Another Take – This One from Insider Higher Ed – on Pushback on Anderson’s Self-Sufficiency Plan

Inside Higher Ed’s take on the Anderson self sufficiency issue (with a nice plug for our blog)

Pushback on a B-School’s Bold Plan (excerpts)

November 23, 2010, Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

The blog of the Faculty Association of the University of California at Los Angeles features a video, labeled “a little self-sufficient music” — the Supremes singing “Stop in the Name of Love.” The clip starts not with the famous title line of the song, but with the refrain: “Think it o-o-ver.” The reference to “self-sufficient music” is a play on the plan of the business school at UCLA to stop accepting any funds from the state — in return for greater flexibility over such matters as tuition rates. And what’s become clear in the past few weeks is that the more faculty leaders think it over, the less they like the plan, which many view as privatization…

Many Senate bodies feel that a paradigm shift of such profound significance warrants a much more complete and substantive proposal as the basis for a thorough review.”

Judy D. Olian, dean of the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, is undeterred. She said in an interview that there have been “misinterpretations” of her plan and that she would work hard to dispel them. …When Olian first discussed the idea publicly in September, she said it had been approved at the campus level and was awaiting a review by Mark G. Yudof, president of the university system…

The Academic Senate’s analysis of the business school plan questioned all kinds of assumptions. It noted, for example, that all of UCLA would applaud the business school for raising more private money to support spending that the state couldn’t provide — and that this wouldn’t require a new relationship to the state. And the report said that based on UCLA’s own data on business school faculty salaries, the university does quite well compared to leading private and public institutions — with no evidence of top scholars leaving…

Olian, the business school dean, said that the fundamental problem with the criticisms is that they assume that a change in financing would lead to many other changes. “This is not privatization. This is not changing the relationship between the school and the university, or the faculty interaction with the university,” she said. “All of the mission-related issues are, frankly, not accurately stated” in the faculty analysis, she said. “We will continue to be part of UCLA and part of the state,” she said, with all of the commitments to public service associated with such ties… She said that while faculty members are correct to note various risks of going ahead with any change, “we look at the alternative as riskier. The alternative is to continue the current model, which is troublesome for the future.” …

Full article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/23/ucla

Anyway, the Senate apparently doesn’t want Anderson to walk away from UCLA – or at least its budget: