Author: admin

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    Swaps as Flops?

    Byadmin

    From the San Francisco Chronicle: Passing Proposition 30 prevented hundreds of millions of dollars in near-term cuts to the University of California, a laboratory of innovation that fuels our state’s economy. But now a large part of that lifeline might be squandered in payments to Wall Street banks, according to a report released Tuesday by researchers at UC Berkeley. Over the last decade, the UC Board of Regents has engaged in risky deals with Wall Street banks called interest rate swaps. Banks sold swaps to the university and other public institutions as insurance against rising interest rates on variable rate bonds. Under a swap agreement, borrowers…

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    Fox & Co.

    Byadmin

    Craig Fox The New York Times today has an article about the “dream team” of social scientists who advised the Obama campaign.  One team member profiled is Professor Craig Fox of the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Excerpt: Late last year Matthew Barzun, an official with the Obama campaign, called Craig Fox, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and invited him to a political planning meeting in Chicago, according to two people who attended the session. “He said, ‘Bring the whole group; let’s hear what you have to say,’ ” recalled Dr. Fox, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles. So…

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    UC and Affirmative Action

    Byadmin

    The U.S. Supreme Court will be making decisions on affirmative action in higher ed admissions soon.  UC – despite Prop 209 which bans such affirmative action – seems to be caught up in the case indirectly due to research papers and court submissions dealing with the impact of Prop 209.  Inside Higher Ed today points to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper on the impact of 209 on graduation rates of minorities from UC.  It has been contended that affirmative action programs create a kind of mismatch between students and institutions.  The working paper finds that 209, by…

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    Something to Do on Your “Day Off” – The California Economy

    Byadmin

    ROTC installed on UCLA’s old Vermont Avenue campus in 1920 Yesterday, we noted that UCLA is closed for Veterans’ Day today (Monday) even though Veterans’ Day was on Sunday.  We also noted some not-so-positive history as to why there is no instruction today on UC campuses even though it reduces class time and generally is harmful to the academic endeavor.  And we noted that private universities such as USC and CalTech find it worthwhile to continue instruction today, unlike UC. But since you do have a “day off,” albeit thanks to some prior unwise decisions by UCOP, we offer some…

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    Prop 30 Election Post Mortem

    Byadmin

    We know that Prop 30 – the governor’s tax initiative – passed with about 54% of the vote.  But the polls always showed it in a marginal position and losing support towards the end.  One possible explanation is that Prop 30 always had a plurality of “yes” votes and that undecided voters ended up voting yes in sufficient numbers to enact it. However, the political number crunchers are now raising questions about whether the pollsters’ estimates of “likely voters” were biased towards older folks who were less positive than younger voters about Prop 30. From Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee columnist:…

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    When Southern Californians are the Out-of-State Students

    Byadmin

    …as much as we enjoy your tuition. Inside Higher Ed today has an article about Southern California students attending the U of Oregon.  The idea of attracting out-of-state students who pay full freight (and thus subsidize in-state students) is hardly unique to UC.  UO is doing the same thing.  And some folks are saying that the Southern Californians recruited by UO are not serious academics.  You can find the posting at:http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/11/12/scrutiny-californians-u-oregon If you go to that post, you will find a link to a longer article about those Southern Californians: SoCal students and other out-of-staters come from families who can…

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    Veterans’ Day and some UC/UCLA History UCOP might not want raised

    Byadmin

    ROTC at UCLA’s old Vermont Avenue campus: 1928 Note that UCLA is closed tomorrow although Veterans’ Day is today.  There is a bit of history here.  UC did not always close on Veterans’ Day.  When Gray Davis was governor, however, someone complained about UC being open.  The governor couldn’t order UC to close but the powers-that-be went along with his request to do so.    As yours truly recalls it, the Faculty Welfare committee at UCLA – and possibly others in the Academic Senate – noted that with a ten-week fall quarter, cutting a day out of the term would…

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    If X = amount of algebra you learned in high school and 2X = 0, how much algebra did you learn?

    Byadmin

    A complaint about UC’s view on remedial math as taught in community colleges appeared today in the Sacramento Bee: (excerpt) Community colleges are struggling to address a huge problem: remedial mathematics. In fall 2009, 143,587 California community college students enrolled in remedial math to become eligible for college math, but only 18 percent went on to complete a college math course within three years. Given these results, policymakers are questioning the use of scarce public dollars to “pay for the same education twice.” If students didn’t learn algebra in high school, why are we paying for it again in college?…

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    Some of the best gubernatorial metaphors are mixed

    Byadmin

    Governor Brown has been emphasizing that just because the legislative Democrats now seem to have a supermajority needed to pass taxes and override vetoes on spending, it would be wrong to expect that he will let them.  We have cautioned, therefore, that expectations of big enhancements of the UC budget are misplaced. Our past posts on the governor’s analogies and metaphors have featured aircraft and Biblical references.  But some of the best metaphors are mixed. For example, in explaining how he got Prop 30 passed by voters, the governor said: “Some people began to read tea leaves incorrectly,” Brown told…