The College Fix

ANALYSIS: Nearly 30 different DEI programs at UC Berkeley don’t help ratio

The University of California Berkeley employs one full-time administrator for every four undergraduate students, according to a College Fix analysis.

This is an 11 percent increase in full-time administrators from the 2013-14 school year, according to info provided by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

UC Berkeley employed 6,638 administrators that year. This includes student and academic affairs divisions, IT, public relations, administrative support, maintenance, and legal and other non-academic departments.

By the 2022-23 school year, this number increased to 7,363 administrators. This works out to 263 administrators per 1,000 students, or roughly one administrator for every four students.

Many positions focus on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” This includes a “director of equity data initiatives,” a “faculty director of the othering & belonging institute,” and other positions to support nearly 30 different DEI programs.

The analysis found the instructor to teacher ratio decreased over the same time period. During the 2013-2014 school year, there were 128 instructors per 1,000 students. In 2022-2023, this ratio dropped to 120 instructors per 1,000 students.

Other universities have high ratios, including University of Wisconsin Madison, which has one administrator for every four students. Florida State University, however, has one administrator for every ten students.

UC Berkeley employs a total of 150 professionals and 250 additional students dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and sustains the programs with an annual budget of $25 million, as previously reported by The Fix.

Many diversity, equity, and inclusion employees make significantly more than office workers. Office and administrative support workers make an average of $75,341 per year, according to IPEDS data.

A scholar at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity who has done research on the factors behind the rising cost of higher education said the university has “an unusually high number of administrators.”

“Schools like UC Berkeley typically have around 160 non-instructional staff per 1000 students, according to my research at FREOPP,” Preston Cooper told The Fix. “If Berkeley’s ratio is well above 200, that suggests they have an unusually high number of administrators relative to the size of their student body.”

Cooper said DEI could contribute to the administrative levels at the public university.

Anne Baranger, the associate dean for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at UC Berkeley, makes $259,798 according to the university system.

Lasana Hotep makes at least $200,000 per year according to public records, as the director of the office of diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging. Hotep made at least $200,000 as a manager in 2022, according to the university system.

The Fix reached out to both Baranger and Hotep to confirm their salaries. Neither has responded to inquiries sent in the past week.

By contrast, Mario Telo, a professor of literature at UC Berkeley, made an annual salary of $149,642 in 2022, according to the University of California payroll database.

The Fix reached out to Public Affairs Chancellor Dan Mogulof at UC Berkeley and inquired whether the school’s DEI budget has stayed the same over the past three years. He has not responded in the past several weeks.

The African American Student Development Program gives free support to black students. There are similar, but separate, programs for students who are Asian, Pacific American, “Chicanx,” “Latinx,” and Native American.

UC Berkeley also offers a Gender Equity Resource Center, GenEq, which offers services and resources to women, hate crime victims, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and sexual harassment victims.

The website says anyone who “experiences life through the lens of a woman … past, present, future, fluid,” can take advantage of its programming.

Theatre department hires first social justice professor

UC Berkeley has also taken efforts to bring equity and inclusion into the classroom.

In 2024, UC Berkeley started its spring semester with the campus’ first social justice theater professor, Timmia DeRoy.

DeRoy is the first professor UC Berkeley has hired as a “social justice theater practitioner.” Other performing art professors do “incorporate social justice methodologies into their teaching,” according to the university news release.

According to DeRoy, the aim of social justice theater is to contribute to social “transformation.”

“Sometimes that looks like disrupting. Sometimes that looks like protest. But often that also looks like people from a specific community that have been marginalized developing their own performance techniques to tell their own stories,” DeRoy states on Berkeley Voices.

The Fix reached out to DeRoy to ask for comment, but the scholar did not respond.

The university has also required DEI statements for hiring.

Job applicants should have a “[c]ear knowledge of, experience with, and interest in dimensions of diversity that result from different identities,” according to documents obtained by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

MORE: Northwestern employs 1 admin for every 2 students

IMAGE: University of California Berkeley

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter