LOOKING INTO THE UC BUDGET  --  Report #2b      (e-mail version)


by Charles Schwartz, Department of Physics, University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720.       510-642-4427	          February 28, 1993



			SUMMARY 


This is the second follow-up on Report #2, which looked at the growth 
history and present size of the University's administrative structure, 
concluding that there appears to be a great deal of bureaucratic 
overgrowth that can be trimmed.

UC's Vice President for Budget has now produced a formal 
report, responding to my study; and in this paper I evaluate 
that response in detail.  Several of Vice President Baker's 
criticisms appear valid and I take them into account in a revised 
quantitative assessment of the University's administration.

After a careful analysis, trying to be generous to the University 
administration, I conclude that they are spending between $209 
million and $320 million dollars per year in excess of what is 
necessary. While similar in magnitude to the estimate given in my 
earlier Report, this finding rests on a much firmer basis.

Again, the urgent recommendation to the Board of Regents is that 
outside management experts should be brought in to locate the 
precise places where the administrative fat should be trimmed.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Report #1 in this series (December 10, 1992; 2 pages) dealt with a single 
administrative unit: the Office of the General Counsel of the Regents, which 
consists of 37 attorneys, plus staff, and spent  $9,174,000  in fiscal year 
1991-92. Over the past 15 years, this office has grown two to three times more
than the clientele it is presumed to serve. In addition, 7 out of the 12 
campuses and major laboratories run by UC now have their own legal officer(s) 
as Assistant Chancellors, etc., while there was only one such officer 15 years
ago. This indicates a severe case of bureaucratic bloat that ought to be 
questioned.

Report #2 (January 4, 1993; 8 pages) covered the entire upper-level 
administration of the University. Comparative growth in budgeted positions 
(FTE) was analyzed over the last 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 years; and it was 
estimated that perhaps half of the present size of UC's administration is 
excess bureaucratic bloat that has grown unchallenged for decades and now 
wastes large amounts of scarce funding that is needed for the university's 
primary academic functions.  The total expenditure for this administration in 
1991-92 amounted to $523,508,000.  The recommendation was that outside 
management experts be brought in to study and identify precisely where UC's 
administration should be trimmed.

Report #2a (January 19, 1993; 6 pages) studied the University's first response
to Report #2.  It was shown that 94% of the money expended on administration 
in UC came from funds which are entirely under the control of the Regents and 
allocated at their discretion, thus demolishing the first excuse offered by 
President Peltason for not taking the conclusions and recommendation of the 
previous report seriously.

Report #3 (February 7, 1993; 16 pages) extended the previous study of 
administrative bureaucracy (Report #2) by presenting individual data for each 
of the nine UC campuses, showing the historical inflation of administrative 
budgets and their current high levels of expenditure. For each of the campuses
one can see evidence of substantial bloat; but there are large variations in 
the magnitude of this problem from one campus to another.

Charles Schwartz, Professor Emeritus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		
			I.  RECAPITULATION

     In Report #2,  I presented a novel study of the University's 
administration.  The methodology I adopted proceeded through three steps:  
First, tabulate the growth in administration staff (FTE = full time equivalent
employees) over the last 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years; second, compare that 
with other growth elements - such as Student enrollments, Instructional FTE,
and Total Staff - and thus arrive at an estimate of how much is "excessive" 
growth in the administration; third, determine the total current expenditure 
on administration, in dollars, and combine this with the results of the 
previous step to get the potential waste/savings. 

     The main resources I used, published annually by the Office of the 
President, are:"The University of California Campus Financial Schedules 
1991-1992", from the Corporate Accounting office (which I shall refer to as 
CFS, or CFS92); and"1992-93 Departmental Allocations, University of California 
Budget for Current Operations", from the Budget office (which I shall refer to
as DA, or DA93 for this latest edition, which gives final data for the fiscal 
year 1991-92.)

     For step#1, I collected FTE figures ("permanently budgeted" positions) 
from DA93, DA88, DA83, DA78, DA73, and DA68 for Total Staff and also for staff
in the separate function categories: 40 = Instruction, 66 = General 
Administration, and 72 = Institutional Support; also data for Academic Staff 
was identified; and data on Student Enrollment (actual, year average, FTE) was
gathered from another UC source. The resulting growth figures, over the full 
25 year span, were:

Students  		up  97%		Academic Staff  	up  68%
Instructional Staff 	up  61%		Total Staff  		up 104%
General Administration	up 123%		Institutional Support 	up 182%

     Step #2 involves more than just taking the difference between the 
Administrative increases (123% & 182%) and one of the other percent increase 
figures. The analysis of this important point will be repeated in Section V 
of this Report.  My previous estimate was that perhaps one-half of the present
administration represented excess.

     For step #3, I collected data on Current Funds Expenditures from CFS92, 
using the accounting category "Institutional Support", which combines both 
budgeting categories 66 and 72 described above.  The figure was $394 million. 
To this I added $129 million in expenditure listed in CFS92  under the 
separate category of "Academic Support/ Academic Administration" (Deans' 
offices), which does not exist as a separate category in the budget documents 
(it is buried in the Instruction budget.)  The Total Expenditure for 
Administration was thus $524 million; and one-half of this represented a 
potential $262 million of waste that could be saved.

     In Report #2a I showed, using data from CFS92,  that 68% of this Total 
Expenditure for Administration came from State General Funds, and 94% came 
from all "unrestricted" funds, that is, entirely under the control of the 
Board of Regents.

		II.  THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Report to the UC Board of Regents by William B. Baker, UC's Vice President 
for Budget and University Relations,  at their meeting on February 18, 1993:
[from the amended text provided by the Office of the President,2/22/93,pp.7-9]


     	"With respect to administrative costs, we need to be clear, first of
all, about what is defined as administration in the University.  Administration
includes not only the offices of the chancellors, vice chancellors, president, 
and vice presidents, but also all the people who work in personnel services, 
accounting, auditing, purchasing, police, planning and budget offices, mail 
distribution, community relations, legal counsel, and so forth.
     	"The functions I named are necessary to any large organization that
employs thousands of people.  In our case, we have the added administrative 
complexities related to students, federal contracts and grants, hospitals, 
agricultural field stations, and oversight of the DOE laboratories--
to name a few.
     	"Professor Schwartz and others have raised the question of growth in 
administration.  We have reviewed the facts, and I can report to you that 
administrative expenditures, as a proportion of total expenditures, have 
remained relatively constant over 20 years, 1971-72 to 1991-92.  If you look 
at General Fund expenditures, which is the part of our budget that supports 
core instructional programs but excludes federal research grants, hospitals, 
auxiliary enterprises, and private giving, administration has accounted for 
about 11 percent of the total over the years.  If you look at expenditures 
from all fund sources, administration has actually gone down slightly, 
dropping from about 12 percent in the early years to about 11 percent in 
more recent times.
      	"In brief:  Administration has grown in proportion to growth in the 
University--and no faster.  That is quite remarkable considering that we have 
had to deal with a growing array of federal and state legislation in areas 
such as environmental health and safety, collective bargaining, handicapped 
access, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and affirmative 
action.  The fact that we live in an increasingly litigious society has not 
helped.  Despite new and costly administrative requirements, we have received 
virtually no funding from the State to help us out.  On the contrary:  As a 
result of our recent budget cuts, campus and Office of the President budgets 
for administration were cut by 5 percent in 1990-91 and 5 percent again in 
1991-92, for a total cut of $25 million; an additional 10 percent, or nearly 
$20 million, has been cut in the current year, and we will be cutting again 
next year.
     	"As I have indicated, administrative costs are driven by factors other
than growth in students and faculty.  We have no choice about complying with 
governmental regulations that affect all large organizations, for example.  
Additionally, Professor Schwartz counted all people employed in administration,
without recognizing that many of those people are recharged to self-supporting
operations such as our teaching hospitals.  We added three new hospitals over 
the period he examined, which required significant growth in administrative 
personnel--but these personnel were not charged to the state-funded budget 
that supports our instructional programs.  Additionally, there are inherent 
difficulties in attempting to compare apples and apples across a time span of 
25 years.  We reorganize our accounts from time to time.  For example, police 
services were moved from the maintenance category to administration some years
ago.  Obviously, this doesn't represent real growth in administration."

[Baker then went on to discuss in detail the budget and operations of the 
Office of the President. Since most of the emphasis was on non-administrative 
issues, it appears this was a response to some critic other than myself - 
perhaps the Los Angeles Times, which, in an editorial on November 26, 1992, 
suggested eliminating the entire statewide administration.]


		III.  SIFTING THROUGH BAKER'S REPORT

     My purpose here is to go through the specifics in Vice President Baker's 
report, identifying areas of agreement as well as issues of contention, and 
then make constructive use of the new information he provides.  It is 
regrettable that his report is so sparse with precise details (compared to my 
own work), and he cites no references at all in support of the few numbers 
which he gives. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned here.

A.     Since Baker and his staff are the experts on the subject of the 
University's finances, while I am a newcomer to this study, it is important, 
first,  to see where he confirms aspects of my work. 

1. His first paragraph gives a definition of the activities covered by the 
term "administration" which is the same as the one I used in my previous study
(Report #2 in this series.)

2. Baker's report contains no criticism of the data I presented - numbers, and
the definitions and references cited in my Report; and this silence I take as 
significant confirmation that I have not erred in identifying and using the 
University's financial records.

3. Another significant silence concerns the concluding recommendation in my 
Report #2: that independent outside management experts should be brought in to
examine UC's administration in detail and identify where excess fat could be 
trimmed.  If such an expert survey had been done sometime in the not too 
distant past, then I would expect Baker to say so; and that might go far to 
vitiate my allegations of administrative bloat.  Since, apparently, that has 
not been done, it gives more credence to the idea that it needs doing.  
(Baker's reassurance, "We have reviewed the facts, and I can report to you 
that ..."  is no substitute for an independent outside review.)

B.  Baker makes a number of critical points, giving specific substance to some
general questions I was aware of in my previous work but was unable to nail 
down.  These are corrections which I shall accept and incorporate into a 
revised assessment of the problem.

1. The police services item in the current administrative budget was counted 
elsewhere in earlier years. I shall correct for this.

2. Environmental health and safety, collective bargaining, handicapped access, 
CEQA, and affirmative action are relatively new areas of administrative 
responsibility that the University has been required by law to undertake.  I 
shall correct for this.

3. Baker says, "Professor Schwartz counted all people employed in 
administration, without recognizing that many of these people are recharged to
...."  Actually, I did acknowledge the question of "recharges" ("transfers" as 
they are called in the accounting books) in my Report #2, but chose not to 
include those amounts in my calculation of total administrative expenditures. 
I shall make this correction.

4. Baker gives numerical data for the percentage of UC expenditures that goes 
to administration, saying that it is about 11%, for each of two ways of 
measuring it.  I have checked his numbers against the official UC reference 
source ["UC Campus Financial Schedules 1991-1992" = CFS92] and here is what I 
found:

Looking just at General Funds expenditures, using Schedule 11-D, one finds (in 
millions of dollars): Institutional Support = 251 and Total = 2,175; and the 
ratio is 11.5% in agreement with Baker.  This confirms that the category 
"Institutional Support", which I used in my work, is the correct one.

Looking at all fund sources, again using Schedule 11-D, one finds the two 
numbers  394 and 6,792, whose ratio is 5.8%.  This does not agree with Baker's
number.  However, if I use Schedule 11-E, I can include the "Transfer" 
(recharge) amount with the Institutional Support expenditure and get the
numbers 811 and 6,792;  the ratio of these is 11.9% in agreement with Baker. 
This confirms the correction (stated in paragraph 3. above) that I should 
include the Transfer amounts in calculating the total current expenditures on 
administration.

     Qualitatively, these several corrections will decrease the growth rate 
for administration (in step #1) but will increase the total current 
expenditure (in step #3). Section IV of this Report will present the 
quantitative details and results of these corrections.

C. Now I come to several of Baker's points with which I disagree, or find to 
be inconsequential.

1. Baker says that spending on administration has been relatively constant for 
20 years, when measured as a proportion of total University expenditures.  
Here we encounter a major difference in the choice of research methodology for
measuring growth over an extended period of time.  I looked at the number of 
staff positions (FTE), Baker wants to use dollar expenditures instead.  The 
great virtue of my approach is that it deals with a unit of measure which is 
reliably constant over many years: one person working full time.  Baker's 
approach is subject to several complexities which can easily vary over the 
years and so obscure the reality of what is happening: the mix of spending 
between salary & wages, supplies, equipment, etc., can vary; the mix between 
the number of people getting very high salaries and those getting much lower 
pay can vary; the way in which administrative budgets grow with inflation 
compared to the way other University budget components grow with inflation - 
may also vary over the years.  The contribution of recharges to administrative
expenditure, introduced above, may also fluctuate significantly over the years.
For all these reasons I assert that my method - counting administrative 
FTE over the years to measure administrative growth - is by far the more 
consistent way to proceed.    

2.  "Administration has grown in proportion to growth in the University--and 
no faster."I find fault with Baker's statement on two counts: his calculation 
of growth rates is seriously flawed, as discussed in the preceeding paragraph;
and his criterion - that administration ought to grow as fast as the whole 
university - is also wrong, as I discussed in Report #2 and shall discuss 
again in Section V of this Report.

3. Baker says that administrative budgets have been substantially cut  in 
recent years.  This does not answer the question of whether much deeper cuts 
are called for.  Actually, I am curious how much of the cuts cited by Baker 
are real reductions in administrative expenditures and how much are just 
shifting of administrative budgets from General Funds to other fund sources.

4. Baker says that the addition of new hospitals in recent years required much
growth in administrative personnel.  I have searched through CFS92 and found 
that 95% of all expenditures for hospital administration is accounted for in 
the "Teaching Hospitals" category rather than under "Institutional Support."  
Thus this matter has no effect upon my calculation of administrative growth.


		IV.  CORRECTING MY NUMBERS

     For each of the particular budget items which I shall consider, following 
Vice President Baker's advice, we need data on budgeted FTE, from DA93, and 
data on expenditures, from CFS92 (Schedules B or C) including both the 
"Current Funds Total" and the "Transfers".  To gather this data requires a 
detailed search through these source documents, campus by campus, and then 
combining the amounts identified for each individual item into a total 
University figure.  The results are the following.

TABLE 1.   CORRECTIONS FOR 1991-92 DATA			
						(Dollars in millions)
					FTE	C.F. Total	Transfers
Police					546	$ 24.9		$ 8.7	
Environmental Health &Safety		281	$ 18.1		$ 7.6
Collective Bargaining 			 79	$  4.6		$ 1.3
Affirmative Action			 71	$  3.9		$ 0.3


     I could find no entries for "handicapped access" or for "CEQA" under the 
Administration categories of the budget; they appear to be under Maintenance 
and Operation of Plant and Student Services, thus are irrelevant to this study.
The staff and budget for Collective Bargaining /Labor Relations are listed 
separately for some campuses but submerged in some other item for other 
campuses; therefore, the entries on that line of the table above are estimates
and not exact figures.  Probably, some of the items in the table above did 
contribute in smaller amounts to the 25-year ago data, but I shall take these 
corrections at their maximum strength.

     Now we take the FTE data for the 25-year comparison from Report #2 (Table
1.) and subtract the FTE corrections given in Table 1. above. The first two 
items (Police and EH&S) belong to the "Institutional Support" budget category,
and the other two are under General Administration.  Table 2 , below, now 
gives the full set of corrected data for measuring growth in the several areas
of interest.

TABLE 2.    	CORRECTED DATA:  FTE, AS BUDGETED OVER 25 YEARS

			  1966-		  1991-		 Growth	     Percent
			  1967   	  1992     	 Factor	     Increase
Students		 79,293		156,371		  1.97	      97%
Academics		  9,908	  	 16,629		  1.68	      68%
Instructional Staff	 13,301	  	 21,375		  1.61	      61%
Total Staff		 33,305	  	 68,024	 	  2.04	     104%
General Administration	  1,795	    	  3,850	  	  2.14	     114%
Institutional Support	  1,642	    	  3,802	 	  2.32	     132%


     The Growth Factor is just the ratio of the 1991-92 number to the number 
for 1966-67.  In the calculations that follow we shall use this Growth Factor 
rather than the Percentage increase, for good mathematical reasons.

     The second set of data, for Administrative Expenditures in 1991-92,  we 
take from Report #2 (Table 3. et seq.) and correct by subtracting the entries 
from Table 1. above.  As presented in Table 3., below,  I have separated the 
seven sub-categories of Administration into two groups, as follows:
Group A = Executive Management + Fiscal Operations + Community Relations + 
Other Institutional Support + Academic Administration (Deans' Offices);
Group B = General Administrative Services + Logistical Services.
This division is close to, though not identical with, the previous separation 
into two budget categories, General Administration and Institutional Support.


TABLE 3.  	CORRECTED DATA:  EXPENDITURES FOR 1991-92     
(Dollars in millions)
			Current Funds	Transfers		Distribution
Group A			  $ 355		  $   48		  $  403
Group B			  $ 117		  $  363		  $  480
		
		    TOTAL EXPENDITURE FOR ADMINISTRATION  =	  $  883


     The last column in Table 3., labeled "Distribution", is just the sum of 
the "Current Funds" expenditure and the "Transfers" (recharges).

     With this new data, fully corrected to accept Vice President Baker's 
criticisms, we are now ready to proceed to the analysis and final estimation 
of excess administrative growth and expenditure.

		V. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS

     We see that the administrative budgets (the last two lines in Table 2) 
have grown a lot, even more than the other constituents of the university.  
The corrections just incorporated have decreased this effect, but not 
eliminated it.  How shall we estimate, from the data at hand,  how much of 
this growth is excess ?  Vice President Baker implies that administration 
ought to grow at least as fast as the university as a whole; but I strongly 
disagree.  We must remember how the university is organized.

     Teaching faculty and research staff are organized in departments and 
other research units, each of which has its own administrative staff to handle 
matters such as personnel, purchasing, accounting, mail, recordkeeping, etc.  
All of this is budgeted, along with the staff for teaching support and 
research assistance, as part of the Instructional and Research budgets of the 
University.  These staffs and budgets are expected to grow roughly in 
proportion to the number of academics.  But the staffs of Administration which 
are examined in this study are entirely elsewhere - at the central campus 
offices, under the supervision of the Chancellors, and at the Office of the 
President. This is top management, along with some central services that the 
departments make use of and report to.

     Increase in the number of students calls for a proportional increase in 
many other staffs and budgets, aside from faculty,  but these are again in 
separate budget categories: Student Support and Auxiliary Enterprises.  
Maintenance and Operation of Plant is yet another budget category that one 
would expected to grow roughly in proportion to the campus population.

     Thus, in Report #2, I posed the question, Why should this top 
administration grow at all ?  Four considerations occur.  

1. Over the years, some new missions may be given to the administration which 
require it to grow.  Vice President Baker has listed these; and I have now 
removed these particular items entirely from the data being considered 
(perhaps leaning over backward in doing so.)

2. While the top layers of management should not grow in proportion to the 
growth of the whole university, perhaps some lesser rate of growth is 
plausible.

3.  For those parts of the Administrative budget which perform services 
directly for the entire staff, a growth rate equal to the general growth rate 
may be reasonable.  In particular, the concept of "recharges" suggests that 
these portions of the expenditure by the administration, the "Transfer" 
amounts in Table 3., might be allowed to grow at the general university growth
rate.  (I have some reservations about this, but am willing to be generous 
again.)

4. Finally, there is the phenomenon of office automation which ought, over 
these decades, to produce a shrinkage in the staffs of office services, which 
form a large part of the administrative budget.  This consideration should 
lessen whatever growth we might allow from the previous points.

     That analysis having been given (and, I note, not disputed in Vice 
President Baker's report), I now must choose a method for estimating how much
of the 25-year growth in the administration is reasonable and how much is 
excess.  Again, I want to be conservative (i.e., generous to the University 
Establishment) in order to give my results more credibility.  Here is what I 
shall do:

For the Current Funds expenditures, I shall allow administrative growth at 
one-half the rate of growth of the rest of the University; and for the 
Transfer (recharge) expenditures I shall allow administrative growth at the 
full growth rate of the rest of the University.

     The final question to be resolved is, Which of the first four growth 
factors listed in Table 2 shall I take to represent the growth rate of "the 
rest of the University."  I can see lots of arguments on this question; so I 
shall simply do the calculation twice, using the largest figure (Growth Factor
= 2.04) and also the smallest one (1.61).  This will serve to bracket the 
"right" answer.

     The rest is arithmetic, and the details are in the Appendix.  Here is 
the final result:

Of the Total Expenditure for Administration in 1991-92 ($883 million),  
something between $563 million and $674 million is generously allowed as 
reasonable.  This leaves a large amount as excess:  between $209 million 
and $320 million.

     Compared with the earlier result of Report #2, we have found a smaller 
growth in administration but a larger total expenditure; and the net amount 
identified as excess spending - wastage that can be cut - comes out in the 
same neighborhood as before.


		VI. APPENDIX - MATH DETAILS

     First, I'll do the Transfer portion for Group A.  The Growth Factor is 
2.14 (from Table 2.) and the amount (from Table 3.) is $48, so the "allowed" 
amount is between
	(1.61/2.14)x$48 = $36          	and 	(2.04/2.14)x$48 = $46.
Likewise, for the Transfer portion for Group B: the Growth Factor is 2.32 and 
the amount is $363, so the "allowed" amount is between
	(1.61/2.32)x$363 = $252		and	(2.04/2.32)x$363 = $319.

     Now, for the "Current Funds" portion I want to allow only one-half of the 
growth rate for the rest of the University.  This means that I use the square 
root of the other Growth Factors: 
         SQRT(1.61) = 1.27      	and 	SQRT(2.04) = 1.43.

For this portion of Group A the amount is $355 and the "allowed" amount is 
between
	(1.27/2.14)x$355 = $211		and	(1.43/2.14)x$355 = $237
For this portion of Group B the amount is $117 and the "allowed" amount is 
between
	(1.27/2.32)x$117 = $64		and	(1.43/2.32)x$117 = $72

     The Total "allowed" Expenditure is then the sum of each set of four 
amounts:  it lies between    	
		$ 563 million		and         $ 674 million.