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No Mandate for Online Ed at UC: Let’s Pretend!

Byuclafaculty
Our post last night that the governor line-item vetoed his own $10 million mandate in the new state budget for online courses at UC is correct in a literal sense. But what appears to have happened is that UC – which doesn’t like overt mandates which challenge its constitutional autonomy – agreed that it would spend $10 million on online ed anyway if the governor would just remove the mandate language.
From Inside Higher Ed today: …“We’ve made a commitment to provide the $10 million, so it’s not going to affect our plans,” said Steve Montiel, a spokesman for the UC president’s office…
In effect, without the mandate UC can pretend to decide freely to do what the governor wants. So in the spirit of the deal, let’s pretend:

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Byuclafaculty

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Jerry Brown Looks for an Online Course that Requires No Human Interaction

Byuclafaculty

At the Regents meeting of January 22, 2014, Gov. Brown seems to be searching for an online course that requires no human interaction.  Such a course, he reasons, could have unlimited enrollment because it is completely self-contained.  He gets some pushback from UC Provost Dorr, who thinks courses should have such interaction.  You can hear this excerpt at the link below.  The entire meeting of the Committee on Educational Policy of the Regents was posted yesterday.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tYFLJvrE3g?feature=player_detailpage]

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Jerry Brown Suggests Master Plan is Dated

Byuclafaculty

Our previous post covered the Jan. 22 meeting of the Regents’ Committee on Educational Policy.  As noted, there was discussion of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, considered a major accomplishment of Brown’s father when he was governor. Below is a link to Brown’s comments in which he suggested the Plan was now dated.  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RmjI4gVync?feature=player_detailpage]