State Audit reveals no major malfeasance, but a deep lack of transparency
by Brian Leubitz
Sen. Leland Yee has been all over the UC system, arguing that nobody knows what is going on with the system. But while State Auditor Elaine Howle didn’t find anything legally wrong, she did find that much more could be done to shed light on the process
The University of California should justify to the public why it spends thousands of dollars more per student at four of its 10 campuses and also do a better job of explaining how it spends more than $1 billion it allots annually to “miscellaneous services,” state auditors said Thursday.
The audit found no major malfeasance in the university system’s budgeting or spending, but noted a lack of transparency in the way it handles its finances that could erode public trust.
For example, $6 billion was budgeted for the UC president’s office over five years, all of it falling under a line-item category called miscellaneous services. (SF Gate)
Now, most of the money can be traced back to legitimate expenses, but why was so much money just tossed into a “miscellaneous” file. UC can do better than that. Heck, they have a whole fleet of accounting professors that can help them out with that. But we would all be served by a bit more sunshine in the Office of the President.
The report also revealed that several campuses receive much smaller amounts of funding per student. UCSB receives $12,309 per student, while UC-Davis receives $17,660. Much of this has to do with some important underlying factors such as percentage of graduate students, but once again, a little sunshine could make this whole process smoother. If the UC just did a better job in keeping its books open, many of these issues wouldn’t get heated at all.
Meanwhile both the UC system and Yee are taking the report as a win. Hooray for that.
….$6 billion was budgeted for the UC president’s office over five years…..
THAT’S Outrageous !!
That kind of money should be Fully explained and Questioned
And That’s why I support Leland Yee
Where’s Jerry Brown ?
Where are the Democrats on this nonsense ??
Missing in Action
“Heck, they have a whole fleet of accounting professors that can help them out with that.”
Yes, because that is exactly why UCs hire world-class faculty.
/sarcasm
As someone inside the UC system with a (bottom-up) view of its opaque finances, a few points. (My hunch is that public attention to $6bn of ‘miscellaneous’ systemwide, or the per-campus funding, is largely red herrings, but there are some very real systemic as well as local problems).
1. Transparency is great, but be careful what you ask for. Unfortunately, calls for macro-transparency get translated by legislators and accountants into mechanisms for micro-management. My unit (a department with 5 staff) had two people, more and more frustrated, trying to keep up with all the new accounting rules and sub-rules and sub-sub-guidelines. Reimbursing a professor for travel to a conference became a nightmare of deadlines, ultra-specific rules about receipts and allowable expenses, and so forth. The amounts were usually only $100s, but they sucked up staff time. MEANWHILE: the big questions of how much income our campus has, and what assets, remain just as opaque as ever.
2. The reported per-campus student support is mostly a reflection of medical schools, whose per-student cost is way higher. It doesn’t mean much. Right now, distribution of state and tuition funds to the campus is regulated by an enormous kluge of rules, starting with some basic rules, but then with innumerable epicycles and exceptions and supplementary distributions. Frankly, only a few gnomes have a clue how each campus’s share of undergraduate FTE funds is derived…it’s just a magic formula. There’s actually a major project afoot to leave most funds at campuses that collect them in the first place (tuition), and to create much simpler scheme to distribute state funds. But huge vested interests are at stake (mostly UCB and UCLA, which et the same basic amounts for undergrads but benefit disproportionately from the layers and layers of epicycles, as I understand it), which will lead to complicated phase-in and transition and adjustment compromises.
3. The President’s office in Oakland has been cut back drastically in the last few years, which most people don’t know. Much of the cutback was overdue, but the knife has been dull, and good elements have been lost as well. The Regents apparently have every intention to keep cutting, and to put UCOP funding on a much tighter leash in the future as well (probably as a flat ‘tax’ on campus budgets, of 2-3%)
4. The real opacity nowadays is at the campus level, where Chancellors and their offices hide about half of their assets and revenue from Senates, faculty, and students. The numbers given out are not false, but they are clearly very incomplete at most campuses, and if they are complete, they are buried in very complicated multi-layer arrangements that no non-expert can read.
Like any addiction, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward correcting it. University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau ($500,000 salary) has forgotten that he is a public servant, steward of the public money, not overseer of his own fiefdom.
Recruits (using California tax $) out of state, foreign $50,000 tuition students who displace qualified sons, daughters of Californians from public university
education.
Spends $7,000,000 + for consultants to do his & vice chancellors work
(prominent East Coast University accomplishing same 0 cost).
University accrues $150 million of inefficiencies over his 8 year reign.
Pays ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures.
In procuring $3,000,000 consultants failed to receive proposals from other firms.
Latino enrollment drops while out of state jumps 2010.
Ranking : QS academic falls below top ten
Tuition to Return on Investment drops below top10.
Cal on 100 most expensive in nation list
NCAA places basketball program on probation: absence institutional control.
These are not isolated examples: it’s all shameful. There is no justification for such irregularities by a steward of the public trust. Absolutely none.
Birgeneau’s practices will not change. University of California Board of Regents Chair Sherry Lansing must do a better job of vigorously enforcing oversight by President Yudof than has been done in the past to Birgeneau who treat the university as his fiefdom.
Until demonstrable action is swiftly applied to chancellors by the UC Board of Regents/President Yudof, the University of California shouldn’t come to the Governor or public for support for any taxes, additional funding.
I have 35 years’ consulting experience; have taught at UC Berkeley, where I observed the culture & the way senior management works. No, I was not fired or downsized & have not solicited contracts from Cal.
Honorable retire Cal Chancellor Birgeneau.