November 7th, 2009, 5:00 am by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
 Doti discusses the future growth of the campus during an annual address. Photo by Bruce Chambers, The Register James Doti, the economist who serves as president of Chapman University in Orange, was paid a salary $440,000 during the 2007-08 academic year, which is $40,000 higher than the salary given to the president of the United States. Doti also received $27,516 in benefits, for total compensation of $467,516, says the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), which examined the salaries of scores of presidents and chancellors at public and private colleges and universities. (These are the latest comparative figures available.) The study doesn’t mention that Doti lives in a 5,000 square-foot home in Villa Park that’s provided by the university.
UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake also lives in an official university residence. And, during the 2007-08 academic year, he was paid $392,000 in salary, $19,600 in retirement pay and $8,916 to cover car expenses, says the CHE table. Drake’s total compensation was listed at $420,516.
I emailed Doti and asked, “I realize that they are different jobs, but how do you feel earning more, in salary, than President Obama? (His predecessor, George W. Bush, also was paid $400,000 in salary.)
Doti, who has been president since 1991, replied that, “If Obama wants to trade jobs with me, I’ll consider it… even at the lower pay.”
I also asked him why he earned more than UCI’s Drake, whose campus has almost 28,000 students. Chapman has an enrollment of about 6,000.
” I’d rather not comment on salary differences with Chancellor Drake,” Doti said.
Lastly, I asked Doti why his 2007-08 salary was lower than it was a year earlier.
“I’m not sure,” Doti said in the email. “It’s probably due to some things the Chronicle counts in one survey that they decide not to count in the next survey. New federal funding regs are also muddying up the comparisons.”
Should the president of Chapman have a higher salary than the president of the United States?
Sample of total compensation packages of a variety of California colleges and universities, 2007-08 academic year.
| Institution |
Total compensation |
| University of the Pacific |
$1,350,743 |
| Univ. of Southern California |
$1,023,198 |
| Caltech |
$803,296 |
| Stanford University |
$731,614 |
| Pepperdine University |
$526,926 |
| UC Berkeley |
$467,556 |
| Chapman University |
$467,516 |
| Pomona College |
$453,000 |
| UCLA |
$445,716 |
| Claremont McKenna College |
$436,454 |
| Whittier College |
$341,450 |
| University of Redlands |
$324,768 |
| Biola University |
$323,814 |
| Concordia Univ. (Irvine) |
$221,798 |
That same year, the compensation for the president of the University of California system was $434,166. And for reasons not explained by CHE, the figures for Cal State Fullerton were not included in the national survey.
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Posted in: Uncategorized • Chapman University • Chronicle of Higher Education • executive salaries • orange • president obama | Post a Comment »
November 6th, 2009, 12:23 pm by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
Chapman University will produce a live public webcast of tonight’s performance of “American Celebration,” a song-and-dance show that’s meant to raise money for the schools’ scholarship fund. The broadcast begins at 8 p.m. Saturday’s performance will not be webcast.
The theme of tonight’s show is “The Eternal Optimist” and it will feature songs from such musicals as “Hello Dolly,” “Mame,” Mamma Mia” and “Annie.” The one hour performance, broadcast live from Memorial Hall, will feature student and alumni performers.
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November 5th, 2009, 8:50 am by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
 Image by Phyllis Cerf, via Ayn Rand Institute website Chapman University in Orange will today dedicate a bust of the late novelist, philosopher and playwright Ayn Rand (bio), whose controversial belief system (known as Objectivism) about how a person should behave is still causing arguments 27 years after she died.
The New York Times summarized her outlook this way: “In Rand’s view, selfishness was good and altruism was evil, and the welfare of society was always subordinate to the self-interest of individuals, especially superior ones. In some ways, Objectivism is an extreme form of laissez-faire capitalism, a view that Rand came to naturally.”
Her philosophy formed the basis of “Atlas Shrugged,” her famed novel, which still sells well today. Rand saw “man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
Her basic beliefs have recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest on many college campuses and among more Conservative and Libertarian thinkers. Some of that interest has been stoked by the Ayn Rand Institute, which is located in Irvine.
Rand was also intensely disliked by many people, including me. I very rarely inject personal opinion into this blog. But I had a run-in with Rand that, in my opinion, showed that her beliefs weren’t built on bedrock. It happened in the late 1970s when Rand visited Boston’s Northeastern University to give a speech at the popular Ford Hall Forum.
For reasons she never clearly explained, Rand said that she would not allow herself to be photographed during the public talk. I was a reporter for the campus newspaper at the time and found this to be outrageous, especially because $2,000 in student fees were being used to cover her lecture fee. I walked into the auditorium during her speech and photographed her, at which point she yelled at me. I thought she was interfering with freedom of the press and ignored her protests.
Chapman will dedicate a bust of Rand at 5:30 p.m. today at its Global Citizens Plaza. The event is open to the public — without charge.
Posted in: Chapman University • Private universities • Uncategorized • Atlas Shrugged • Ayn Rand • Chapman University • Northeastern University | 28 Comments »
November 4th, 2009, 5:00 am by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
 Chapman students frolick during twice annual undie run, an event held at hundreds of colleges and universities across the country. Photo by Joshuna Sudock, The Register Leave it to the pervs to ruin things ….
Chapman University says it’s going ahead with plans to hold the next in its twice annual ”undie runs,” a goofy ritual in which students blow off steam by briefly running through the streets of Orange in their underwear. (Similar runs are held at campuses across the country.) But Chapman says it won’t announce the specific date in December that it will hold the next run.
“Everyone has a camera today and we don’t want to attract the voyeurs, who could make the situation dangerous,” says Mary Platt, the university’s spokeswoman.
She adds in an email that, “”We will be doing the same thing we did at the last Undie Run, which worked out very well — the students are planning a fantastic party(which the university will pay for) after the run, which will encourage run participants to return to campus as soon as possible. The university will also be covering the cost to fence off the Plaza fountain, the Orange Library fountain, and the Chapman fountains, to avoid any fountain frolics that could damage the landmarks. And there will be appropriate Orange Police and Chapman Public Safety presence at all points in order to help keep everyone safe and get them happily back to campus. As long as everyone stays safe and it’s all good clean fun, we are hopeful that this will work and the students can preserve their tradition.”
Chapman annoyed some of its neighbors and city officials last fall when some rambunctious under runners jumped into the fountain in the city circle and caused minor damage.
 Image courtesy of Universal Pictures WHAT WOULD DEAN WORMER SAY?
Dean Wormer would say ...
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November 3rd, 2009, 5:00 am by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
 Aerial view of UC Irvine, which has nearly 28,000 students this fall. The University of California says it doesn’t endorse the qualitative rankings that are issued by various magazines and institutions. So what does the UC do? It issues a news release summarizing how well many of its campuses have finished in the same rankings.
The new list includes an assessment from Arizona State University that I had not seen. It places UC Irvine among the top 25 public research universities in the country. The ranking is more rigorous than ones produced by US News and World Report because it depends less on reputation than on important criteria that can be measured.
Specifically, ASU says it uses nine measures: total research, federal research, endowment assets, annual giving, National Academy members, faculty awards, doctorates granted, postdoctoral appointees and SAT/ACT scores.
The ASU ranking is a sweet one for Irvine, which is straining to serve a record number of students this fall while coping with deep budget cuts, furloughs and lay-offs. But the UC list fails to mention that UCI dropped about 30 spots in the latest World University Rankings, which literally sums up Irvine’s place in the academic world.
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Posted in: Uncategorized • university of california | 10 Comments »
October 31st, 2009, 5:00 am by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says Congress’ federal stimulus program has saved or created 8,356 jobs in the University of California system, a claim that comes as a surprise at UC Irvine, Orange County’s largest employer.
Schwarzenegger’s claim was made by his California Recovery Task Force,which also says the stimulus created or saved 26,156 jobs in the California State University system, bringing the total for the two systems to about 34,500.
“We can’t figure out where the governor’s office got the data to support saying 34,000 jobs have been saved in the CSU and UC systems. No such data has been forwarded by our campus to the state,” said Cathy Lawhon, director of media relations at UCI.
“Basically, the state cut to the UC system was $815 million. The stimulus money totaled about $700 million, which didn’t quite make up the difference. And what remains to be seen is, since that $700 million was a one-time shot in the arm, what happens in the next fiscal year?
“It is accurate to say we (UCI) have laid off several dozen people.”
UCI has about 14,000 full-time employees on its main campus and at its medical center in Orange.
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Posted in: Uncategorized • California Recovery Task Force • California State University • federal stimulus package • Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger • university of california | 59 Comments »
October 28th, 2009, 11:37 am by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
UC Irvine sharply reduced its freshmen class and is offering far fewer courses this fall due to the state budget crisis. But the university’s enrollment has hit 27,792, the highest since UCI opened in idyllic pasture land in 1965.
Enrollment is up because of a long-planned UC-wide hike in transfer students and modest increases in the number of graduate students, Irvine officials say. Some students also might be slowing their drive toward a degree due to the poor job market.
| Year |
New Freshmen |
Total Enrollment |
Overall increase |
| Fall 2005 |
4,338 |
24,987 |
|
| Fall 2006 |
4,824 |
25,870 |
883 |
| Fall 2007 |
4931 |
27,126 |
1,256 |
| Fall 2008 |
4,583 |
27,631 |
505 |
| Fall 2009 |
4,030 |
27,792 |
161 |
The enrollment increase comes as UCI is in the process of reducing costs by more than $70 million to help balance the state budget. The savings are being achieved through furloughs, lay-offs, a general hiring freeze, and a cut it academic programs, among other things. Still, overall enrollment ticked upward.
It’s unclear whether the cutbacks, combined with the enrollment increase, is significantly affecting the quality of education, or whether it is preventing large numbers of students from getting the classes they need to graduate in a timely fashion.
UCI enrolled 4,030 new freshmen this fall, or 553 fewer than last year. But the number of transfer students rose by 389, to 1,732.
“First, when you add in teaching credential students, graduate academics/graduate professionals in state-funded programs, and graduate students in self-supporting programs, the total incoming cohort of new students in Fall 2008 was 7,377 students; for Fall 2009, that total is 7,274, or a reduction of just 103 students year-over-year,” says Cathy Lawhon, a university spokeswoman.
“As you can see, the decline in new enrollments this Fall was not quite as stark as the reduction in new freshmen might lead one to believe: partially offsetting that decline were increases in transfer students, in teaching credential students, and in graduate students in the health sciences and in self-supporting programs.”
Lawhon adds by email that “the big increase in new transfers from 2008 to 2009 was due
to two things: 1) the other half of UC’s enrollment plan for 2009-10: increasing transfer student enrollments system-wide as a partial offset to the reductions in new freshman enrollments, and 2) our campus’s desire, for pedagogical reasons, to close Winter 2010 to any new transfer admissions.
“Transfer students who enter in Fall rather than Winter get to take advantage of campus orientation programs at the beginning of the year and also fit into our course sequences better. We think changing our admissions timing for transfer students should improve their retention and graduation rates.
“We have been enrolling about 300 or so new transfers in previous Winter Quarters, so this Fall’s increase is essentially the 100 students called for in the new (University of California Office of the President) enrollment plan plus 300 students who would ordinarily have enrolled in Winter 2010.
“The second point is that student continuation rates also contribute to total enrollment. The average time-to-degree for new freshmen is just over 13 quarters, or slightly more than 4 years. Graduate students, of course, take even longer to graduate, as much as 6 to 8 years. So the total student population continues to grow because some of the students who first enrolled in previous years haven’t graduated yet.
“We suspect some students may intentionally be taking longer to graduate so that they can stay in school rather than face the depressed job market. However, we have no data to confirm or refute those suspicions.”
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Posted in: Uncategorized • California budget • UCI • university of california | 11 Comments »
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