Given the lightning rod that has developed for student protests, one would think that more care would be taken. But the lesson that we learned this week is that neither prudence nor decency seem to have a place when it comes to the decisions made by the CSU Trustees, who follow the actions of UC from late last fall.
Moreover, any notion of synergy between Democrats and the student protesters and/or Occupy movement is rendered largely inoperative by the starting inability of Democrats, in the higher education committee, to act.
On Tuesday, the CSU trustees, who met in Long Beach, headquarters to the California State University system, approved raises for the presidents of CSU East Bay and Cal State Fullerton. They did so over the public criticism of Governor Jerry Brown. They do so despite complaints from student and faculty members alike.
The ten percent salary increases were the maximum allowable. This was done back in January after they sparked outrage by giving a $100,000 raise to San Diego State’s new president and raising tuition by 12% at the same meeting.
In Long Beach, CSU Trustee Roberta Achtenberg said, “I’m just sorry we can’t pay them more.”
Writes Joseph Palermo in the Huffington Post: “So out of touch are Reed and the Trustees they saw nothing amiss last summer in passing a 12 percent hike in student fees at the same meeting where they voted to give the incoming president of San Diego State an increase in salary of $100,000 over his predecessor.”
He adds, “Only after the public uproar this move caused, which caught the top managers by surprise, did they hastily draw up a new policy that would cap raises for new presidents at 10 percent over the previous salary. But the damage had been done.”
In a letter from Governor Brown, he wrote, “I write to express my concern about the ever-escalating pay packages awarded to your top administrators. I fear your approach to compensation is setting a pattern for public service that we cannot afford.”
He added, “I have reviewed the Mercer compensation study and have reflected on its market premises, which provide the justification for your proposed salary boost of more than $100,000. The assumption is that you cannot find a qualified man or woman to lead the university unless paid twice that of the Chief Justice of the United States. I reject this notion.”
“At a time when the state is closing its courts, laying off public school teachers and shutting senior centers, it is not right to be raising the salaries of leaders who–of necessity–must demand sacrifice from everyone else. These are difficult times and difficult choices must be made. I ask that you rethink the criteria for setting administrators’ salaries.”
Senator Yee was angry, issuing a statement, “When the students are suffering, CSU should not be handing out such exorbitant executive compensation.”
The Senator noted that the CSU Board of Trustees has twice in the past year raised tuition by 9.6 percent and then by 12 percent.
This week, the California Faculty Association which represents faculty in the CSU, issued a scathing critique in a report entitled “For-Profit Higher Education & CSU: A Cautionary Tale”:
The report examines how, “with virtually no public input, those entrusted with leading the CSU have parlayed the public’s desire for greater access to higher education in a time of economic crisis into a stealth program that threatens to alter the very essence of the CSU as a great public university.”
The report continues:
“Last year, CSU executives were paid between $240,000 and $400,000 in salary alone. On top of that, each executive is allotted $12,000 per year as an auto allowance. Campus Presidents and the Chancellor each receive either state-owned homes or housing allowances of $50,000 or $60,000 per year. Other perks available to executives include special retirement packages such as lifetime employment as a tenured professor and other deals that were widely criticized as excessive ‘golden parachutes’ when they were exposed by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2006.”
In a blistering letter from Senator Ted Lieu to Chancellor Charles Reed, “Against the backdrop of statewide outrage, it is disturbing that CSU leadership – rather than reaching out to stakeholders – instead engaged in a unilateral process of creating a skewed policy to lock in ever-escalating pay packages. By asking for adoption of this policy, CSU leadership is essentially telling the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, legislators, faculty, students, taxpayers, and editorial boards in California to go pound sand.”
He adds, “The resulting loss of credibility by CSU leadership has severely negative consequences for the CSU system. Last year, CSU’s budget was cut twice, for an amount totaling $750 million. Several legislators have introduced, or will introduce, legislation to take away salary discretion from the Board of Trustees. In walking the halls of the Capitol, meeting with stakeholders, and discussing the state budget with other legislators, I can safely say CSU has few to no defenders.”
In their hasty and ill-conceived defense, the university official on Wednesday conceded that the raises were “bad optics…bad juju” in light of budget cuts and enrollment restrictions, a notion that was first quoted in the Sacramento Bee but quickly spread across Twitter and other social networking sites to the mocking of many.
In a scathing editorial from the Fresno Bee, of all places, they wrote, “In this economy, the symbolism of the CSU move is dreadful.”
Despite all of this, and all of the righteous indignation put forth by Senator Yee (who can hardly be accused of merely going with the political winds, given his track record), Governor Brown and Senator Lieu, the Senate Higher Education Committee, the same committee that smacked down Chancellor Katehi a few months ago, would not pass Senator Yee’s legislation to limit executive pay raises.
The measure only garnered four votes, three votes shy of a majority, and three Democrats would oppose. These three were Senator Alquist, Senator Carol Liu (not to be confused with Senator Ted Lieu) and Senator Simitian. Senator Lowenthal, another Democrat, abstained and Senator Vargas was absent.
In fact, the Senate Higher Education Committee approved legislation (SB 952-Alquist) to allow double-digit pay hikes for California State University executives making $300,000 to $600,000.
However, they rejected a bill by Senator Yee that would have prohibited pay hikes for top administrators during bad budget years or within two years of a student fee increase.
“It is another sad day for our students,” said Senator Yee. “Unfortunately, the Education Committee has sent the completely wrong message. Rather than stand up for students and faculty, they protected the 1% and condoned CSU’s bad behavior. CSU students and California taxpayers deserve better than the status quo.”
“Unfortunately, SB 952 codifies this abhorrent practice of catering to university elites,” said Senator Yee. “Rather than approving SB 967 and putting a stop to these exorbitant pay hikes, the Committee instead has ensured in perpetuity that students suffer and executives get rich.”
“Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time before CSU gives yet another executive pay hike and another scandal plagues our great university,” said Senator Yee. “I will not give up this fight for our students, faculty and California taxpayers.”
And we wonder why students, who see their livelihood and futures threatened by tuition hikes, might be outraged not only at the university leadership, but also by their elected representatives in Sacramento.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[quote]In fact, the Senate Education Committee approved legislation (SB 952-Alquist) to allow double digit pay hikes for California State University executives making $300,000 to $600,000.
However, they rejected a bill by Senator Yee that would have prohibited pay hikes for top administrators during bad budget years or within two years of a student fee increase.[/quote]
This says it all. If the legislature won’t act, then the financial abuse of students will continue. This is what/where the students should be protesting – the seat where real power to stop the financial abuse resides – in the state legislature…
Elaine: They have done some of that. BUT, you are missing a huge amount of culpability on behalf of the Board of Trustees and the University. It is the board who approved the executive raises – both CSU and UC – and they are the ones who decided to do it the same day they jacked up tuition. That’s not on the legislature, that is on the universities and their governing board.
If you voted for the Democrat candidate in any state election over the last 30 years, look in the mirror for the primary root cause of the budget situation we find ourselves in today.
The Democrats have rewarded the public sector by jacking up gross employee compensation… including management. The cat is out of the bag, and now the Democrats cannot stomach the work required to correct their mistakes of the past and put it back in the bag.
Unfortunately, this ramping up of public-sector pay and benefits has attracted people lacking the drive and determination to make their success in the private sector, but still greedy to make as much money as they can and then retire early. I have very little respect for senior employees of the public-sector these days precisely because they demonstrate so much entitled elitism and greed. They don’t blink an eye sticking it to the little guy while their wallet grows fatter.
We need to get back to a time when part of the consideration for working in the public sector was public service.
“We need to get back to a time when part of the consideration for working in the public sector was public service.”
Is that similar to the time when working for a private company for many years meant that that company also had some loyalty to the worker and to the workers family ?
[i]”Is that similar to the time when working for a private company for many years meant that that company also had some loyalty to the worker and to the workers family ?”[/i]
Why do you think private-sector companies are not loyal to their employees?
That certainly has NOT been the case with all the private companies I have worked for.
Loyalty though, is a two-way street, and unions tend to set up an us-against-them relationship. None of the companies I have worked for were unionized… I would never had worked there if they had been.
Unions are only able to win a certification vote if that us-vs-them relationship is already there. Unions don’t create it. That is usually management’s fault. Nugget isn’t unionized because they evidently pay their workers well enough, give satisfactory benefits, and are apparently a good place to work.
[i]”people lacking the drive and determination to make their success in the private sector, but still greedy to make as much money as they can and then retire early..”
[/i]
See if you can go 24 hours without insulting an entire class of people. Most of my family works/worked in the public sector. Your statement is, as usual, offensive and entirely without substantiation.
[quote]Elaine: They have done some of that. BUT, you are missing a huge amount of culpability on behalf of the Board of Trustees and the University. It is the board who approved the executive raises – both CSU and UC – and they are the ones who decided to do it the same day they jacked up tuition. That’s not on the legislature, that is on the universities and their governing board.[/quote]
I’m missing nothing. If CSU and UC won’t police themselves, then the only party left to rein in the financial abuse is the state legislature. Asking the financial abuser to rein in their egregious behavior is a useless exercise, which the students are discovering…
[quote]The Democrats have rewarded the public sector by jacking up gross employee compensation… including management. The cat is out of the bag, and now the Democrats cannot stomach the work required to correct their mistakes of the past and put it back in the bag.
Unfortunately, this ramping up of public-sector pay and benefits has attracted people lacking the drive and determination to make their success in the private sector, but still greedy to make as much money as they can and then retire early. I have very little respect for senior employees of the public-sector these days precisely because they demonstrate so much entitled elitism and greed. They don’t blink an eye sticking it to the little guy while their wallet grows fatter. [/quote]
Be fair Jeff, the same could be said of the private sector. How many times have we seen top executives literally looting their own company, giving themselves fat raises as the company is going downhill? Often the executive pay at private companies is obscene. Seems to me the former head of the NYSE Richard Grasso retired with an $188 million golden parachute. See [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Grasso[/url]
Also see:
[url]http://abcnews.go.com/Business/ceos-golden-parachute-exit-packages-pass-100-million/story?id=14901705#.T3CUfmGF9CA[/url]
[url]http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57357812/how-ceo-golden-parachutes-hurt-shareholders/[/url]
[url]http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-CEOs-Loot-their-Compan-by-william-czander-110815-212.html[/url]
[url]http://www.psc-cuny.org/clarion/march-2012/how-business-elites-looted-private-sector-pensions[/url]
Don: on your attempted defense of unions: it is well known that the overall measured job satisfaction for union employees is significantly below that of non-union employees for comparable jobs.
I was not attempting to insult an entire class of people; my focus was on the executive and senior-level employees. Please stop being so sensitive that I am attacking your family.
In my experience, the talent level for executives working in the private sector is quite a bit stronger than it is for the public sector. The reason is that there is much greater competition and turnover in the private sector executive ranks. My wife worked in the Alumni Affairs Department of UCD a couple of decades ago and I got to know several of the UCD execs at that time. It was VERY clear to me that they would have been out of their league with equivalent authority in the bank I worked at during that time. The UCD staff that reported to them had little respect for them. That type of thing would end the job of any manager/exec working for the private-sector companies I worked for. As early as the mid-1990s we were surveying employee satisfaction and the scores became part of management performance assessment and bonus.
Unions ruin the management-employee partnership that is the basis for overall greater employee satisfaction and higher organizational performance. There is generally a greater lack of trust between management and employees in union shops. The HR department wields much more power when the labor is unionized. Management and employees become compliant, instead of creative. They become defensive, rather than opportunistic. Employees become entitled and combative, and management just throws up their hands instead of tackling meaningful reform.
Nugget pays their employees less than Safeway, yet Nugget employees are much happier about their jobs than are Safeway employees. Why is that Don?
[i]”Be fair Jeff, the same could be said of the private sector. How many times have we seen top executives literally looting their own company, giving themselves fat raises as the company is going downhill?”[/i]
Few points…
First, if the company “their own” then then have the right to pay themselves whatever they think is fair. However, I think you are talking about private-sector, publically-traded companies. In this case, the CEO is generally NOT the owner. And, in this case, I agree that there are problems with SOME executive compensation.
However, there are some qualifying points here too:
1. The problems are for a minority of companies and the stories are exploited by the media and Democrats to wage class war.
2. Public-traded companies are controlled by board that set and approve all executive compensation. Boards represent stockholders. There is a democratic process that provides controls.
3. Generally much of the compensation that the media and left rails about is in the form of stock options… the value of which is tied to the ongoing success or failure of the company.
4. If the compensation IS cash, then in NY or CA, fully 50% of it will be peeled off and sent to the government to redistribute. So, why is the left crying about it? They should be happy about big cash bonuses.
5. The left never seems to complain about the obscene money going to all the liberal Hollywood movie stars and athletes? I guess these examples do not serve the class war.
6. Companies can and do shrink and grow based on their strategy, success and failure earning revenue. The public-sector does not earn revenue; it only consumes the revenue earned by others. Even so, it continues to grow expenses.
[quote]5. The left never seems to complain about the obscene money going to all the liberal Hollywood movie stars and athletes? I guess these examples do not serve the class war. [/quote]
That is just as obscene as company execs and public execs getting salaries that are way too high and not commensurate with their “talents”. I’m sorry, but I have a problem with the idea that some lowly grunt who invents something at a company gets paid peanuts, while the CEO of the company gets paid in the neighborhood of millions. Without the grunt, the CEO would be nothing…
Elaine, if the employee invents something, he/she is usually not a lowly grunt. That would be rare that he would not be rewarded in some way for his/her contribution.
The problem with forced compensation leveling is that it corrupts market forces for talent supply and demand. It also serves to damage worker motivation as there is not enough upside/reward for higher levels of responsibility. Socialists and communists have tried this already and it is a disaster.
A CEO shoulders a lot more responsibility than does a line worker. The line worker goes home to his/her family and leaves the job at work. The CEO rarely gets a true day off. If the line worker screws up, he might cause a product defect. If the CEO screws up, the entire company might fail and all will lose their job.
I’m not making the case that all CEOs deserve to make many hundreds of percent more than their low-level employees. Some do. Some don’t. However, the key for me is income mobility. When controlled by education, the US has by far the greatest income mobility of all other countries. The rich grow poor and the poor grow rich, and they can do it many times during their career. The low-level worker can strive to be the CEO if desired enough.
We should stop fretting so much about pay gaps and focus instead on education gaps.
[i]I was not attempting to insult an entire class of people; my focus was on the executive and senior-level employees. Please stop being so sensitive that I am attacking your family…. In my experience, the talent level for executives working in the private sector is quite a bit stronger than it is for the public sector.[/i]
Which is precisely what my father was. Associate director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He ran the ship operations for the research vessels, was budget officer, and also a research scientist, graduate student adviser, and associate professor. I would put his job skills up against yours and about five of your peers combined.
Your statement about the talent levels of private versus public sector is completely without foundation, so it simply represents bias on your part.
Stop insulting whole classes of people. You do it all the time.
You missed my point about unions. It was that a company that gets a union certified probably deserves it. I’m not a defender or opponent of unions. I’m pretty neutral about them. And I have zero experience being in one or working anywhere that there is a union.
[i]”I would put his job skills up against yours and about five of your peers combined.”[/i]
Don, there you go again. I’m not attacking your father. I’m sure he was great at what he did. Maybe he could run a commercial mortgage company better than me and five of my peers. I’m not questioning your point because I don’t have any knowledge or experience to challenge it.
However, let’s focus on the original topic and consider a senior executive employed by UCD and one with similar a role/responsibility working in the private sector.
I have worked in both the private and public sector. I have worked with great people in both domains. However, my experience has been that the more competitive filtering that goes on in the private sector leads to higher-performing employees compared to their public-sector peers. Over the last almost three decades of my career, many employees that were let go for their inability to perform ended up working for the state. During this time, there has been general acceptance of the knowledge that working for the state is the “safer” and “less stressful” career choice… and one that paid less. However, that has changed considering total compensation as the private sector has shed pensions and the high cost of healthcare has taken a larger bite.
Do I have statistical evidence to back my opinion of this? No, no more than you do to back your claim that your father’s job skills would match mine and five of my peers. You and I are both making these claims based on our experiences. You of course know your father, and I have a lot of experience hiring, firing, developing and being directed by employees with similar roles working in both the private and public sector in the Sacramento region. For me, there is no question that the relative caliber of the private-sector employee has been consistently generally higher.
The only reason I bring this up is that we are talking about high executive compensation at UCD and an insistence that these compensation levels are required for to attract and retain talent. I think there must be some collusion between the various campuses on this, since there appears to be no connection with these compensation levels and the overall job market for like roles. I think UCD and possibly CSUS are both top-heavy. I think a private company would have consolidated executive positions by now and would have also cut compensation (probably reduced bonus since more private-sector executive compensation is generally held at risk).
[i]For me, there is no question that the relative caliber of the private-sector employee has been consistently generally higher. [/i]
I believe that is called Confirmation Bias.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias[/url]
Expeience Don, not bias. I have always entered each professional encounter with a completely open mind and I always develop my opinion of people based on their own personal behavior. I could care less that they are green, blue, red, public-sector, private-sector…
What I am telling you that out of all the individual professional encounters I have had, the private-sector employees have been more often higher-caliber than their public-sector peer. Sorry if that offends you, but that is my experience.
There have been exceptions to this… but interestingly, for those in the public sector I have been most impressed with, most of them migrated to the private sector at some point.
I think the pace of change tends to be significantly faster in the private-sector.
I agree that the change of pace in the private sector is much faster than in the public sector. I think it takes different skill sets to work in a large public institution, just as it takes different skill sets to work in public organizations such as the military. Those skill sets are not directly comparable to private enterprise in some ways.
I think what you state as your experience is significantly affected by your bias against public employees, which arises from your ideology. I have no idea what you mean by “higher-caliber,” but I suspect it relates to your expectations based on your biases. That is what I was referring to as the result of confirmation bias. You think public employees are lesser than private employees; you’ve said so many times in many different ways. So that is what you see.
As to whether public sector employees are paid more than we, the public, can afford, I suspect you and I would be in agreement. Salaries and benefits at places like UC need to be ratcheted back. I would love to see Mitt Romney be the replacement for UC President Yudof after he loses the general election.
[i]”I would love to see Mitt Romney be the replacement for UC President Yudof after he loses the general election.”[/i]
LOL! That would certainly be better for UCD than Obama would be. Though Obama could help organize the students.
“higher-caliber” = More highly capable to handle more difficult and demanding work. I don’t have any ideological bias against public sector workers. There are several that I hug on a regular basis. I consider them some of the best people I know.
Most of my experience comparing private-sector and public-sector talent has been in the IT, project management and general management areas. You seem to focus on science. Maybe public-sector scientists are generally the same or greater caliber than private-sector scientists… but in my areas of experience and expertise, the private sector talent has been notably stronger. Sorry.
No, I’m focusing on administration of scientific enterprises. Management of scientific research requires a very high level of ability to handle “difficult and demanding work” and tends to require at least a base knowledge of the research subjects. It involves all the things you describe: IT, project management, and general management.
Project management including providing research facilities for scientists of different disciplines.
Obtaining grant funding from different sources for ongoing projects that span several years and involve numerous researchers and graduate students — NSF, private sources, etc. Funding for scientific research is not as reliable as you might think. The ability to write and review grant proposals is a special skill set that many good researchers don’t have.
Or, as another example, coordinating data from private businesses (oil companies), public institutions, and the military about, for example, ocean temperatures.
Managing things like ocean buoys that are used by several agencies.
Example: arranging for a dozen or more projects to be ongoing on a vessel that is going to need to be at sea for several months, resupplying from several different countries, with researchers from different universities joining the trip and leaving the vessel at different ports of call.
I’m using oceanographic examples only because I have some passing familiarity with what is involved. It is similar, as I understand it, in other fields of science.
Let’s say you are coordinating the long process of sequencing the human genome, which took over a dozen years. It involved universities and research institutions all over the world. You don’t have all the top researchers in one place. You have lots of people with specialized skill sets who happen to be at different places, with different funding (and big egos). There were parallel public and private groups working on the Human Genome Project.
I’m sure there were highly skilled administrators at both UCSC and Celera managing the competing research teams, but they had to have different skill sets. One was working in public, releasing data for peer review literally daily. The other was working for a private enterprise that was trying to restrict the data and reserve patent rights for future commercial uses, releasing data only annually and refusing access in some cases. Different masters, different purposes.
So I highly doubt that your private-sector managers are “higher-caliber” than their comparable public-sector managers. They can probably make decisions faster. That’s about it.
Don, fair enough. I don’t have job stats for government workers in front of me right now, but I suspect that a very small percentage are administrators of scientific enterprises. I think you are arguing your counter to my general point with a narrow example.
I guess it all comes down to what we have experience with, right?
I agree.
Getting back to the topic that prompted this thread, it can be challenging (I imagine) to devise a compensation package for administrators in these public agencies. You don’t have any way to reward performance that is comparable to the private sector. No performance bonuses or stock options. One of the biggest problems is the autonomy of the UC and CSU systems. There is no accountability for the regents and trustees once appointed. And even though many come from the private sector, they just become team players once on the boards.
The pay is “too high” with respect to the state budget. Whether it is commensurate with their skill sets and with the applicant pool is another issue. Pay raises at this time are not good public relations. It is very likely that administrative overhead could be reduced (the academic senates certainly think so). An executive from outside the rather closed culture of academic administrators would be a good replacement for Yudof. But that isn’t how the hiring process works. So much as I dislike Senator Yee’s grandstanding in general, his continuing the critical focus on UC is useful.
[quote]Elaine, if the employee invents something, he/she is usually not a lowly grunt. That would be rare that he would not be rewarded in some way for his/her contribution. [/quote]
I disagree – from [url]http://www.ipeg.eu/?p=2532[/url]
[quote]Some will argue that financial reward programs should not be considered at all, as it is the role of research and development engineers to invent. However, benchmark data suggests that a number of companies are rewarding their inventors well. Financial awards as well as annual patent ceremonies and such items as plaques for inventors are good well established practices in many companies. Increasingly company wide recognition of the top inventors, for example based on exceeding some threshold for the number of granted patents, is becoming the norm.[/quote]
Notice “is becoming the norm”. It did not say “is the norm”!
Yet CEOs of large corporations are being remunerated every year with compensation in the hundreds of millions. I consider that ridiculous/obscene, particularly when the company is headed downhill…
Elaine: In many cases, the large golden parachute paid to a CEO is based on the value of previous lon term incentive plans (generally stock options) that are contractual and set at times when business was rosier.
While I agree with the general point that CEOs of failing companies should not walk away with a large pile of money, the compensation issue is more challenging considering long-term incentives and a multi-year assessment of performance.
Corporate governance is a hot topic in B schools these days. CEO pay in publically-held corporations is set by the board of directors. The board of directors are supposed to represent stockholders. The stockholders are the primary constituents impacted by CEO performance. So, why is this not working well enough? Why have so many CEOs had such a reckless appetite for risk?
There are certainly demonstrated problems with the corporate governance model and there is a lot of work being done to figure it out and fix the model. However, government stepping in to put caps on CEO pay will cause many more problems that it will solve.
As for reward to employees for their inventions… there is always competition for talent that can invent products that generate revenue for companies. Employees possessing these talents can negotiate their compensation arrangement. They can also quit and work somewhere else.
I highly recommend the book “Empires of Light” about the birth and development of the electricity industry. It is a fascinating peek into the dawning of the use of patents and politics to compete in business. George Westinghouse was an example of a CEO who paid and rewarded handsomely for both internal and external patents. He also nearly went bankrupt a couple of times as a result of what he committed to pay… for example Nicolas Tesla’s patents for AC power. On the other side was Edison pushing DC power and his incandescent light bulb invention. Edison did not value other’s inventions and would absorb the work of his engineers as his own. In the end, Edison was forced out of his own company that then became General Electric.
One other point about inventions that many people do not get. The invention is generally only worth the paper it is printed on until someone makes a product out of it, and then pays for armies of attorneys to defend the intellectual property. Many people come up with great ideas, but few actually make them happen. Ideas are really a dime a dozen in this world. Employees complaining that they have not been fairly rewarded for their idea seem to discount the required investment to realize an return for the idea. Yes they deserve a reward, but it usually much lower than their ego desires or demands.
[quote] Yes they deserve a reward, but it usually much lower than their ego desires or demands. [/quote]
I could say the same about CEOs!
[i]”I could say the same about CEOs!”[/i]
Yes, you could… and do! 😉
[quote]“I could say the same about CEOs!”
Yes, you could… and do! ;-)[/quote]
LOL 😉
My experience with public vs. private sector managment has been similar to Don’s.
I was an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab (government run) in the 1980s; the scientific management was superb; most scientists and engineers were happy in their work and there were a lot of brilliant accomplishments that advanced satellite and space and related technologies and spin-offs.
I also worked as an engineer at a private BioTech company in the 1990s. Scientific and engineering management overall was pretty good; but more uneven. The politics was much more amped up; since the company attracted a large pool of very ambitious people who wanted to be king of the hill and get rich–this actually resulted in reduced overall efficiency, as a lot of time and energy was wasted in politics and a lot of nasty manuevering going on; worker morale was lower than at Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the pace of work was slightly faster but was less efficient (much more backtracking and firefighting), so that no more was accomplished.
The company was still quite successful, since they had a few key world-class scientists who were well-connected and were able to identify start-up companies with promising potential therapeutics; our company bought out these start-ups and the rights to those therapeutics, this is where success hinged starting in the late 1990s (in the 1980s thru early 90s initial success of the company was mostly in-house).
Maybe in other areas of business private sector executives are more effective than public; consider that at the executive level of big companies (e.g. with as many employees as UC Davis) the compensation is 10-100 fold that of UC Davis; perhaps chancellor compensation should be upped to the 10 million per year range to attract the ‘best’? And we can have a wonderful wonderful corporate campus.