In an interview last January with UCLA’s campus newspaper The Daily Bruin, University of California president Janet Napolitano was clear that there would be a 2.5 percent tuition hike this fall across the ten UC campuses. It is “a last resort,” she said, but it’s necessary to “maintain quality” across the statewide public-university system.
But according to an audit released on Tuesday by California’s state auditor Elaine Howle, the UC Office of the President has plenty of money to “maintain quality” across UC campuses; it just wants more. Howle found that Napolitano and her colleagues accumulated $175 million in reserve funds, all of which were concealed from the public, the California state legislature, and even the UC’s governing board, the UC Board of Regents.
“Why did we need to increase tuition if the Office of the President has $175 million in reserve that nobody knew about?” Howle asked.
Even California’s Democratic lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom, who is also a member of the the UC Board of Regents, decried Napolitano’s opaqueness. “It’s outrageous and unjust,” he said, “to force tuition hikes on students while the UC hides secret funds.” Newsom called on the UC Board of Regents to reconsider the tuition hike.
The UC Office of the President collected a surplus of $175 million quite easily, and it did so while paying its staff extravagant salaries. In fiscal year 2014-2015, Howle discovered that ten of Napolitano’s colleagues were paid a total of $3.7 million — “over $700,000 more than the combined salaries of their highest paid state employee counterparts.” The UC chief financial officer makes $412,000, for example, while the California State University’s chief financial officer — its counterpart — makes $341,000.
