7 Highest Paid At UC Berkeley: All Coaches

By Professor Doom

     It’s been a while since I’ve pointed out higher education’s peculiar madness when it comes to sportsball. There is so much corruption in higher education that I try to focus a little, but a recent article so brutally emphasized that something is wrong here that I feel the need to come back to this.

     Yes, we all know the highest paid public employee in any given state is probably a coach, but even the simple picture in that link fails to show just how insane higher education is. Looking at that map, one might think that, while the highest paid is a coach, perhaps the second best pay goes to an educator, or at least an administrator.

     No. 

     Much as the Poo Bah has ridiculous pay, and is surrounded by sycophants likewise paid ridiculous amounts, so too is the coach. Since coach pay is in the stratosphere, even the “somewhat lower” pay of the sub-coaches is still an insane amount.

      Let’s talk about coach pay, just at UC Berkeley. Hey, do you know what team(s) Berkeley is famous for? Me neither. I grant that I’m not into sports, but it seems like over the course of decades Berkeley’s great athletic programs would have come up somewhere for me.

      The highest paid employee at Berkeley is the coach, of course. He’s not even a winner:

Daniel Dykes, who was the head coach of Cal’s football team in 2014, earned $1.8 million in a year in which the team “went 5-7 … and did not make a bowl appearance.” Dykes was the highest paid UC Berkeley employee in 2014.

     Gee whiz, you don’t even need to coach a winning team to get nearly $2 million a year in loot. Please understand, the $1.8 million dollar salary doesn’t tell the whole tale, there are a great number of perks that put the effective salary way over that nominal salary…besides the slavish adoration of fans.

     Is the gentle reader stunned that the highest paid employee is not even a coach of a winning team? It gets worse:

“Dykes was followed closely by Jeff Tedford (at $1,800,000), the Bears’ former coach who was still on the payroll in 2014 despite having been relieved of his coaching responsibilities…

     How does anyone look at this and not suspect something is wrong here? This guy isn’t even a coach and still gets that kind of pay? As I sit here and realize that every institution I’ve left, I’ve left in good standing, and walked away with nothing…I can’t help but be annoyed that the folks at the top get such generous benefits.

     Perhaps I’m just a bitter and envious person, but the gentle reader should understand that these huge salaries are paid by taxpayers. At the very least, keep this in mind when you are told there needs to be a tuition increase due to lack of money in the system…

     Ok, so the highest paid employee at UC Berkeley is a coach, and the second highest paid is a guy who once was a coach. Could it get more insane? Sure:

The next five highest paid UC Berkeley employees were also coaches,” the report added.

     The article I’m quoting from isn’t even about the high pay of coaches, it’s more about the ridiculous pay that floats up to the top. While I really wanted to focus on how the money we’re paying into education simply isn’t going into education, it’s fair to also point out that higher education is also a system of political plunder:

Another vocal income inequality expert at UC Berkeley, Professor Robert Reich – former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton’s administration who in 2013 helped produce the film “Inequality for All” – earned $263,592 in 2014, the think tank’s report states.

      Isn’t it great how these Left-wingers keep giving speeches telling me I need to give up my money and reduce my pay to help resolve income inequality, even as they’re getting paid hand-over-fist to give the speech on how I should work for less?

“But Reich’s salary was likely not his only source of income in 2014,” it adds. “Reich makes himself available to give paid speeches through a number of speaking bureaus, charging a fee estimated at $40,000 per talk. He is also likely to receive some income from his books, movies and pensions from previous employers.”

     Maybe Reich is a special case, but the fact remains: so much of the money that’s flooding higher education is just going to the people at the top. Again, I conclude we must turn off the student loan scam, and even if doing so would guarantee my unemployment…my conclusion is unchanged.

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