Earlier this week, State Senator Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, called for hearings into salary compensation and raises in the University of California system. Apparently, the UC people have been hiring a bunch of people at mid-level salaries, and then gave them all sorts of extra goodies. Not to mention kick-ass raises. All this would be all well and good except for the fact nobody at UC let the Powers That Be know that they were going to do this. Oh, and they just cut a whole bunch of student services and raised fees too. In short, juicy salary raises + lots of free stuff + cuts to student services= pissed off people.

What's been going on is that the UC have been hiring people for average kind of salaries (for professors and school administrators) but then giving them lots of free stuff on top of that. Things like free housing or loans or free parking or jobs to loved ones. And since doing this looks kind of cheesy, they kind of neglected to let people know they were doing these things. Which always works out well. In fact, the only reason this all got found out was because the Chron, yes the Chron, did some snooping and some investigating and discovered it all. Three cheers for the hometown rag.

The UC system says they need to do these things to stay competitive with other schools which has more money to throw around and this is the only way they can do it without busting the salary cap. Which may be true, but we have a feeling this won't make all the top ramen students have been eating more of go down any easier.