Daily tip Troian
Volume LXXII, Number 52
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Wednesday, December 7, 1977
Staff found to earn 13% less compared to other schools
By Carla Schalman
Staff Writer
A survey of 30 staff positions here and at other institutions . found that personnel in positions here receive 13% less salary than those in comparable jobs elsewhere.
The survey was conducted by the Office of Personnel.
The office chose 30 positions encompassing 720 people for the survey and sent the job descriptions to other institutions. Attached questionnaires asked if these institutions hire people in these positions and what salaries the positions are paid.
Institutions surveyed include California State University at Los Angeles, Los Angeles City College, UCLA, Claremont Men’s College, California Institute of Technology, Occidental, Stanford, the County of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The office also used a published report by the Merchants and Manufacturers, an organization that surveyed salaries in the commercial sector.
Over 600 job titles exist at the university.
The survey focused on three job areas: clerical/technical, operations and maintenance, and administrative positions. Salaries of surveyed clerical/ technical positions were found to be an average of 14.82% lower than at other institutions. Salaries of surveyed operations and maintenance positions were found to be 9.7% lower and those of surveyed professional administrative positions were found to be 6.5% lower.
The greatest need for salary increase is in the secretarial area, said Jack Schneider, director of personnel.
Other positions far behind /
the average salary are computer operator, staff accountant, departmental administrative assistant and keypunch programmer, he said.
This is the third year the survey has been done. Since the initial survey, overall salaries have increased 23%, Schneider said.
Three years ago an equity fund of about $230,000 was established to provide additional money for salaries in special individual cases. This money was initially allocated to the lowest-paid positions and last year was given to those who had been in the positions at least four years and were still earning lower salaries.
Money this year is tight and the survey attempted to look at the worst cases and create a baseline for salary recommendations. Schneider said.
(continued on page 8)
University reflects national trend toward grade inflation slowdown
SHOP AROUND — Pete Vasquez contemplates ceramic oil lamps at the annual Christmas Crafts Faire held this week in Alumni Park. Today is the last day of the faire, which provides an opportunity for some inexpensive present buying. DT photo by Sue Adams.
Single form replaces state financial aid applications
By Jim Saenz
Staff Writer
A single application for state aid has been developed for undergraduate financial assistance by the Student Aid Commission for the 1978-79 academic year.
The new program will require students to complete a single application form and financial statement that replaces the various separate applications that have been distributed in the past by the commission.
Under the new procedure, applicants will be required to fill out only a Student Aid Application and, if the applicant wishes, he can request that it also be used as a federal Basic Educational Opportunity Grant application as well, said Linda Berkshire, director of student aid programs.
"The Student Aid Application will simply be used as a need-analysis document for federal, state and institutional evaluations. However, each student will still be required to fill out a separate application for each specific state and institutional award,” Berkshire said.
Current college sophomores or juniors can qualify three ways for state scholarships.
One is a mandatory grade-point average (GPA) of 3.5 or above, regardless of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. All students are still required, however, to complete the SAT
Those students whose GPAs
are less than 3.5 can qualify by having a total SAT score of 1,200 or better and a college GPA of 2.5.
Students who don’t qualify for either of the first two alternatives, but have an SAT score of 800, wall be ranked by their college GPA. Scholarships will be granted to financially eligible students by GPA rank until the number of awards authorized by law is fully committed.
(continued on page 6)
By Gigi Golden
Staff Writer
What do grades really mean?
This was the question asked a few years ago by university administrators, graduate and professional schools and large numbers of “A” students unable to find jobs or get into graduate schools in spite of their college records.
It was labeled grade inflation and it peaked nationwide and at the university about 1971.
The problem? Grade-point averages for students were increasing rapidly, while those students’ performances on standardized tests showed a decline in scholastic ability.
The reasons?
“The Vietnam War had a lot to do with it,” said Juanita Mantovani, assistant dean for student affairs in the humanities division of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She said during the late 60s many of the faculty were afraid to give a student the deserved grade, for fear that student would get drafted.
Mantovani is head of an academic standards subcommittee on grade inflation.
In addition to the war, Mantovani said a whole movement, which questioned the relevancy of grades, developed in the late 60s. “Faculty started to put less emphasis on grades and reevaluated the whole process of education,” she said.
As a result, more A s were given. In some classes up to 60% of the students received A's.
Yet performance on tests, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the Medical College Admissions Test, the Graduate Record Exam and others indicated that students were not smarter, nor was the educational process any better.
“The pendulum has swung the other way.” said Joseph Kertes, assistant dean of student affairs in the division of social sciences and communications in Letters, Arts and Sciences. “The trend (of grade deflation) is not only at the university, but nationwide.”
No actual statistics are available that show the decline of GPA or percentage of A's given at the university. "That kind of information isn't kept,” said James Jones, executive director of Student Administrative Services.
But Mantovani said that although no statistics are kept of overall GPA at the university — “because there is no computer system for that” — the grade inflation situation has improved.
"It’s easy to latch on to some statistics that will tell you if grades are going up or down.” Mantovani said. But she questions the validity of “those statistics.
"There are so many factors involved in the issue of grade inflation that you have to be careful about what it really means," she said.
(continued on page 2)
Survey shows 80% of students sexually active
By Lois Pitter
SUIT Writer
Eighty per cent of the students here are sexually active, according to statistics from a survey conducted by Laura Schlessinger, a professor in the Biological Sciences Department.
The survey, which will be published in next Sunday’s Herald Examiner, incorporated the responses of 125 university students, 70 females and 55 males, in her Biology 402 (“Human Sexuality”) course. Schlessinger noted that 86% didn’t associate sex with guilt feelings.
But 407c of the male and 62% of the female students don’t tell their parents about sexual activity. “They don’t admit to the next generation that they’re sexual but most of them are getting it on,” she said.
“It's denying that there’s sexuality between the generations. The older people deny the younger generation’s sexuality and the younger generation deny the older
generation's sexuality.”
The students participating in the study ranged in age between 18 and 22 and represented each undergraduate class.
Nine percent of the males questioned were virgins compared to 19% of the females. The survey also showed 53% of the sexually active females and 64% of those males had experienced intercourse by the age of 17, indicating that many probably were active before they entered college.
"This is an answer to all the parents who think kids are warped once they get here (the university),” she said.
Schlessinger noted students’ changing attitudes towards marrying virgins. Only 12% of the men (and no women) want to marry virgins while 307r didn't care either way and the majority (58%) responded with an emphatic no. However, 82% of the males preferred to have their female partners know the same or more about sex than they did. . . „
The women were in total agreement about men having more knowledge about sex and none of them wanted the men to know less.
The existence of love in a relationship preceding sexual involvement was not a requirement according to 55% of the women and 80% of the men. Also 46% of the men and 37% of the women said they would would engage in sex with casual friends or someone they had just met.
In the survey. 64% of the females and 40% of the male students felt that men and women have equal sex needs but only 4% of the men and 13% of the women felt women had a greater need.
There was greater importance placed on the existence of sex in womens’s lives (96rr) while only 86% of the males regarded sex as moderate to very important in their lives.
One-third of the women masturbate while two-thirds of the men do.
(continued on page 6)