Administrative salaries over the past five years have increased by 55 percent while faculty salaries raised four percent, according to a recent flier put out by the CFA.
The data comes from the CSU chancellor’s office in Long Beach, and is updated and sent to the CFA every February.
Graham Archer, president of Cal Poly’s CFA chapter, said they track this data by listing all the administrators and their monthly salaries, multiplied by 12, to approximate what the administration is costing Cal Poly every year.
Archer said they have also been tracking the recent growth in administrators at Cal Poly, and the growing number of lecturers and decreasing number of professors.
“Even after all we did last year to bring this issue to the forefront, the cost of the administration still went up, even more than we anticipated,” Archer said. “This comes at a time when the CSU was telling us they had no money for our raises.”
Cal Poly spokesperson Matt Lazier said that the Cal Poly administration is focused on providing the optimum environment for student success and Learn by Doing.
“From a fiscal standpoint, this requires balancing a number of budgetary priorities as the university works to attract and retain not only world-class faculty but also the support staff and administrators necessary to maintain the university’s learning environment,” Lazier said. “The CFA’s numbers paint an incomplete picture of that effort.”
Lazier went on to explain that a good number of the newer administrative positions have been filled by former staff or faculty members who have been shifted to administrative positions because of increased responsibilities in their day-to-day work.
“From October 2014 to October 2015, the university added 53 faculty members and 48 staff members, versus an increase of 21 MPP (administrator) positions,” Lazier said. “And because of the impact of retirements, resignations and other changes, the net increase of MPP (administrator) salaries over the one-year space was only about $93,000.”
This flier is updated every year with the data from the chancellor’s office, and is then sent out to members of the CFA, according to Archer.
“Last year, we got what we thought was the largest increase (in administrative salaries) since we’ve been tracking this,” Archer said. “This caused a huge uproar almost exactly a year ago, when we had a rally and whatnot … it went up, again, and that was actually a surprise to me.”