COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:

This spring, thousands of young college students will earn a degree from one of the University of California’s nine campuses.

For them it is a time to chart a new course in life. As they contemplate their future, here’s a career they may want to consider: UC administrator. These types of jobs pay well.

Take for example departing UC President Robert Dynes, who will get a year off with pay ($405,000) before he returns to teaching physics at UC San Diego.

When Dynes decides to hang up the mortarboard, he will enjoy his retirement pay in yearly installments of $145,524, or in a lump-sum of $1.2 million.

Dynes’ replacement, Mark Yudof, will also benefit from the generosity of the University of California by receiving $850,000 a year. What justification can there be for a salary equivalent to the tuition of 112 students?

Perhaps a more fitting title for the new UC president would be the prince of the University of California, since the position includes extensive travel and entertainment budgets, and a small palace in the Oakland Hills.

But Yudof will not be able to move in until more than $8 million of renovations have been completed on his palace in the hills. In the meantime, he will live in another Oakland Hills house, which the UC will rent for $100,000 a year. I wonder how many of our UC students will ever snack on bruschetta and chardonnay at Casa Yudof?

But the president of the university is just the tip of the iceberg. The university is thick with bureaucracy, a whole class of mandarins in nice offices making plump salaries and doing work that is largely irrelevant to the principal functions of the institution: education and research.

And how does the UC plan to pay for these perks and salary increases? For starters, it is raising tuition 7.4% this year — a 93% increase in the last five years. Would anyone argue that the quality of education produced by the University of California has doubled in the same period?

The fact is that the UC can raise tuition because it knows someone else will pick up the tab; most of its students come from well-off families. Regarding students from lower-income households, UC can count on state and federal grants and loans to make up for the additional cost.

Whenever someone else is picking up the check, people tend to overcharge for their services. The sad truth is that most of the time, that “someone else” is the taxpayer.

Providing a first-class university education costs a lot. But with large subsidized budgets and few incentives to streamline operations, it seems as though parents and students will be stuck with the burden of paying for the bloated salaries of University of California administrators.

TOM HARMAN is a state senator representing the 35th District.