Author: admin

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    Hip-hop UC professor battles chemical company citing pesticide impact on frogs

    Byadmin

    An interesting tale appears today in California Watch: Allies of Syngenta, a company that produces a ubiquitous but controversial herbicide, have continued attacks on UC Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes, a leading critic of the chemical who has fought the company through outrageous e-mails laced with rap lyrics, original rhymes and raunchy put-downs… …UC Berkeley has defended the professor’s free speech rights. Hayes is preparing to submit a new study co-authored with dozens of scientists around the world that says atrazine is a reproductive toxin. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is planning to hold more hearings on the chemical’s use. And…

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    Red Balloon

    Byadmin

    I came across something called the “Red Balloon Project” sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). No UCs belong to this group, although some CSUs do. Exactly what it entails is not clear – I suspect there is a fair amount of impetus for online education, etc., involved. From the AASCU website (excerpts): http://www.aascu.org/programs/redballoon/index.htm The Red Balloon Project is a national initiative to re-imagine and then to redesign undergraduate education for the 21st century. Public colleges and universities are facing a complex set of challenges: transformational changes in technology, reductions in funding, shifting student demographics, growth…

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    UCLA Used to Be Normal

    Byadmin

    UCLA, when it first was created as the Southern Branch of the University of California, operated in an old state “normal” school on Vermont Avenue where LA City College is now located. If you have been in that neighborhood, you may have noted that LACC is at the corner of Vermont and Normal Street. Above is a photo of the California State Normal School. (Normal schools were teacher training institutions. A quick internet, dictionary, and encyclopedia search failed to determine why they were called “normal.”) UPDATE: The comment by Andy Sabl seems to have it right. Normal school is a…

  • California Spends About $7 Per $1000 of Personal Income on Public Higher Ed

    Byadmin

    The image above is not too clear. I have put a black rectangle above the bar for California to help identify it. The chart shows – by state – spending in 2009-10 on public higher education per $1000 of personal income. For California, the figure (which includes community colleges) is around $7, somewhat above the U.S. average of $6.60. The data include federal stimulus funds for that fiscal year. You can get a clearer image by going to the source document. The chart is from a College Board report entitled “Trends in College Pricing 2010” (page 19) available at http://trends.collegeboard.org/downloads/College_Pricing_2010.pdf…

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    How Green Is My Campus?

    Byadmin

    Inside Higher Ed points today to something called “College Sustainability Report Card 2011” which offers web “green” grades for various universities and colleges, including the UCs below. The folks behind the ratings tend to downgrade UCs for having foundations with investments that are not specifically green. The foundation trustees, I am sure, would argue that they are pursuing another type of green. Anyway, the ratings with some explanation are at the web addresses below. The folks behind the ratings are at the “Sustainable Endowments Institute.” It describes itself as follows: Founded in 2005, the Institute is a special project of…

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    Two Unclear Issues in the Yudof Pension Proposal Clarified

    Byadmin

    Our previous post reproduced the letter from President Yudof explaining what he will be recommending to the Regents in mid-November regarding changes in the UC retirement system. (The Regents are expected to make their formal decision in December.) In one sense, the letter was no surprise since it recommended a lower-tier pension for new hires of the defined-benefit variety. Essentially, Yudof is opting for a version of what has been previous termed Option C, a defined-benefit plan that is NOT “integrated” with Social Security (as Options A and B were). The letter, however, makes no mention of the proposal that…

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    Letter to UC from President Yudof about proposed changes to UC retirement benefits

    Byadmin

    October 26, 2010 Dear Colleagues: I am writing to share with you the recommendations I plan to discuss in November with the UC Board of Regents about changes to the University’s post-employment benefits programs. When I established the Post Employment Benefits Task Force, I made clear that the proposed changes needed to satisfy two critical objectives: Help address our financial challenges, and preserve good post employment benefits in support of UC’s commitment to excellence and in recognition of the vital role our faculty and staff play in the quality and delivery of UC’s service to the public. I believe these…

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    Credit Card Deals and the University

    Byadmin

    An article in today’s Insider Higher Ed notes that the Federal Reserve has made available info on deals between credit card issuers and universities. Above is a table from the Fed’s report showing some information on the UC-systemwide alumni group and UCLA and their deals with credit card firms. It isn’t as legible as I would like but you can get the report including the table above at http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/creditcard/2010/downloads/CCAP_October_web.pdf An excerpt from the article in Insider Higher Ed: Credit Card Companies Pay Millions to Colleges (excerpt) Inside Higher Ed, October 26, 2010 Credit card companies made more than $83 million…

  • Putting a Price on Professors

    Byadmin

    Putting a Price on Professors: A battle in Texas over whether academic value can be measured in dollars and cents (excerpt) Wall St. Journal, 10/22/10, Stephanie Simon and Stephanie Banchero A 265-page spreadsheet, released last month by the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, amounted to a profit-and-loss statement for each faculty member, weighing annual salary against students taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained. Ms. Johnson came out very much in the black; in the period analyzed—fiscal year 2009—she netted the public university $279,617. Some of her colleagues weren’t nearly so profitable. Newly hired assistant professor Charles Criscione,…

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    Final Report from Committee on the Future (Except It is a Draft)

    Byadmin

    There is now a draft report on the UCOP website – entitled DRAFT final report (so it is final but still a draft?) – from the UC Committee on the Future. There are not a lot of surprises. Recommendations are included to speed up undergrad degrees, make transfers easier from community colleges, pursue online education, change the word fee to tuition, have cohort-based tuition schedules, achieve more efficiencies, do more fund raising, wring more money out of grants, have more out-of-state students who pay full freight, etc. Maybe the most controversial is differential tuition across the campuses. The draft report…