I apologize if this is a topic that’s been posted on before, but a quick search came up with nothing.  So here I go.

I moved to California just over a year ago, fresh out of a liberal arts school with a degree that I thought would help get me a job.  I didn’t find a good solid one until March this year, when I went to work at UC San Diego.

There’s a lot to love about working for UC.  I got a pretty comprehensive benefits package — which I’m pretty relieved about, given everything that’s going on in the healthcare world right now.  I’m in the scientific field that I wanted to be, and I’m assisting with some cutting-edge research (albeit more on the administrative side than anything else).  I have decent job security, as my boss has told me that I’m doing a good job and he’d like me to keep doing more of the same.  Which is all one can hope for in this economy.

But my job at UCSD just got a lot less wonderful with the Board of Regents’ announcement about their cost saving measures.

First, the facts.  Most of the full-time equivalent positions at UCSD are having furloughs applied to them.  For those of you who don’t know what they are (as I didn’t before it happened), furloughs are basically forced unpaid vacations which translate to a pay cut.  Every salaried employee is subject to this.  This includes me — and when my fiance is worrying about layoffs at his company, it makes me worry even more.

I know that everywhere is tough, and there are cutbacks everywhere you look.  But when is the last time that responsible, fiscally conservative people like my boss had 8% pay cuts?  We’re not one of the big banks that

Even if my salary is adjusted for inflation, I’ll be making less money than I did at the beginning of my job here.  While I know that I am lucky to have a job at all, it is still something that concerns me a lot.  How long until my boss can’t fund me at all?  My job is a fairly critical one towards running a lab, but what if he decides to jump ship and go to China?  This is a fairly real possibility.  He already mentioned that there were standing offers from places in China that match salaries over here.  And he’s upset that because of the depth of his pay cut, he might have to mortgage his house again.

You might think that a professor has a cushy job.  You might think that academia is an easy place to work.  It’s not.  My job is challenging, and extremely instructive.  I’m literally learning new things every day.  There are so many things that go on behind the scenes that most people have no idea even exist.  I could write another full diary on these things, but I’m focusing on the budget cuts here.