UCLA Housing Tract

* There is a significant reason UCLA faculty members are not purchasing homes in “The Bluffs” (Oct. 22). Most of us could never hope to qualify financially for such homes, which range from $400,000 to $600,000.

Your article does a great injustice to the general perception of a professor’s life when it states that the average salary is $70,000. That is the average for a full professor, a level which many in the university never achieve. Under normal promotion and progress, a full-time faculty member will take at least 14 years to reach the lowest level of full professor. Even then, promotion is based on rigorous standards and is often denied. Currently, the salary for those at the top of associate professor (the level below promotion to full professor) is under $50,000 in the vast majority of departments. Developments such as “The Bluffs” were meant to attract highly visible, high-level professors, such as Nobel Prize laureates, whose salaries are far beyond those of most teachers at UCLA.

CAROL FISHER SORGENFREI

Associate Professor of Theater, UCLA

* UCLA Chancellor Charles Young should resign. Perhaps a second career could be in real estate, because his first is definitely not in education. Where are his priorities? How can he support subsidized palatial housing for faculty when he is closing the library school? It is poor judgment and lack of leadership. As a taxpayer and UCLA alumna, I want to see UCLA produce librarians and not houses! Shame on him.

JANET MINAMI

Woodland Hills