Cost of Living

We often make faculty salary comparisons based on nominal dollars.  However, price levels (the “costs of living”) vary from location to location; a dollar may buy more or less depending on where you are. There have been private surveys that purport to tell you the relative price level in various locations but they typically have unknown methodology.  Now the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis has released estimates of relative price levels by state and selected metro areas.  Aboveyou can see the results by state for 2011.  With the U.S. average = 100, some metro areas in California are San Francisco (118.1), Santa Cruz (116.8), Los Angeles (114.1), San Diego (113.5), Santa Barbara (104.7), Riverside (104.4), Sacramento (100.1), and Merced (94.3). Before you object to these numbers based on personal perceptions, note that a) I have used abbreviations for the metro areas (they don’t correspond to city boundaries), and b) that if there were measures available, they would show variations within metro areas by neighborhoods. [There doesn't appear to be an index corresponding to Orange County, i.e., Irvine, but I took only a brief look.]

You can find the data release at http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/rpp/rpp_newsrelease.htm

By clicking on options on the right-hand side of the release, you can find an Excel sheet which has the metro areas above including a more complete description of the boundaries involved.

Note: Yours truly will be traveling for the next ten days or so and blogging may be limited.  However, I am accompanied on my travels, so I won’t be like the fellow at the link below:

Lessons to be Learned

Today's LA Times carries the story of two neuroscientists recruited by USC from UCLA:

Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson will move to the USC Keck School of Medicine campus next fall, along with scores of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staffers who now work at UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, known as LONI. In establishing a new institute at the USC campus in Boyle Heights, they will also move substantial government and private grants that fund the lab's $12-million annual budget as well as some of the highly sophisticated equipment used to investigate the brain's inner workings.  (The move)...raises concerns about the ability of financially strapped public universities to fend off raids from deep-pocketed private colleges like USC.

The scientists did not divulge details of their new salaries and research funding but said they did not seek a counteroffer...  According to a UC website of employee compensation, Toga was paid $1.06 million in 2011, including basic salary and extra money for research work. Thompson was listed at $421,150...

Toga said he did not want to disparage UCLA but said private schools "are often a little quicker on their feet."...

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-0510-usc-ucla-brain-research-20130510,0,6976660.story

Of course, Chancellor Block comments and says that although he is disappointed, not to worry, there is plenty left at UCLA.  But that is not a good response.   Let's note that at UCLA, the LA Times had only to look up faculty pay on the website because of court decisions regarding pay at UC.  USC also has complete access to the data.  But no pay disclosure occurs, or is required, at a private university such as USC.  There is also the observation about private universities being able to respond quicker.  Sounds like plenty to worry about to yours truly.  Sounds like the kind of story that should be trumpeted to the governor - who still harbors his youthful notions of "psychic income" for faculty - and to the legislature that is busy mandating this or that for the university and pursuing fantasies of saving money via online ed.  Will we hear anything about these matters at the Regents meeting next week?

President Yudof is supposed to present a state of the university report to the Regents next week.  Instead of the usual presentation about UC - despite budget cuts - still being the best public university, how about taking up these issues for real?  After August, there will be a new UC president.  Whatever political constraints there have been on Yudof in the past, they are gone now.  Tell it like it is, Mark.  We'll be listening.

For the Record

Back in mid-December, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) produced a report saying all was well with UC faculty compensation, despite concerns about pay lags.  No one seems to have paid much attention to the LAO report so far, which is a Good Thing, since the report was poorly done. It is unclear what suddenly motivated the LAO to issue the report just when UC was entering intersession and the ability to respond was limited. In any event, the University Committee on Faculty Welfare (UCFW) prepared a response which was recently posted on the Academic Senate website.  For the record – because you never know when someone might haul the LAO report out - here are some excerpts from UCFW’s rebuttal to LAO report: [Links to the full UCFW report and the LAO report are below.]

The UC Systemwide Committee on Faculty Welfare (UCFW) carefully studied the recent report on faculty salaries, recruitment, and retention released by the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO). The LAO's major conclusions are the following: 1) total UC compensation is competitive with top universities; 2) few faculty members leave, and reasons other than salary are responsible for most faculty leaving; 3) the small number of tenured associate professors who leave shortly after receiving tenure is not a concern; and 4) UC continues to hire its top-choice candidates. UCFW questions the accuracy of these conclusions...

(P)rior to 2000, UC salaries closely matched the Comparison Eight average but started to lag behind the Comparison Eight universities shortly after 2000... The lag continues to grow. UC salaries now lag the Comparison Eight by more than 11%...

The LAO makes (an) error by relying upon UC's most recent, but outdated, analysis of total remuneration from 2009. At that time, although faculty salaries lagged the Comparison Eight by about 10%, the value of UC's retirement benefit partially compensated for the salary lag. This was entirely because employees were not required to make contributions to their retirement plan and not because the retirement benefits themselves were overly generous.  The LAO overlooked the predictions in this study, as well as and the update to examine the competitiveness of the "New Tier" retirement plan, that the UC retirement plan would become uncompetitive when faculty made a 5% contribution to retirement, as they are doing in 2012-13... If employee contribution rates rise even higher (6.5% for current employees in July, 2013 and higher thereafter), then UC benefits will not compensate for below-market UC faculty salaries whatsoever...

The LAO concluded that "most faculty do not leave UC or reject UC job offers due to compensation" on the basis of some exit surveys performed in the mid-2000's and summarized in ... the LAO report. The LAO noted that several reasons were given. "Salary" was cited by 33% of those who rejected UC offers and by 37% of those who left UC.  UCFW notes, first, that "salary" was the most prevalent reason for both categories. Secondly, an increase in salary could certainly mitigate concerns about "housing problems" (cited by 22% of those who rejected UC offers and by 13% of faculty who left) and "cost of living [besides housing]" (cited by 11% of those who rejected UC offers and by 7% of those who left). Taking into account not only the issue of "salary" but also the separately enumerated issues that an increase in salary could mitigate, then salary-related issues could account for up to 66% of the reasons for rejecting UC offers and up to 57% of the reasons that faculty leave UC. This is quite the opposite conclusion of the LAO...

UCFW is uncertain what point the LAO attempts to make with the data on the fate of Assistant Professors hired in 2000-01. These data have no reference point, either from when UC was in a more favorable economic environment than in 2000-01, or from other universities when the UC data were collected. In contrast to the LAO, UCFW believes that a 10% rate of departure of young professors after receiving tenure is of great concern. UC heavily invests in assistant professors, especially in science and engineering, by providing them with start-up packages worth several hundred thousand dollars each...

UCFW members, based on their experiences on search committees in their home departments, question whether the data provided to LAO by the UC administration concerning the top choices in faculty searches is truly representative of the current competitive job market.  ...(T)he data are almost 10 years old and do not reflect the current economic conditions in which UC competes for new assistant professors...

The full UCFW report is at: http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/ucfw/UCFWreLAOFacultyRecruitmentandRetentionMarch2103.pdf 

The December LAO report is at: http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/PubDetails.aspx?id=2675

And - for the record - we'll try to maintain a sunny attitude and be optimistic that the LAO will do better next time:

Legislative Analyst Says Everything's OK With UC Faculty Pay

Legislative Analyst's summary:

In this report, we assess UC’s ability to recruit and retain tenured and tenure-track faculty. We find that (1) UC has been hiring candidates who have received their highest degree from some of the most selective universities in the nation, (2) UC has a long history of hiring its top choice faculty candidates, (3) most new entry-level faculty stay at UC long enough to earn tenure, (4) less than 2 percent of faculty resign from UC each year, and (5) UC’s faculty compensation is competitive with other top universities. These findings indicate that UC generally has been successful in its faculty recruitment and retention efforts. In light of these findings, coupled with the continuing need to prioritize limited state funding, the Legislature will need to assess the relative trade-offs between providing funding for faculty salary increases and other competing budget priorities involving faculty and higher education more generally.

Full report at http://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/edu/uc-faculty/uc-faculty-121312.pdf

So not to worry!!