Cal State Fullerton’s Pension Tsunami Shell Game and Our Kid’s Future
After showing you how management lives in the lap of luxury last week, I received an email from a Friend who brought to my attention a Cal State University system business practice that forces out qualified, lower paid part-time lecturers and untenured faculty, and brings back higher paid, semi retired faculty. The faculty and management at our own Cal State Fullerton know this practice as FERPing. Just the sound of the acronym sounds like something they should apologize for and we haven’t even said what exactly FERPing is.
The Faculty Early Retirement Program, as the name implies, allows faculty to retire early and then come right back to work. On the surface it creates a lower fiscal burden on local university funding which looks like a cost savings for guys like Milton A. Gordon, who gets $302,042 per year while living rent-free at the El Dorado Ranch. The reality is that it costs taxpayers and students more than if the schools utilized the lower paid, part-time faculty who are otherwise forced out under FERP.
Retirement never looked so lucrative. While everyone else must take furloughs or are getting laid off outright, the FERPers receive FREE parking, ALL of their retirement benefits, and 50% of their last salary. That’s part of the reason why your kid’s tuition continues to rise and classes are getting canceled. This Cal State double-dipping program is brought to you by the public employee unions as a result of the spineless leader who is content to live in his rent-free mansion with an inflated salary and the entitlement attitude of senior public employees. Some FERPers have been milking us for more than 5 years!
Here is an example of the compensation structure that FERPers use to determine just how good retirement might be:
Age: 63 1/2 years (CalPERS retirement age percentage factor: 2.5%)
Length of Service: 27 years
Highest Salary: $87,500(during any 12 month period of CalPERS covered employment)(minus $133.33 monthly deduction for Social Security = $1,599.96)
Calculation: 27 years x .025 (age factor percentage) = 67.5% of highest salary
Estimated CalPERS retirement salary: $85,900 x .675 (age factor percentage) = $57,982
Plus estimated FERP salary: (half of faculty base $70,800) $35,400
Total estimated retirement salary plus FERP salary: $93,382
It’s time to wean the leaches off our sweet cream before all we are left with is sour cream for our kids. Email Milton Gordon at mgordon@fullerton.edu or you can call him in his CSUF public employee office at (657) 278-3456. Tell Milton Gordon it’s time to act fiscally responsible with our tax dollars.
Below are some links I stumbled over which helped put FERPing in perspective for me:
http://www.fullerton.edu/Emeriti/preretirement.htm
http://collegelife.freedomblogging.com/2009/08/13/cal-state-fullerton-abruptly-begins-canceling-classes/7103/
http://www.calstate.edu/csuleader/2004/040511.htm
http://www.csufresno.edu/aps/forms_policies/retirement_ferp.shtml
http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/aa/personnel/retirement/ferp/
While retirement benefits like that would make any private sector retiree giddy, it pales to the amounts that high school (and maybe junior college) educated 50 year old retired beat cops are raking in. What a scam.
Full-time university professors are the closest thing I have found to “professional students”. Many arrive at the tender age of 18 and are spoon fed until they retire. Inspirational, isn’t it?!
FERPing in and of itself is not the problem. It’s actually a benefit to both the student and the individual professor in most respects.
The REAL problem is the defined benefit retirement system that dictates a lifetime pension that requires the employer to pay both the retiree and the replacement for the same job.
Eventually Californians are going to wake up and realize that any system that permits someone to retire with a lifetime income of 80-90% of their working income (which is not uncommon in the law enforcement arena) and then also pay a competitive salary to the replacement — is a system that is doomed to failure. Let’s hope that the realization is sooner rather than later.
We need forensic accounting done to determine just how the money (40% of the state budget) is being spent. I guarantee that they have more than enough money to meet costs. With 34% of their budget going to “Administration” I think I would know where to look first.