For Your Information: Request from Berkeley Faculty Assn.

Byuclafaculty

The request to circulate the item below was received by Prof. Meranze of the UCLA Faculty Assn. board from the UC-Berkeley Faculty Assn.:

Berkeley Faculty Association Calls for Increased Support of Grad Student Employees: At the end of September, the current 3 year-contract of UAW 2865 representing UC Academic Student Employees (GSIs, readers and tutors) expired and ASEs are now working without a contract. UCOP Labor Relations and UAW 2865 have not yet reached an official “impasse.” But the Berkeley Faculty Association is concerned that UCOP’s last offer of a 2% rise doesn’t come close to eliminating the gap with our comparator institutions, based on a 2010 UCOP survey.  Currently the 10-month (49.5%) GSI stipend is $17,655 for an incoming student, though our campus financial aid office estimates that $21,608 is required to cover the cost of living for 9 months while the campus desired target for doctoral students is $26,000. The Report of the Taskforce on Competitiveness in Academic Graduate Student Support, adopted by UC Academic Council in June 2012, declared “rising tuition and uncompetitive stipends threaten to seriously undermine program quality” and asks that additional resources be allocated for net stipends for academic doctoral support.  On the discussion agenda of the Regents meeting this week, a report from the Committee on Educational Policy restates the situation: “It has become more difficult for UC departments and faculty to offer competitive financial support for their doctoral students.” In letters sent up to UCOP on September 16 and October 3, 33 Department Chairs at Berkeley and 21 Chairs at San Diego asked the University to raise the GSI base wage so as to enable our PhD programs to stay competitive, citing the unsustainable practice of having to top up students’ support from scarce and unpredictable resources. Please lend your voice as a UC faculty member by signing this petition, which will be sent to Director of UCOP Labor Relations Peter Chester.

Similar Posts

| |

USC Has a Bad Patch

Byuclafaculty

We posted yesterday about the news from UC-Berkeley that many earthquake-prone buildings are located in southern California – including in Westwood.  The Westwood-Century City Patch, in picking up the story from the LA Times, blamed USC instead of UC-B, at least in the headline.  See above.  Probably just as well.  Who wants to be the bearer of bad tidings?.

|

UC-Berkeley Releases Its Earthquake Survey to the LA Times

Byuclafaculty

We have followed the LA Times‘ story of the concern about certain concrete buildings in the southern California area which might be at risk in a major earthquake.  The Times identified some buildings in an earlier story but noted that UC-Berkeley had a survey list of buildings.  Berkeley was reluctant to provide the list because its intent was to get an estimate of the number of such buildings based on public records rather than evaluate each building directly.  It has now provided the Times with the list, along with a legal disclaimer.  The Times now has an interactive map on…

| |

Quake Response

Byuclafaculty

We noted in a prior post there would be increased attention to earthquake risks in LA around the 20th anniversary of the Jan. 27, 1994 Northridge quake.  One item that began to develop was an LA Times article indicating that various buildings were at risk in the LA area, even though they were thought safe when constructed.  One of the buildings in Westwood is owned by UCLA, which asserted that it had been upgraded.  It was also reported that a team of researchers at Berkeley had compiled a list of such buildings, but was not making the list available due…

| |

Is the ball still in their court or has the train left the station?

Byuclafaculty

Hey! Let’s rebuild the old stadium! Sorry to mix metaphors.  But Inside Higher Ed today has a long story on Berkeley athletics which have recently been in the news for low graduation rates and problems in funding a stadium upgrade.  A white paper from the Berkeley Center for the Study of Higher Education suggests that the program is running as an autonomous and relatively uncontrolled business operation. It is written by a former vice chancellor – who can now tell all -and a Berkeley grad student. See http://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/publications/docs/ROPS.CSHE_.12.13.Cummins%26Hextrum.CalAthletics.1.6.2014.pdf and http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/08/highlighting-berkeley-paper-explores-academic-damage-expanding-independent-athletics The issue is whether control can be retaken or whether…

| | | | | | | |

Yesterday’s news

Byuclafaculty

Christmas day tends to be a slow news day.  However, for those who didn’t see it, the LA Times carried a front page story about UC’s online offerings which allow cross-campus credits.  You can find the article at: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-uc-online-20131222,0,6798231.story Blog readers will be familiar with these offerings.  We noted in a prior post that UCLA seems to be a taker rather than a giver in this endeavor.  That is, other campuses’ online courses are available to UCLA students.  But UCLA is not offering courses to the other campuses.  Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, and Riverside seem to be the offerers.   Now, how…

UC Berkeley prof says its future is as a ‘finishing school for the superrich of Asia’

Byuclafaculty

The headline for this posting is a direct quote from a headline to an article in the San Francisco Business Times which you can find at www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2013/12/16/uc-berkeley-finishing-school-asia-rich.html The (economics) professor in question is Brad DeLong.  For your information, below is the portion of his post on the Berkeley Blog that deals with the subject of that headline: …(Partially) a Finishing School for the Superrich of Asia The first priority of the chancellor is to successfully execute a strategy to keep Berkeley great–to reinforce the reasons that it is worthwhile keeping a university like Berkeley around at all.The days of Clark Kerr…