SACRAMENTO, CA - The audit committee of the California Legislature is expected to order a probe of recent allegations that the California State University, while cutting budgets and raising student fees, has been shoveling money to executives no longer officially on the payroll for what one legislator describes as "no discernable work."

Five former campus presidents, a report in the San Francisco Chronicle notes, stayed on the payroll, to the tune of more than $200,000 per year, to produce "special projects" that required no end product or written report. CSU chancellor Charles B. Reed is paying one of these, Robert C. Maxson, former president of Cal State Long Beach, a full $555,792 for a two-year project to "mentor and coach" university bosses.

Donald Gerth, who ran Cal State Sacramento from 1984-2003, gets an annual pension of $267,000, more than $22,000 a month. Chancellor Reed is hiring Gerth at $54,372 a year to write a book about the Cal State system, sure to be a riveting read. That and other projects may continue until 2008. The retired Gerth also gets clerical support of about $36,000 a year, and the CSU even pays travel expenses for his wife.

The special assignments tab comes to about $4 million and was not disclosed to the public or trustees in the usual way. That bothers trustee Ricardo F. Icaza, who told the Chronicle he was not aware of the practice and said, "I am just appalled that this is occurring when the reality is that the budget has been cut so many times, and we cannot afford these kinds of perks."

The revelations also disturbed Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, who said in a statement: "I'm deeply troubled by allegations that former high-level CSU officials have been given dubious positions after their tenures, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars to do no discernible work while students have seen their tuition rise almost 30 percent in the past three years." (The Chronicle pegged the CSU tuition increase at 67 percent.)

Speaker Nunez, who wants the audit of CSU practices, also called for investigation of a pay scandal at the University of California. While raising student fees 79 percent, UC bosses were doling out more than $800 million in bonuses and stipends. One UC Davis executive got $200,000 a year for two years, plus a lump-sum payment of $50,000, for a post with no job description. (See "Oh Say Can UC?"Capital Ideas, December 7, 2005, and "UC Flunks Reform School," Capital Ideas, May 31, 2006) Nice non-work if you can get it.

If Republicans, assumed to be diligent monitors of waste in government, also found UC and CSU practices appalling they kept rather quiet about it, with the exception of state Senator Abel Maldonado. Republicans with an eye for accountability might pay closer attention to the results of the audit, but some realities are already clear.

Public institutions are every bit as subject to management improprieties as the corporate world. The UC and CSU pay practices dispel the boilerplate charge that California's public university systems are bereft of funds, and that the state somehow shortchanges education. It doesn't, but it is accurate to say that UC and CSU management shortchanges students. True to form, CSU brass dismissed the idea they had done anything wrong and that there was anything at all amiss in the special projects gravy train brought to light by the press, not current oversight procedures. Those could use some tightening and CSU executives could stand a refresher course.

The CSU is the nation's largest public university system. It exists not for the enrichment of an academic ruling class but to provide a quality higher education for the students of California. Leadership of that system requires more than serving as a bag man in an old-boys network.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is Editorial Director at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at
lbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.