Month: February 2013

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    Finally, some common sense about juries and why it matters to UCLA

    Byuclafaculty

    Editorial: Anyone who works for UCLA, or any local public entity, and has been called for jury duty knows that the jury pool in LA County is not a random sample of the population.  Apart from the fact that only citizens serve on juries (but anyone can be tried), public sector institutions are likely to have liberal policies for jury duty and jury leave, unlike many private employers.  Those called who show up (many don’t) are often excused for hardship reasons, or excused from lengthy trials, because of the economic hardship of missing work.  Yours truly’s last experience was being…

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    Tobacco Tax Initiative for UC & CSU Student Aid Advances

    Byuclafaculty

    Earlier posts on this blog in late December noted that an initiative had been filed to impose a tobacco tax with revenue largely earmarked for student aid at UC and CSU.  Unlike many initiatives filed by amateurs that go nowhere, this one was filed by a law firm noted for election work.  So there must be some serious funding behind it.  Whether there is enough serious money to fund a signature-gathering campaign is unclear.  In addition, a tobacco tax would attract well-funded opposition from tobacco firms.  (Remember that a  tobacco tax initiative for cancer research was narrowly defeated last June.)…

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    UC-Irvine Gets Some Good Press

    Byuclafaculty

    Warm welcome to University of California Irvine By Anat Maor, Jerusalem Post, 2-17-13 When I first arrived at the University of California in Irvine, I didn’t know a single person there. To tell you the truth, I was feeling apprehensive about my new role as a professor in Israel studies here, especially given the reputation of the school. This was the same university which saw confrontations between student protesters and Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2010, which culminated in arrests and the Zionist Organization of America branding UCI as “a campus that permitted bigotry.” Yet after just one month I…

  • Rethinking Professor Snodgrass

    Byuclafaculty

    A recent posting on this blog replayed President Yudof’s comment that online courses have to be more than putting a camera in the back of the room and letting Professor Snodgrass drone on. You can replay his comments below for your listening pleasure.  But maybe the Snodgrass approach has merit at this time. Note that UC-Berkeley, among other universities, has put courses that essentially are video recordings of courses on YouTube for free. Anyone can view them.  It’s a relatively costless production method. You can find one such course at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMV45tHCYNI&list=EC4BBB74C7D2A1049C At a modest cost, those now “taking” such courses could…

  • The Wrong Kind of Hike

    Byuclafaculty

    CalPERS enrollees receive notice of long-term care rate hikes 2/20/13, Sacramento Bee, Jon Ortiz [excerpt] With an 85 percent premium hike looming, government workers and retirees covered by CalPERS’ costliest long-term care insurance policies face a crucial decision: Swallow the increase or get out of a program they have been paying into for years. The reality of the increase literally came home this week as letters from CalPERS hit the mailboxes of 148,000 policyholders. The fund’s board last year voted to raise premiums for the 90 percent of insured members who bought the top-tier plan – lifetime coverage and inflation protection for…

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    The Less the State Pays, the Better Our Credit Rating

    Byuclafaculty

    From the UC-Berkeley Daily Californian: Fitch Ratings announced Thursday that bonds issued by the University of California have been rated AA+.The UC Board of Regents has issued $1.7 billion of AA+ bonds with a stable rating outlook to be sold by negotiation the week of Feb. 25. Fitch cites the university’s exceptional reputation and successful fiscal management as primary reasons for the bonds’ high rating…  In addition to (other) positive indicators, Fitch has stated that it regards the university’s diverse revenue base as a favorable credit factor. Decreasing reliance on state funding has provided a measure of safety against future…

  • Blame It on Professor Snodgrass

    Byuclafaculty

    New York Times editorial:…Online classes are already common in colleges, and, on the whole, the record is not encouraging. According to Columbia University’s Community College Research Center, for example, about seven million students — about a third of all those enrolled in college — are enrolled in what the center describes as traditional online courses. These typically have about 25 students and are run by professors who often have little interaction with students. Over all, the center has produced nine studies covering hundreds of thousands of classes in two states, Washington and Virginia. The picture the studies offer of the…

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    Quick! Somebody Tell the Governor!

    Byuclafaculty

    From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Professor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching Students regularly drop out of massive open online courses before they come to term. For a professor to drop out is less common. But that is what happened on Saturday in “Microeconomics for Managers,” a MOOC offered by the University of California at Irvine through Coursera. Richard A. McKenzie, an emeritus professor of enterprise and society at the university’s business school, sent a note to his students announcing that he would no longer be teaching the course, which was about to enter its fifth week. “Because…

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    A Different Kind of Grade Inflation

    Byuclafaculty

    From the Orange County Register: When Jose Carrillo went through medical school at Dartmouth College a decade ago, students would have thick books weighing down their white coats with reference information in case they needed it while making rounds… Today, Carrillo is helping third-year medical students understand neurology at UCI Medical Center in Orange… (L)oaded on the iPads in the pockets of the medical students’ coats is every textbook, note, flash card and question from their first two years of medical school – so much information that its equal in printed copies once covered entire tables. All that information sits on…