We, the Davis Unit of UC Student Workers Union UAW 2865, representing 14,000 academic student employees across the UC system, call for UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to be fired.
We are deeply concerned with recent revelations about Chancellor Katehi’s decision to take a $70,000/year board position with DeVry – a for-profit university facing lawsuits and allegations of unethical and predatory practices – in addition to the $420,000 she made on the board of academic publisher Wiley and Sons from 2012-14. Obviously, the Chancellor cares more about herself than the students.
NCAA student athletes would face more severe consequences than she has if they took so much as a free slice of pizza. Students face suspension or expulsion for intentional plagiarism. However, it is the Chancellor who has committed the most atrocious dishonesty and violated expectations that govern conflict of interest. John Wiley & Sons is a publisher of textbooks, college materials, and scholarly journals. They profit off of the excessive cost of supplies for college students, however as Chancellor of UC Davis, Katehi should be concerned that the cost of textbooks is burdensome to students. Katehi took a board position with DeVry Education Group while it has been under federal scrutiny for exaggerating job placement and income statistics. It is clear that the Chancellor has her interests at heart not the students of UC Davis or DeVry.
Furthermore, it is beyond disgusting that the Chancellor, who already makes an exorbitant salary with benefits, would take time away from her duties to rake in almost half a million dollars in outside compensation, while many UC workers are at or near the poverty line, homeless students are crashing in the 24 hour study room, and while tuition has kept many from enrolling or overburdening others who do with outrageous debt.
Let’s be honest, Katehi should have resigned or been fired in 2011 after the Nov 18th pepper spraying of student protesters. She should have been fired after the Cruz and Reynoso reports revealed Katehi was partially responsible for the use of chemical weapons on students. Chancellor Birgeneau of UC Berkeley stepped down after the infamous incident of police brutality, which happened at Berkeley just nine days before the pepper spray incident. But Chancellor Katehi refused to step down. Instead she kept her $400,000 salary, plus benefits. She then proceeded to exploit her position to make more money by taking paid positions at Wiley and Sons, and more recently DeVry, again huge conflicts of interest.
Katehi is not alone in this conflict of interest mess. UC Regent Richard Blum’s Blum Capital is the largest stockholder in two for-profit higher education companies, Career Education Corp. and ITT Educational Services Inc. UC Regent Monica Lozano is also the director of private student loan provider Bank of America. UC administration are placing their interests above us, the students whom they should serve.
We are not calling for Katehi to resign because the decision is not hers. We are calling for her to be fired because we think that the students and workers of the UC should have a say as to who runs our university.
We demand that whoever replaces Katehi should be selected and approved by the UC labor unions and UC students.
It is our hope that this incident can spark a conversation and a movement about who the university serves and who should be overseeing it – overpaid admin that use the institution for their own personal gain, or the workers who make the university run and the students who the university serves.
Despite it being the end of the quarter, with finals just around the corner, we will be rallying to Fire Katehi this Friday March 11, at noon on the quad. We hope students, campus workers, and community members can come out and fight for a better university.
Signed,
The Davis Unit of UC Student Workers Union UAW 2865
“We are calling for her (Katehi) to be fired because we think that the students and workers of the UC should have a say as to who runs our university. We demand that whoever replaces Katehi should be selected and approved by the UC labor unions and UC students.”
When one finishes reading the entire demand letter, the above summation says it all. The students and UC labor unions shall chose all future chancellors for the University of California, Davis.
Assuming the proponents of this measure have given this radical shift in power a comprehensive analysis and deliberation, how would a transitory student population and privately controlled labor unions be held accountable to the California public for its decisions? Begin with a process for having every university student and every union member signing a conflict-of-interest declaration, and then detail how it would be monitored and enforced.
As I said yesterday, I think it’s entirely reasonable that campus groups are given some level of input in the choice of the chancellor. I think “selected” goes further than I would support, but some sort of approval process is reasonable.
David wrote:
> I think it’s entirely reasonable that campus groups are given
> some level of input in the choice of the chancellor.
The UC unions have been talking to their public sector friends in California who have “approved” the majority of elected officials in the state and realize that you tend to make more money (and have better benefits) when you “approve” the people that set your pay and benefits.
South of Davis
“The UC unions have been talking to their public sector friends in California who have “approved” the majority of elected officials in the state and realize that you tend to make more money (and have better benefits) when you “approve” the people that set your pay and benefits.”
And maybe it is not unreasonable for the students to want to pay less for their “public education” and the union workers to want to make a little more given how very much more Katehi and colleagues have been able to make by parlaying their public posts into private money makers ?
Okay but so what?
Tia Will said . . . And maybe it is not unreasonable for the students to want to pay less for their “public education”
I agree that it is not unreasonable Tia. Nor is it unreasonable to put the cost of their “public education” into perspective. The following information from the College Board website (see LINK) is very illuminating.
Tuition and Fees by Sector and State over Time
Table 5: Average Published Tuition and Fees by State in Current Dollars and in 2015 Dollars, 2004-05 to 2015-16
In 2015-16, average published tuition and fee prices for in-state students at public four-year institutions range from $4,890 in Wyoming and $6,350 in Montana to $14,990 in Vermont and $15,160 in New Hampshire. The average is $9,142 and the median is $9,120. California’s $9,270 is decidedly “average”
Where California does a good job is for its full-time students at public two-year colleges where California’s $1,423 annual tuition and fees, the lowest in the country, is about $2,000 below the national average.
Just as it’s not unreasonable for taxpayers to want to pay less taxes. If we give free education then taxpayers will be hit hard.
Government is a series of tradeoffs. I would prefer we spend money on education than some other things we spend money on.
There is a significant distinction between “given some level of input” and power of approval. Input means just that, something that is advisory but not binding. And various segments of the UCD community have made input in innumerable circumstances, including proposing criteria for vacant positions of leadership. There were public promotions of named subordinate administrators deemed suitable by campus based sub-groups during the pepper-spray controversy, remember that? No need to give them input, they already have it.
“Approval,” that’s a far greater level of authority. A chancellor selection could not be finalized unless and until the student/union coalition gives its blessing on the choice. An unacceptable choice could rejected, again and again, delay the appointment process for months or years, until a candidate that suits their specific agenda is presented. The power of unlimited rejections is the same as the power of uncontrolled appointment. Tell me, again, that’s reasonable.
I don’t agree with their position – but I also believe when you make a political demand, you are more likely to get about half of what you ask for, therefore, from a strategic perspective, they are making the right demand.
Phil and David
“The power of unlimited rejections is the same as the power of uncontrolled appointment. Tell me, again, that’s reasonable.”
“I also believe when you make a political demand, you are more likely to get about half of what you ask for, therefore, from a strategic perspective, they are making the right demand.”
What would be far more reasonable from my point of view would be to drop the adversarial approach with all the posturing from both sides and adopt a collaborative approach where the concerns of the regents and administration as well as the concerns of the students and employees are all taken into consideration through out the process of vetting, interviewing and confirming new candidates for senior administrative posts such as chancellor. Gee, what a novel idea ! Actually let all stakeholders have a voice in a non competitive, collaborative process !
Phil
“how would a transitory student population and privately controlled labor unions be held accountable to the California public for its decisions”
I would agree with you that this proposal lacks a mechanism for holding these groups accountable to the public. However, I would assert that the current mechanism has not succeeded in holding anyone accountable for how well the actions of the Regents serve the public in terms of the students they were intended to educate, namely the students of California. Instead Mr. Katehi and her colleagues have been allowed to abridge the rights of current students ( as in the pepper spray incident), amass fortunes for themselves through their associations with outside entities ( some of which derive excessive profits from the very students they are supposed to be educating), and recruit foreign students at the expense of California students as a money ( rather than student) attracting venture.
So much for current accountability.
You see what happens when you set a precedent of caving into student demands like safe houses, admission, teacher hiring practices and being told you that have to treat one group differently than others. These groups feel empowered and will demand more and more because they know the system will cave to them.
It’s a bad thing that students feel empowered?
The students’ analysis is right on. Check out today’s Bee for Napolitano’s defense of Katehi, especially the textbook company connection UC President Janet Napolitano: Davis chancellor should stay despite mistake. Unbelievable.
Thanks MrsW for link. The Sacbee article implied that the Chancellor is giving the Wiley stock to student scholarships but did not state she was resigning from that board. Is that true? Keeping the board position and salary or not?
“Napolitano defended the policy as adequate to prevent conflicts of interest.”
A rather shocking statement given that it clearly did not serve to prevent a conflict of interest in this case.
“All of us have so-called extracurricular activities, and that’s part of life, and we anticipate that and build that into the policy.”
And it would appear to be time to revisit this “part of life” as well. I have no problem with the “extracurricular activities” as long as the money made, stocks offered and contacts made go to the benefit of the University and not into the personal coffers of the Chancellors and other senior management of the university. If individuals involved in the leadership of public universities do not believe that their $400,000 plus salaries + benefits are adequate compensation, then I would suggest that they seek employment in the public sector at compensation levels more satisfactory to them.
UCD is a public university. Ms. Katehi does not ever seem to have understood this very simple point and has consistently pursued building her own power base, wealth, and reputation over the education of the students of California. I have never called for her departure previously feeling that perhaps her approach would prove beneficial to the university. I feel that she has failed in supporting the public education that the taxpayers of California and their children have a right to expect and that she should seek employment in a private educational institution more in keeping with her philosophy.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article65110317.html#storylink=cpy“
“UC Regent Monica Lozano is also the director of private student loan provider Bank of America.”
Bank of America helps students and parents get Federal student loans and that is a bad thing? So the group does not want students to have access to loans for college? Seems strange to me.
I think that’s a complicated issue. A federal student loan gives one an education, it also puts a huge burden on students later in life. When you’re a student, you don’t realize how big a hurdle that will become. The system needs to be repaired.
Sam:
> Bank of America helps students and parents get Federal
> student loans and that is a bad thing?
It is not a bad thing if the loans help students get a degree that leads to a job that pays enough to pay down the loan (like most degrees from UC), but it is a bad thing when it is used to load kids up with debt to get a degree that people just laugh at (like most degrees from Corinthian or DeVry) that will hang around the kids neck like a millstone and can not be discharged in bankruptcy.
> When you’re a student, you don’t realize how big a hurdle
> that will become.
Most kids today were raised by boomers (and more recently some GenXers) who went to UC when tuition was less than $1K a year and got a great value for their tuition dollar. The majority of the parents of kids today are up to their eyeballs in debt and don’t see the problem of their kids doing the same thing (and most have no idea that student loans can not be discharged in bankruptcy or how hard it is to pay off a $200K loan with a masters degree in poetry from DeVry “University”)…
By the number of graduates that are “surprised” at the amount of debt they have it is obvious that the decision to take out loans was not well thought out to begin with. How does the union think that their members are going to have jobs if nobody can borrow money to go to UC Davis? How does this benefit the union members, many of which rely on those loans to attend UCD?
Sam, the “loans” only apply to tuition sometimes, not other things, but they use them anyway. UCD claims that over half the students have NO tuition because of “financial aid”. But the fees are killer, and are not reflected in those figures above.
Yes the HS educational system needs to be repaired… how a 17-18 year old doesn’t understand “time value of money”, “credit”, and choosing an area of study likely to lead them to be financially secure, are REAL problems…
Here is another perspective on the Chancellor.
Davis Enterprise: Katehi claims credit for others’ hard work
http://www.davisenterprise.com/forum/opinion-columns/katehi-claims-credit-for-others-hard-work/
I rarely agree with unions, but in this essay they are making the same arguments I have been making since 2011 about Katehi needing to be fired, adding the perspectives on the recent issues which I also agree with. In fact, I’m quite happy that this time around the call is to fire Katehi, which I called for also in and since 2011, when the mood was inexplicably to ask her to resign. As they point out above, the decision isn’t hers.
I don’t agree that the students and union should pick her successor outright, though I agree these parties should be able to weigh in on her prospective replacement.
Bye, bye, Linda.
BP
“Just as it’s not unreasonable for taxpayers to want to pay less taxes. If we give free education then taxpayers will be hit hard.”
Your assessment considers too short a time line from my perspective. Yes, we would have to pay more now. However, I believe that a free college education for all would pay off in the long run in terms of the contribution of these students to the economy unfettered by horrendous debt which only those at the top of the economic food chain ( highly paid professionals, Silicon Valley whiz kids, entertainers, Wall Street traders) and the like will be able to pay off before time to accept their retirement packages. So once again, we either pay for what we want now ( presumably an educated populace) or we continue to suffer economic doldrums for the foreseeable future. The choice is ours, but we need to stop seeing taxes as “evil” and start seeing them as the cost of living in a first world country with first world amenities.
Looks like rain.
Our chancellor is getting all kinds of attention. From Inside Higher Ed on March 7 “Controversy over Davis chancellor’s brief membership on DeVry board escalates into broader debate over a common practice.” Should Presidents Moonlight on Corporate Boards? I had no idea how widespread this practice was, nor to the extent it’s been rationalized by its participants.
I find the comments section even more informative than the article. Jim Finkelstein, a Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University summarizes his research on this very subject. He provides the number of chancellors moonlighting, the amount of money they are receiving, the number of days they work for the money, and more. I echo one of his concluding sentences