Day 8

Administrators, commentators, and campus brains are rightfully worried about "brain drain"--loss of talent--from the UC system. They sometimes mention staff, but I think that's more to be polite than anything else since the real essence of the university is in the faculty and students. However, since I am here to write from a staff member's perspective, I've been thinking about the staff drain that will also happen. So here's my bit on how staff brains like mine can also be drained from Berkeley, and why that stinks:

I spent the first half of my day in the office today working on something that was not in my job description when I was hired. When a member of our staff resigned last summer to take another job, half of her responsibilities became mine. I had been able to make some pretty significant improvements to the efficiency of operations back in my corner of the office, so I had the time. The added responsibility was initially labeled "temporary" but as California's fiscal situation rapidly tanked, and my boss saw that I could handle both jobs, the second job was mine for good and the other staff person was not replaced. Because these changes took place mostly after we were all finished re-defining our jobs through the Career Compass project, these new responsibilities were thrown in at the end of my new job description as a side note rather than as a significant part of my job. My title is defined by what I was hired to do, while the new set of responsibilities is listed as just one of those random things that all staff members have to take care of because someone needs to do it.

However, this new job actually takes up the majority of my time during the late summer and much of the fall, and I'm working on it one way or the other throughout the year. I can in fact comfortably handle the new responsibilities along with the old, but in a normal work environment, my efficiency and multi-tasking would be rewarded with a promotion or at least a raise. Neither has happened in my two years working here, nor is either in my foreseeable future. My boss has zero power to give me any sort of tangible incentive to keep up the good work.

This is essentially what will lead to brain drain in the staff-operated trenches at UC. It is true that many of my staff colleagues are between a rock and another really hard rock, because on one side they need to stay local for family and mortgages but on the other side they can't exactly find better positions in the university system in California since we aren't hiring. However, those of us who are more mobile will be able to abandon California for better prospects elsewhere in the country. I am fully aware that universities around the country are also suffering, but many institutions, including a handful of our east coast competitors, have recently lifted hiring freezes just as UC goes into a furlough and layoff period. If I find a better job for more money at another university, my boss has nothing to offer me to encourage me to stay. She can't even promise a raise at the end of the furlough, because the financial situation could possibly worsen, and we all know that non-union staff raises are typically very low priority on campuses with any sort of budget trouble. A colleague of mine in another department has warned her supervisor that she is actively looking for a job at another school in another state where they can give her regular raises and hope for promotion rather than stagnancy and fear of layoff. I have no doubt she will succeed before the furlough period is over, particularly since her department has no choice but to let her go. And when she does go, they won't be able to replace her since attrition is part of the cost-cutting plan at UC. Once she is gone, her fellow staff members will have to pick up the slack by adding functions to their job descriptions, the quality of student and faculty service will drop while staff are working harder for less, and the cycle will continue.

My department's leaders recruited me from outside California, and paid me the highest they could in fairness to my colleagues. They flew me in and put me up for an interview, and helped me in whatever ways they could with my move and new start. While I know that my "start-up" package is a joke compared to faculty, the cost of hiring me was not insignificant. As the new guy in an office, it can take a year or more to really get a feel for the culture, the annual process of a job, and build significant efficiency. The cost to replace me, or my colleague who is actively looking elsewhere, will not be insignificant either. Maybe they won't fly anyone in, but hiring new staff is costly if for no other reason than because of the time it takes to review candidates, interview them, make a decision, and finally conduct orientation and training. Hiring freezes that include attrition add to this cost since once the hiring freeze is lifted, the institution will not only have to spend more than in a normal year to fill all of the empty positions, they will undoubtedly have to give handsome offers to draw people to the formerly crisis-ridden employer.

I decided to work at UC Berkeley because I believe in the institution, its mission, and California's vision of higher education overall. I've become a member of the community, and would very much like to build my career here and contribute in my small ways to one of the best public universities in the world. I am sure many other staff members at the university feel similarly to varying degrees. However, assuming the normal 3% increase in the cost of living per year, with my current 6% furlough, I've effectively taken more than an 11% cut in pay since I started working here. This of course excludes any merit-based raises my supportive boss would like to give all of us, and any deserved raise for doing more work.

My case and that of my colleague are of course just anecdotes, but I imagine this is the case across the system. And I know that in tough economic times, we must do what we can to keep the university operating while scraping away dollars and cents to fill Mariana Trench-sized budget holes. It's just that it seems like it would be such a terrible shame for all that the University of California has grown to be and its collection of great minds might be whittled away by state budget cuts, and shrunken to a skeleton as staff, faculty, and students abandon the flooded ship. I hope we can all have our raises and that departments can conduct new hiring soon after this is over with, and that history will look back on this as nothing worse than a rough year, and not a moment of decline for the university.