HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: WANT TO SEE REAL “INCOME INEQUALITY?” LOOK AT CALIFORNIA HIGHER EDUCATION:

The UC Regents approved 3 percent raises for 15 of the University of California’s highest-paid executives. The new pay scale for the five UC chancellors are: $772,500 for UC San Francisco’s Samuel Hawgood; $516,446 for UC Berkeley’s Nicholas Dirks; $441,334 for UCLA’s Gene Block; $436,120 for UC San Diego’s Pradeep Khosla; and $424,360 for UC Davis’ Linda Katehi, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Also included in the raises were $231,750 for Anne Shaw, chief of staff for the UC regents, to $991,942 for Mark Laret, chief executive of UC San Francisco’s medical center. Many of them had salaries well above $400,000 before the new increase.

These are public employees who also can look forward to rich pensions and lifetime health care in retirement… unless the system goes broke. But that’s another story. These people will live as millionaires in retirement, courtesy of the taxpayers. A $770,000 annual retirement for 30 years is $23 million. Is anyone really worth $23 million in retirement for something they did not build themselves?

Others on the UC pay raise list include the UC system’s chief investment officer, Jagdeep Bachher, whose salary now will be $633,450; UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, $441,334; and UC Davis’ medical center chief executive, Ann Madden Rice, $848,720.

Kevin Sabo, board chairman of the UC Student Association, denounced the pay raises as “shameful” and said the raises would hurt future lobbying efforts in Sacramento to boost state funds for UC. He’s right, but no one is listening. They really don’t care.

Academics assume that capitalists are callous exploiters of those who work for them, because the people that academics work for really are that way. . . .