LOL, talk about blaming the victim. Tuition is up because a major component of US News is per student expenditure and faculty student ratios, not because law students want those things-unless they mean that law students want to attend the highest ranked school possible and therefore want these things by proxy because US News does..

Costs are driven more by the needs of the faculty (who will be there long after the students are gone) than the students. This may not be true for the undergraduate level but law professors are paid very well and also receive a lot of benefits and perks. If you look at the Form 990s of standalone law schools you can see for yourself.

It doesn't make any sense to give a 5% raise and then fire people. I highly doubt the productivity of each person will increase in a linear fashion. Instead of giving high pay raises he should have fired less people and kept pay constant. His comments are inherently at odds with previous comments about cutting costs.

(However, the 5% increase could be mandated by exogenous factors, like union agreements, and he's just taking credit for them.)

well i assume that the people who stay get the 5% raise but more responsibilities/duties. additionally, a 5% raise probably isn't even close to the amount cut from laying people off, so it's not like not giving them a raise would have saved many (if any) people from getting fired. i think it makes a lot of sense actually to give them the raise.

That's why I brought in worker productivity. A small raise over many different positions could have saved a number of jobs. Any potential increase in marginal productivity isn't enough to explain the absolute change relative to costs (which is the supposed point of the layoffs.)

It's like Dean Wu is saying we need to cut costs to be a better school but at the same time we need to increase costs in order to prove we're financially fit. It's inherently contradictory and sounds, at least facially, like a bad policy.

marginal utility or not, i am still unconvinced not giving a 5% raise could have saved jobs. now i don't know how many workers there are, or how much they all make, but 5% raises wouldn't amount to anymore than a handful of jobs, if that.

also, i don't think dean wu used the raises specifically to show we are financially fit. it's more likely they cut who they decided to cut and then found a reasonable amount for a raise that they could afford (while also still keeping costs low enough to fit the new budget). citing that a 5% raise shows that the school is in fine financial shape after the decision was made doesn't necessarily mean that the raises were made to prove the school's financial vitality.

but really, it's anyone's guess since we don't really know what's going on.

Law school SHOULD not cost as much as it does. My schools tuition has gone up approximately 5k dollars in the past 5 years.

Article: "As evidence that Hastings is in "robust financial condition right now," he noted that the school implemented a 5 percent pay raise this year for all non-faculty employees."

Budget (http://www.uchastings.edu/strategic-pla ... t_2010.pdf): Career faculty and staff salaries amount to ~$22 million. Non-career faculty and staff wages amount to ~$2 million. Additional benefits significantly increase costs but cannot be broken down. (I would really like to see something specifically related to staff expenditures but I can't seem to find anything on Hastings' website at the moment.

It very simple math. A small portion of money over many different positions creates a large amount of money. Assume every staff member is paid $50K. That means you can either fire 1 staff member or give 20 staff members a 5% raise. Extrapolate that to the bigger picture.

Yes, as a defense you could say marginal producivity may increase. However, the absolute productivity of the school would still be less than keeping more members of the staff and not giving raises.

Giving raises to the workers, without a corresponding increase in productivity, hurts the school and doesn't make financial sense. The purpose of a school is not to pay employees more money. It's to educate students.

I'm not saying the raises were made to show financial stability. I think: 1) Wu is trying to spin mandatory pay raises; or, 2) trying to buy off support through raises.

The only thing I think we agree about is:

as a Hastings student (1L) i honestly think this will improve our rank and reduce the influx of bay area lawyers. seems like a win-win to me....

i definitely see your point, but we just don't have enough information. i would not be surprised to see many workers that inherited several new mandatory duties/responsibilities. i think it's possible there is more than simply marginal increase in productivity for many workers. but that's merely speculation.

regardless, cutting more people and giving an increase in pay makes more sense considering if you forego raises now, that issue will crop up again in the next couple of years. cutting people is always the correct answer, especially in the long run, if you want to cut down on cost.

Cutting people is not always the answer. It's a very good answer if the jobs are "sticky" and it's difficult to fire people in the future. A perfect example of this is tenured professors. Hastings has to be very careful when deciding on tenured position because it's almost impossible to cut them.

However, at-will employees can be easily fired and hired. In this situation increasing their pay is actually a very dangerous thing. Once you give pay raises you can't give pay cuts (at least without tremendous resistance.) If the issue of pay raises crops up in the future that's perfectly okay. Raises are natural due to wages needing to keep up with inflation (the real cost stays the same for the school.) That's why unions make mandatory pay increases in the first place.

Cutting workers hurts the education and ancillary services of Hastings. If other employees can make up for that, through increased marginal productivity, then it makes sense. If they can't, and education suffers, then the policy doesn't make any sense.

Your statement makes sense if you apply it to tenured faculty. But that's not the issue here. We're talking about at-will employees.

basically depends on how and when you want to deal with the issue. if you keep workers on without a raise and then the issue of raises comes up, you have to fire people then anyway (since you have too many workers to give raises to). it's inevitable. it makes a lot of sense to cut everyone that needs to be cut now; presumably they've calculated that the programs are fine with these cuts. i for one, along with most everyone i know, hasn't noticed a difference after the layoffs.

also, you sort of make a good argument for why firing people now is a good idea: you can easily hire people if need be. replacing at-will employers, for the most part, is extremely easy. there's really no harm in going with a plan based on slightly more productivity from less workers and then adjusting it if need be.

The point of staff pay increases is to keep in line with inflation. Hastings wouldn't increase the real pay of their staff for no reason (it's not like all these people are being promoted.) This occurs in one lump sum rather than yearly due to collective bargaining. The issue is in the long-run is completely irrelevant to whether more or less staff is a good thing.

However, the reason I'm talking about pay raises at all is because one way to cut down on real costs without laying off staff is to not give pay raises. This decreases the real cost of labor and allows more staff to be hired (or not fired.) If people need to be cut -- cut them. But it's hardly "inevitable" and giving pay raises right after firing people is counterintuitive from a financial perspective.

Cuts in personal have some immediate and some unforeseen consequences. Some of the positions that have been cut have had an severe impact on the respective program. Other cuts will be seen in the future (ex: a smaller network of professionals and employers willing to help Hastings because of a cut in the career services & Alumni relations offices.)

Wu isn't going after the real structural problems UC Hastings faces. Instead he's trying to make quick fixes. This may be for the best. It may be for the worse. Either way, it doesn't make any sense to be giving raises unless their is a really good reason we don't know about.

Almost everyone I know has seen immediate negative consequences of the layoffs.

Like what? I haven't experienced anything.

I'm part of LEOP. 33% of the staff was fired and that has had a serious impact on the department. Worker productivity has almost certainly increased but not enough to compensate for the absolute loss. Even with a 20% reduction in next years class I highly doubt LEOP will be able to function at the same quality as before.

This type of situation is not limited to LEOP (and my intent is not to zealously advocate for LEOP). I'm sure other departments have seen a significant impact too.

Oh ok, so the only consequences you've seen so far have been in LEOP?

It was a significant cut and at the center of the staff layoff debate. I'm sure there have been other significant layoffs.

It's also important to into account the long-term effects that will not be readily noticeable (ex: Alumni and professional networks.)

I know that the LEOP lay off is what most people are mad about. It just seemed like the way you said it inferred there were more widespread ramifications. A lot of the other lay offs have been things like secretaries. I am sorry Dean Wu will only have one secretary and not two.

Also, lol. They project that in 2016 the tuition for non-resident will be $60,000.

This is asinine. I can't justify the increase in law school tuition. Noone else is getting paid more in their jobs and we sure as hell aren't expected to make more when we graduate.

i disagree. i think reducing the class size is one of the most important structural issues to be addressed.

Yeah, it's totally outrageous. UCH is currently the cheapest UC law school too by about $4,000 for instate, cheapest by $5,000 for OOS. If this stays on par, the other UCs will cost a lot more.

How much is instate?

Without insurance it's around $38,000. Their insurance is like $2,500/yr. I waived out of it.

Dear God. I was expecting you to say maybe 25k at the most. California is insane.

You have no idea.