In the world of chemistry, UC Berkeley's Carolyn Bertozzi is a hot shot.

She is developing new ways of detecting cancer and treating tuberculosis. A long list of major awards graces her resume, including a MacArthur "genius" grant.

Stanford and the California Institute of Technology already have tried to poach her. Others are in the process. Working at a wealthy private institution certainly would mean a higher paycheck.

UC Berkeley officials have watched in alarm during California's fiscal crisis as schools like Harvard and MIT increasingly have sought Cal's most brilliant faculty. Private schools with fatter budgets than Berkeley's offer its stars better research setups and salaries sometimes 25 percent to 30 percent higher than Cal can.

If UC Berkeley professors leave for more lucrative posts elsewhere, it could have broad economic implications for the region. The high-tech industry, venture capital investment and job creation overall could suffer, argues Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Gray.

"It's a very difficult problem for us."

Cal is holding onto three-quarters of the professors who recently have received private school offers. But it's doing so at a price. Matching salary offers creates disparities and discontent within departments. Systemwide, those matches are siphoning away money needed to hire hundreds of faculty members to keep up with retirements and a growing college-age population.

Officials fear that this won't be economically feasible forever, and that brilliant faculty in the midst of important research simply will leave.

"If I can't convince people that we can bootstrap our way to having a university that offers the kind of facilities that other universities have and a salary that's appropriate ... people will succumb to these offers," said Geoffrey Owen, dean of biological sciences. "Once you lose two or three key colleagues, it becomes less important to be here because the kind of interactions you depend on are being stripped away from you. You start to think, 'Maybe I would be better off at Harvard or down the road at Stanford.'"

For Bertozzi, a lower salary isn't the biggest frustration. Budget cuts make her wonder if she could do better science elsewhere, even though Berkeley still has the nation's top-ranked chemistry department, according to U.S. News & World Report.

She has stayed in part because she believes in the chronicled mission of UC: to provide a first-rate public education at a minimal cost to many people who otherwise couldn't afford it.

Still, "I have to do what's best for my science," said Bertozzi, 37. "The salary isn't the major issue for me, but it doesn't make you feel any better."

Chemistry professor Paul Alivisatos, 44, also has had a number of offers but plans to stay. He doesn't foresee a huge exodus.

"There are a lot of students who are the first ones in their family to get a higher education and they had to struggle to get here. And that is a wonderful thing to participate in."

Open to outside offers

The average annual salary for full professors in the 10-campus UC system is $95,815, while the average at the four private institutions with which UC likes to compare itself is $116,781. Berkeley, however, sees its competition as the elite private universities, not the four public universities UC sometimes uses for comparison, where the average salary is just $86,619.

At Cal, full professors earn an average of $117,300, while their counterparts at Harvard earn $150,800.

Faculty at public universities long have had lower salaries than those at private institutions, but the fiscal constraints on public institutions right now are different, said John Curtis, a researcher at the American Association of University Professors.

As states across the nation struggle with budget deficits, public higher education has faced deep cuts at the same time that enrollment has grown. And public universities don't have the large endowments private institutions do. Harvard University's endowment exceeds $18 billion, while Berkeley's is $1.8 billion. Moreover, with 33,000 undergraduates and graduates, Berkeley has more than 10,000 more students than Harvard does.

"It's a real strain on public-sector institutions," Curtis said.

Owen, the dean of biological sciences, has had to fend off a number of raids on his biology professors. In the last 18 months, he has had to give 14 professors, about 10 percent of his faculty, more equipment and higher salaries to keep them from leaving. It doesn't help the university's case that the Bay Area has one of the nation's most expensive housing markets.

"So far we've been remarkably successful in keeping people," he said, adding: "We're constantly having to provide concessions to people."

Take, for instance, neurobiology professor Ehud Isacoff. The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla tried to lure him with a higher salary and the promise of a couple of million dollars for his research and facilities.

Berkeley matched the Scripps salary, and he stayed, even though he has to get grants to generate the research money.

"People love it at Berkeley," he said. "On top of being able to do good research, they just get attached to the place. If the disparity gets too big, that just won't last."

He says he remains open to outside offers.

Cutting edge, for now

The competition to keep and hire new people has knocked Cal's salary scale out of whack. Sixty-five percent of new faculty in 2003 made more than the salary scale called for, compared with 27 percent in 1999.

The proportion of the entire faculty with off-scale salaries has increased to 21.5 percent from 12 percent in 1999.

"If we have a documented offer from a true peer institution and the faculty member is someone we want to keep, we'll match the offer," said Gray, executive vice chancellor and provost. "The point is, we can't afford to keep doing that."

Especially now, when the campus is 297 permanent faculty members short of the 1,930 it needs to maintain a student-faculty ratio of 18.7-to-1. The ratio already is more than 20-to-1. Many private universities have a student-faculty ratio of 10-to-1.

The reason anyone should care about any of this, say UC officials and faculty, is that the university has a big impact on the state's economy.

Between 2002 and 2011, UC spending will generate roughly $144 billion in gross state product, $56 billion in California state and local government tax revenues and more than 2.36 million jobs statewide, according to a study commissioned by the university and released last year.

"Economically, what Berkeley does for the state is incredible," said chemistry professor Charles Harris. "If you look at the sciences and the startup companies that come directly out of the faculty, it's a huge plus for the state. If the university isn't a first-tier university, you're not going to get people who are going to do that kind of thing. You're not going to get the best students in the world coming here. It's going to go downhill."

In a comparison study, Gray found the Bay Area was the region with both the greatest number of top-ranked graduate departments, with 72, including all area academic institutions, and the greatest number of the fastest-growing high-tech companies, with 15.

UC Berkeley remains, for now, at the cutting edge in such fields as engineering, says materials science professor emeritus Kal Sastry. Its Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, he says, mixes the work of engineers with research by scholars in physics, economics, law and other fields so that teaching of "engineering is turned inside out" at UC Berkeley.

"The models of 21st-century education are not lost on Harvard, Princeton and Stanford," Sastry says. "These are the ones really trying to get out and come after some of the best exemplars of this educational structure at Berkeley. That raiding is going to be pretty tough to deal with."

PROFESSORS' PAY

Dated April 2002-03, these figures are averages among all departments for full professors at each university.

Public universities

UC Berkeley -- $117,300

UC system -- $95,815

Cal State Hayward -- $84,600

Private universities

California Institute of Technology -- $131,400

Stanford University -- $137,300

Harvard University -- $150,800

Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- $127,600

Princeton University -- $138,600