UC Office of the President and campus officials are assessing the rates at which faculty and staff members were each hired over the past five years. The study comes in response to the recent release of an audit measuring how well the university has met its agreements with the governor.

The Bureau of State Audits report found UC meeting its obligation to instruct and provide access to students, but questioned an increase in the hiring of managers in several categories.

In a letter to State Auditor Elaine Howle, UC President Richard Atkinson described the report as "professional and thorough."

UC Davis Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw noted there "are actually many success stories for UC in the audit, but there are also recommendations for improvement in the partnership with the state, so we are focusing attention and efforts on accomplishing those."

Auditors found that the rates at which UC hired administrative staff members increased at a greater pace than that of the hiring of tenured faculty members during the review period.

Full-time tenured professors grew by 504, or 10 percent, while full-time staff members increased by 2,075, or 43 percent, according to the review.

Bob Loessberg-Zahl, assistant executive vice chancellor, said that between 1997 and 2001 the number of UC Davis staff employees grew by 314, or 11 percent. Academic employees grew by 16 percent, or 382 positions.

Management and senior professional staff did increase by 136 percent or 79 positions, he said. The majority of that growth, however, can be attributed to job reclassifications.

Loessberg-Zahl found that another surge occurred in the number of analysts, computer programmers and operators hired. They were brought on at a time when the campus was moving away from paper-based operations to automated ones that required more technical know-how.

"I'm confident that we have not over-invested in management and staff," he said.

The report also noted the university slightly exceeded the course-faculty ratio of 4.8 agreed on by UC and the governor. One reason may be that 13 percent of courses taught by faculty had two students or fewer enrolled, auditors said.

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies Pat Turner plans to deliver to UCOP by Aug. 23 a report addressing class sizes and faculty workload at UC Davis.

"The university will examine carefully the classes identified as having one to two students, and will remove … any that should not be defined as classes, categorizing them properly as independent study," Atkinson wrote in his response to Howle.

The American Federation of Teachers, the union that represents UC lecturers and librarians, called for the audit through Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach. It asked that the non-partisan Bureau of State Audits evaluate UC's partnership agreement with the governor - guaranteeing to the state accessibility, quality undergraduate education, faculty course load and competitive faculty salaries.

Of the 22 objectives included in the agreement, the state noted that only nine offer targets that can clearly be quantified. The audit recommends that future partnerships include more measurable goals.

But the report acknowledged that the picture of the partnership effort that the document paints might be incomplete. For instance, lecturers' and assistant professors' courses were not included in the instructional report that was used to prepare the audit. Auditors recommend that these faculty members be included in the next report.

Atkinson has announced that the university will reallocate $10 million over the next two years from institutional support and administration coffers to the instruction program to hire more faculty members and improve undergraduate education.

Beginning next year the university will also substantially expand its Freshman Seminar program. The small courses, taught by regular-rank faculty, will ultimately be available to any first-year student who wants to take one.

"We believe this will improve the undergraduate experience, and will also enable the university to meet the commitment previously made … regarding teaching loads of our faculty," Atkinson wrote.

Any auditors' recommendations about future partnership agreements must be negotiated with the governor, said UC officials.

The audit is available online at http://www.bsa.ca.gov/.