An independent task force charged with reviewing UC's compensation policies and practices and recommending reforms has found that the university is successfully addressing concerns related to disclosure, transparency, governance and accountability. The findings will be presented Thursday, Nov. 19, to the Board of Regents of the University of California.

James Duderstadt, task force member and president emeritus of the University of Michigan, said, "The response of the university, its administration and the Regents has been herculean, far beyond what I would have expected."

UC has made significant strides in improving transparency in compensation, the task force found, yet concerns remain over whether, given the current fiscal climate, UC will achieve its recommendation that all employee salaries reach market level by 2015.

"For UC to best serve the people of California, the Task Force believes that the University must remain in the top tier of the world's research universities. To maintain that level of distinction, it must be able to provide its faculty, administrators and staff a level of compensation that is competitive with that offered by universities in its peer group," the task force stated in its findings.

In December 2005, Gerald Parsky, then serving as chair of the Board of Regents, appointed the Task Force on Compensation, Accountability and Transparency. The independent panel was comprised of academics, business leaders and former lawmakers, and was co-chaired by Regent Joanne Kozberg and former speaker of the California State Assembly Robert Hertzberg.

In 2006, the task force recommended 22 reforms covering four areas: disclosure and transparency, governance and accountability, policies and practices, and competitive compensation. The Board of Regents adopted the recommendations and agreed to reconvene an independent group in 2009 to review the university's progress.

The reconvened task force, again co-chaired by Kozberg and Hertzberg, held a public review in August. In a report on its findings, the task force said UC had "met not merely the letter of the recommendations, but met the spirit of the recommendations consistent with the tone and tenor of the 2006 report."

It also noted that most of the university's current senior leadership team — including President Mark G. Yudof — had been hired after the task force made its original recommendations. Yudof "assumed office in June 2008, well after the initiation of reforms. However, his leadership in marshalling the reforms to completion is clear to us," the task force wrote.

In response to the recommendations, UC over the past three years has established new monitoring and oversight mechanisms related to compensation, including: 

• Public disclosure of salaries and gross pay for all UC employees;

• In cases of compensation that require Regental approval, all elements of the pay package are publicly disclosed and available for public comment before the Regents vote;

• UC reports annually to the Regents on executive compensation, providing details on total compensation for every employee earning more than $214,000 per year.

Several other recommended reforms are scheduled for completion by the end of the year. Those include reviewing compensation policies to ensure that language is clear and unambiguous, and establishing, in consultation with the Academic Senate, new rules governing outside professional activities.

Pending reforms, in addition to market compensation, also include investment in a new human resources information system that would enable compensation data to be quickly examined and analyzed. The task force noted that the current fiscal situation has prevented UC from moving ahead on this recommendation, but said that it remains a critical need. It warned that without such a system, UC must rely on audits and self-reporting by campuses to detect inappropriately granted exceptions to compensation policies.

President Yudof, in responding to the report, said that UC must continue to hold itself to the highest level of public accountability and strive to implement all the recommendations as quickly as possible.

"Transparency is a critical aspect of running any public institution," Yudof said. "Disclosure is not always easy, but we must never shy from explaining ourselves to the public, or from being upfront about what we do and why we do it."