Back of the envelope reckoning

As reported by many sources, including today's WSJ, the UC system employs around 180,000 people. If I wanted to save $200M in salaries, that would amount to a little over a thousand dollars each — that does not come to an 8% cut, unless the average salary at UC is around $12,500.

OK, assume half of those 180,000 are on soft money or do not otherwise draw money from the general fund (a highly unrealistic assumption). Even then, it would come to about $2,000 each in salary cuts. Assuming a 7% average cut (somewhere in between 4% and 10%), then the average salary at UC would have to be around $32K. This last figure is slightly more realistic, but still one can't avoid the feeling that we have been dealing with a very shrewd car salesman.