The following tables detail the compensation of 662 University of California (university) employees who received $168,000 or more from state appropriations, student tuition, or "Other" funding sources during fiscal year 2004–05, as summarized in Table 4 of our report, University of California: Stricter Oversight and Greater Transparency Are Needed to Improve Its Compensation Practices, 2006-103, issued May 2, 2006. Although other university employees may have received more compensation, the compensation they received from state and student sources was less than that of the employees included in these tables.
We obtained information from the university's Corporate Personnel System (CPS) and from the university's Office of the President (president's office) that allowed us to identify state appropriations and student tuition funding sources. However, the president's office was unable to assign eight fund groups, and a portion of a ninth, to the funding sources we identified because the source is either not represented in the categories we defined or is a mixture of the categories. Because it was not feasible to individually evaluate each fund contained within these fund groups—which numbered approximately 3,000—we included the fund groups in our selection of highly compensated individuals to avoid excluding relevant individuals. However, for the reasons described above, we present the "Other" funds discretely.
The compensation items listed in the tables for each employee are those contained in the CPS. The campuses used approximately 800 different compensation descriptions in fiscal year 2004–05, and many descriptions are vague, such as "SELF SUPPORT PROG-BYA 120," which represents compensation for teaching additional classes. Presented next to each campus description is the category the bureau used to classify the compensation item.
The tables include only the compensation that an employee received during fiscal year 2004–05 according to the CPS. Based on CPS data and information from the president's office, we also list the life insurance provided to these individuals and note whether they participate in the senior management severance pay plan. The president's office and campuses reviewed the contents of these tables and suggested changes to improve their accuracy. We made changes to the data when they were able to provide us appropriate evidence to do so.
As noted in the Scope and Methodology section of our report, we were unable to assure ourselves of the reliability of the data in the CPS. Although we conducted procedures to attempt to ensure the reliability of the CPS data we reviewed, as required by U.S. Government Accountability Office standards, we were unable to fulfill data reliability requirements to ensure the completeness of the information in the CPS. Thus, we concluded that the data from CPS is of undetermined reliability. However, because the university indicates that the CPS is the most detailed and complete data source available of compensation information for its employees, we present information maintained in CPS in the following tables.