arentyou going out hiring more professors to do research, if its that lucrative?

Yudof: We actually are. Every time somebody does a study, and says, Boy, youve got somany administrators. It always turns out that theyre either in the hospitals, where theyre doingbooming business, or the research enterprise. But it turns out that the course hours, are paid bythe state it turns out that we really pay a lot of attention to undergraduates and our graduatestudents who, by the way, do the lions share of the real research, so there are core expenses thatyou cant charge to Uncle Sam or to a foundation.

Mantle: Okay, so if you do more online instruction, if in some cases, where it makes sense, youhave bigger classes, does that in any way diminish the experience of the University of Californiaeducation? Because if what youre selling is this four-year experience in an elite institution, andyoure doing what everybody else is doing for a part of that, then youre cutting into what yourcalling card is.

Yudof: And I think thats a significant risk. But I dont think we have much choice, because Idont think the money will be there. So we need to take the risk, we need to be very carefulabout the quality. It has to be voluntary; maybe only 10 or 20 percent of all the courses areonline. Maybe you have some alternate pathways into the university. But I dont see the optionof saying, Okay, well just continue with the present program.


5/9

Mantle and White discuss, Mantle and Harris discuss firing unproductive employees and

can you really do that in a public college or university

Yudof. . . . Weve cut probably 500 employees In the Office of the President. That was a

relatively quiet revolution. It wasnt just the incompetent; many of them were quite competent.We were just overstaffed. It was just too expensive. Of course you have your union agreements.People have procedural rights. We dont want to victimize people with discrimination and soforth. But I put it what I think is a much more comprehensive employee evaluation system.Theres nothing more annoyingIm a lawyer, Im not a doctorand someone isnt performingwell, and you look at their evaluations, and either they werent done or they got six brilliants,you know, high performance. And having real evaluation systems, and then you have somethingto stand on. The first thing you do is you try to ask them to improve their performance, and youcounsel and you do a lot of things. But then at the end of the day you have the basis for taking anaction. But there are limits

Mantle: yes, youre talking about how the system should work.

Yudof: yes, Im trying.

More on CSU: faculty salaries havent kept up. 5-6 years without compensation

adjustments, paying more on the benefits side . . .. White says hes glad that the governor is

reinvesting on the state side.

Mantle: what about these high executive salaries? They are a small part of the overall budget butthey are highly symbolic

Yudof: I dispute the grand narrative, which is essentially wrong.

Mantle: How so?

Yudof/Harris: Any number of grounds. Ive hired five chancellors, three of them took salarycuts to become chancellors three. We are not competitive with private universities we dontpay like private universities. Our chancellors are in the bottom third of all research universities.The guy who was number two in the search of Berkeley was making 800,000 dollars as aprovost. That was a big factor in not appointing him. Its simply not true. What happens is, Ifreeze the salaries of all those people making high salaries, and then what happens is you havenine retention offers. It makes the newspapers, and someone constructs the narrative thateverybody in those salary brackets got a big raise. Its simply untrue. Now, I would like to seethe media, for once, doing some empirical research. You could assert these things, then youought to get a printout, you ought to get a printout of every person pick your number, $150,000or higher get a printout, see what the raises were in that group, compare it with other groups. Ifyou think its like private universities, find out what they pay, Columbia, Chicago, Penn. If youthink its higher than the public universities, find out what theyre paying. Texas, Michigan,Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and so forth.


6/9

Yudof: Make it into an empirical proposition and not an ideological war.

Mantle: But I dont hear the argument that UC or any of these branches are paying what privateinstitutions are.

Yudof (I think): You just said it.

Mantle: Then I misstated it. You are in a competition with private institutions.

Yudof (I think): Yeah, not much, because we cant hire them.

Mantle: But the argument that Ive heard is that: we have to compete with private institutions.We therefore have to provide raises in some cases when we are hiring new chief executives forUniversity. Is that not an argument thats made for some of these places?

Yudof: The argument is made but it lacks empirical reality. We are not competitive with the

Mantle: But that argument is coming on the institutions side.

Yudof: It is not coming on my side. I never said that. What I said is three of the last fivechancellors took a salary cut to come to the university. Ive been on the job five years. We haveten chancellors. Now I admit, when I go back into the market and you have someone who hasntgotten a raise for eight years or ten years, you may have to pay more for the new person. Guesshow many chancellors have received raises in the last six years.

Mantle: I have no idea.

Yudof: Zero.

(Tim White comes in to confirm. He notes CSU Trustees new policy that no new executive

can make more than 10% more than the predecessor. We cant confuse the exec salaries

with the faculty salary issue. We dont want to lose people who are doing a good job. .)

Mantle: So whats an appropriate salary for someone to do that at one of the larger CaliforniaState Universities? What is a fair annual salary to do that?

Yudof: What were paying

Mantle: What youre paying is fair?

Yudof: Yes, in my view.

Mantle: Okay, and which is?

Yudof (I think): The range is from about 300 thousand to about four


7/9

Harris and White: 480, 450

Yudof: And its at the bottom end of the research university. It really is non-competitive. Youpick your distinguished private institution; they pay twice that, literally. And look, people arehurting. I understand this Im not trying to be belligerent about it. But there are things called

markets, and I dont believe anyone can do these jobs. And I believe that take UCLA. UCLAhas raised over 400 million dollars in, I dont know, a year. Thats not easy. You need a leader,and if its 50,000 dollars more--my judgment, and not everyone agrees to raise that sort ofmoney, versus someone who will raise half that, you have to take that into account.

A break.

Mantle: Gentlemen, I want to talk about Veterans education, because I understand thatSouthern California is going to be the area with the largest concentration of returning veteranscoming back here. Many of them are going to look for this opportunity, to take benefits, to takeadvantage of higher education. [Discussion with Harris and White omitted, with interesting

material about veterans learning needs, including for those who have percussive injuries andcant learn as quickly while not wanting to admit itspecial help is being offered for them.]

Mark Yudof, are you getting many vets coming to the UCs?

Yudof: We are, and I have an ethereal life Im in Oakland, I have no students, no faculty, noprospects. But on the campuses Ive actually given awards. We have student led organizationcenters that are very effective. And normally the staffing is done by veterans themselves, andtheyre dealing with all the issues you mentioned. And the board of regents has made it apriority.

Discussion with Harris and White on educational technology.

Mantle: University of Wisconsin and perhaps other state institutions are looking at givingcredits and degrees that have a big component competency, and experience in the workplacethat can be demonstrated with tests designed by those institutions faculty. Mark Yudof, at theUC is this something that you support or do you think its a mistake because in some way thatdetracts from the overall comprehensive university experience?

Yudof:No, I actually like it. I mean, its not for all occasions, for all courses, for all students.But for too long in higher education we thought of ourselves as having a winnowing effect. Inmy case, I took Spanish, barely passed it. Probably a competency-based course would havetaken me 26 weeks. But I wasnt out to be an interpreter or a Cervantes scholar. Its sufficientthat I acquired the competency. And I really think thats true of a lot of things in highereducation, that its not important sometimes to have a bell shaped curve and sort everybody out.If you want some poor competencies why cant you define them maybe you can save somemoney. Maybe some students can do it in four weeks, and others it will take longer. And again,I dont want to replace the whole model, but I think its a good idea lets explore it.


8/9

Mantle:Now, because there are some who argue, there are two things. One is, its shorter timeactually intimately involved with the institution, so there is a loss there. The other, and this maysound odd, but there is something to be said for going through the four years, or more than fouryears of university, of going through all the hoops in the process, that shows a level ofcommitment. It shows, you know, youve gone through the whole process. Is there a value in

that or is that no longer relevant or ever relevant?

Yudof: Well, I think its a value, I think its being diminished today. People are sort ofcommodifying knowledge in a way that I think isnt always desirable. But I think, like Tim wassaying, you want to balanced approach. I dont think its a problem if three courses or fourcourses are competency based, or ten or twenty percent of your courses were online if theyrehigh quality. They cant just put a camera in the back of a classroom and have professorSnodglass, Snodgrass groan on. You need to take advantage of the new medium and all the restof that. But as one component I think its fine. And theres still time for recreational sports andsharing pizza and whatever else.

Discussion with White and Harris variations in preparation which affects the methodsyou can use. Remedial coursework is a big challenge in CCCs.

Mantle asks about CCC advising of students being heavily criticized, who get conflicting

information which delays their progress.

Harris: Well you're bound to get concerns when you have a ratio of 2000 to 1 ratio forcounselors to students. . . .

Mantle: 2000 to 1??

Harris: thats an average up and down the state. What we need obviously are the

resources. All these systems are financially starved. The Master Plan for Higher Education isstill the most elegant public higher education system in the world. Its just grossly underfunded.And as long as that happens youre going to have a 2000:1 counselor to student ratio. We can dosome things with technology . . But at the end of the day these institutions are financiallychallenged. With Prop 30 were finally seeing a bit of a floor . .

Mantle asks whether given these challenges we can still say we even have a master plan

anymore?

White says the institutions are sound, and makes comments on students diversity of

academic and economic backgrounds and needing to help students from non-college

families when they stub their toe academically and dont have anyone in their family who

can help, as more affluent students do.

Mantle: But were able to do that after World War II when we had so many veterans on the GIBill many the first in their families to go to college. This challenge is not a new one in highereducation.


9/9

White: Back to the future man, back to the future.

Mantle: If, by executive fiat, and I dont know whether you get three of these wishes, orwhatever, but if you had an executive fiat, you could change one thing about this system andhow it operates, what would it be? And Ill begin with you, President Yudof at the UC.

Yudof: What would I change? Well, the first thing Id change is Id take 30- 40- 50,000 morestudents. Because I think we should be growing much more than we are, to serve a growingpopulation in California. The majority of the Hispanic groups and the schools, I think that wouldbe very important. I think weve done a pretty good job of deploring tenure and tenure trackedfaulty, but we have a few campuses where our achievement level is not that high. Id like to seethe regular faculty routinely teaching undergraduates. I think thats a very important feature ofthe system. I probably would do more research because it brings money into the state and peoplediscover things that are important to Californians, whether its synthetic fuels or betterstrawberries or an artificial iris in your eye. So, those are a few things.

White says increase and equalize graduation rates. Harris says restore access to thesystem.

Documents

Yudof at KPCC 3Systems Summit Jan 13