The University of Texas at Austin is an extraordinary place to work. A beautiful campus, good benefits, access to one of the country's finest library systems, and a community of eager students and renowned scholars. Because of all these wonderful things, it is all that more frustrating to face the acute disparity between the highest level of our administration and the rest of UT's staff.
There are plenty of disconcerting statistics you can cull from UT's monthly job report if you're determined enough. For example, the top 6 percent of the wage-earners at UT consume 20 percent of all the wages shared by all UT employees. Those lucky 650 administrators at the top earn more than the 9,650 employees at the bottom.
But that data is difficult to fully comprehend unless you're in the mix. That is, it's much easier to understand the disparity when you're feeling it.
If you're part of a core staff, for instance, where 30 percent of all the wages go to the chair or director, it's hard to not feel slighted. As an administrative assistant, it could be difficult not to become jaded if you were to learn UT's presidential salary amounted to your earnings for nearly two decades.
As you worked the campus grounds in 100-degree heat, it could be frustrating to learn that the president's raise alone will be more than you'll earn all year. If you're the aide to a dean, performing nearly every task that is technically the responsibility of that dean, it's not likely to make your day to find out that he's making more than twice what you do and working half as many hours.
That, in fact, hits at the root of the problem. So many of our top administrators serve as little more than figureheads, taking all the credit and little of the responsibility. Department heads, when introducing their staff, love to say things like, "And this is Dorothy, she's the one who really runs the office." Such a statement is said with the best of intentions, but the implication is that the statement is facetious, when it's really a fact.
Top administrators have been known to take sudden vacations during the first or last week of a semester. If any member of their staff did this, it would be a catastrophe. In fact, they could be fired for such negligence.
Make no mistake. For the most part, the men and women who head this university's departments, colleges and schools have paid their dues in one way or another. It is no easy task to earn one's graduate degree (not that all department heads have done so), work one's way up to tenure and then fight among one's peers for a top-level administrative position. Nor is it easy to be the one who must take all the heat when trouble comes down pike.
For this reason, it's reasonable to assume that upper administrators earn more than their subordinates. What's at issue is the colossal gap between the top earners and the rest of the administration.
The party line is that the University needs to pay that much to retain those people in the increasingly competitive market that is academia. Which implies, of course, that the rest of us are expendable. In fact, it is the unofficial policy of Human Resources at UT to encourage a system where, rather than working to retain employees, departments should remain apathetic to employee retention. Employees are instead encouraged to "move up" by switching from department to department.
This helps keep wages low because the departments do not raise an employee's salary to keep them on staff. When rehiring, it keeps down competition from the private sector, and it keeps the mean salary throughout UT generally stagnant, because when an employee does move for a higher salary, it's for a negligible amount.
It's a wonderful concept if you think like a computer, but it does not address the time, effort and costs involved with rehiring, re-training and restructuring every one of those employees who move on to earn a couple more bucks a month. Nor does it calculate the inefficiency that arises when UT employees must take on second and third jobs to pay their bills.
Not that all of UT's moonlighters are exactly tightening the old belt strap. Professor Yudof, for example, holds an appointment with the Law School, where he earns $212,000 per year (well over twice that of the average full professor at UT), and supplements his income by serving as the chancellor of the UT System.
Former football star Earl Campbell, with a 50-percent appointment as "special assistant," earns more than a full-time accountant here, and has a nice gig on the side as the reigning sausage king of Texas (or at least one of the kings).
It's hard to deny the peculiarity of UT's financial practices, where big raises go to big wage earners and small raises go to those scraping by. It makes no sense, and it's simply unjust, but it's not just the money that's disturbing - it's the general aristocratic attitude that's pervading our campus.
It's the fact that there are people in our community who will hear these concerns and answer them with, "If you don't like it, you can always quit." Statements like that neatly encapsulate the very problem. We are seen as insignificant, replaceable cogs in a machine that produces not scholars (as we sometimes forget) but as much money as possible for an elite few.
It's true that UT's economic situation is just a reflection of the economic situation in the rest of the world. The gap between the haves and the have-nots keeps widening, and that's a bitter pill to swallow for working folks. Why then should UT be any different?
There are three Latin words on the official UT seal: "Praesidium, Civitatis, Disciplina."
"Disciplina" refers to our responsibility to education, where we're doing a fine job. "Civitatis" addresses our obligation to community, which seems hypocritical in light of the fact that the highest levels of administration seem content to let the rest of us in the UT community slip further and further behind. "Praesidium" has to do with leadership, protection and guardianship - ironic, considering the neglect by our supposed leaders that many UT employees are feeling at this time.
If UT as a whole is to lead, let us lead the way for the rest of the world. Let us show the rest of the world that we need not live selfishly. We need not cast other members of our community aside so that a few might thrive financially.
Let us lead by example. After all, "What starts here changes the world."
Kresl is a graduate coordinator for the Michener Center for Writers.
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