Author: admin

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    Hearing CalPERS Rate Hike for Long-Term Care Insurance

    Byadmin

    San Francisco’s Poor House As prior blog posts have noted, although UC is not under CalPERS, UC employees – because they were state employees – were invited to enroll in CalPERS’ long-term care insurance plan.  Such plans ostensibly protect enrollees against potential catastrophic expenses that can be entailed in major health crises.  Those who did enroll now find themselves facing large rate hikes or accepting an alternative less generous plan.  Many who enrolled did so assuming that CalPERS would protect them from such hikes.  Yours truly has encountered a number of folks who now find themselves in this predicament.  CalPERS…

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    More on the UCLA-Wake Forest University Monkey Dispute

    Byadmin

    An earlier post noted that there is a dispute between UCLA and Wake Forest U over joint operation of a primate research center.  You can find the earlier post – and a note that yours truly really doesn’t have the story on what led to the conflict – at:http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/03/complicated-monkey-business-involving.html The parties have been told that if they don’t agree to avoid a jury trial and allow a judge to decide the case, it will be a long time before a trial can be scheduled.  The report can be found at:http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_326729b0-b741-11e2-9eca-001a4bcf6878.html

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    How Big Is the Planned UCLA Hotel?

    Byadmin

    Once a year, the LA Business Journal provides a list of the largest 100 hotels in LA County ranked by number of rooms.  The latest list appears in the May 6 edition.  Of the top 100, the smallest is Shutters at the Beach with 198 rooms.  The planned UCLA hotel is on a par with the W Hotel in Westwood (258 rooms), a bit smaller than the Hotel Palomar (Wilshire – a few blocks east of Westwood Blvd. with 264 rooms), and notably larger than the Angeleno (Sunset and the 405 with 209 rooms).  In rough terms, 25-30% of the…

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    Ignorance May Be Bliss – But Ignoring Won’t Be

    Byadmin

    This post is going to be a bit complicated.  But note that you can think of ignorance in two ways.  One is just not knowing.  The other is a state of ignoring.  So here is what the powers-that-be at UC, systemwide and campus level, should know, and what they may be ignoring.  First, by now, everyone knows UC has an unfunded pension liability.  It grows over time unless adequate contributions are put into the pension fund.  Second, UC maintains a liquid cash reserve on hand to deal with ongoing needs for payments.  It maintains the reserve both for systemwide needs…

  • UC Seems to Be Opting Out (for now)

    Byadmin

    Inside Higher Ed today has a lengthy article on attempts to measure the “value added” of college education.  It notes that a group of public universities to which UC belongs has been promoting various forms of testing to measure student value added – under pressure from state legislatures from around the country.  (Value added testing involves giving tests to incoming freshmen and again when they graduate to see if their scores have risen.)  Other forms of testing are also being promoted.  UC has – so far – opted out of following the herd and participating, according to the article.  Will…

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    How to be really famous at Harvard

    Byadmin

    If you are wondering what he said, it had to do with Prof. Ferguson’s recent “contribution” to the advance of macroeconomic analysis: Well-known Harvard professor Niall Ferguson apologized Saturday for what he called “stupid and tactless remarks” suggesting sexual orientation influenced the polices of famed economist John Maynard Keynes.On Thursday, Ferguson suggested that the British economist lacked foresight about future generations because he was childless, and that he was childless because he was gay. Ferguson made the comments during a conference in Carlsbad, Calif., during a discussion on Keynes’ famous line, “The long run is a misleading guide to current…

  • More So Than Ever

    Byadmin

    Last week, we noted that you can enhance your reputation for erudition by starting your answers to any question with “So…”  http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-to-answer-any-question-with.html It turns out that was only half the story.  You can double the impression by starting all your questions with “So…” Correction: Actually, it was the program of 5-5-2013, not 5-4-2013, although the title on the video says otherwise.  But, so what?

  • Technical Frustrations With Missing Links

    Byadmin

    There are occasional technical frustrations involved in blogging.  Some are inherent in the process.  We often provide links to articles or other items.  If those links change, or if the items are taken down, the links will no longer operate.  So if you go back to past postings, you may encounter such missing links and we cannot in general remedy that situation. Where is it? In some cases, however, we have posted audios or videos of public meetings such as Regents sessions.  Some of those postings were originally put on a Facebook page maintained by yours truly.  It appears that…

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    May Regents Meeting: Preliminary Agenda Posted

    Byadmin

    The Regents’ May 15-16 meeting agenda has been posted in preliminary format.  It lists the days and times.  (Apparently May 14 – which had been listed earlier – was dropped as a meeting day.)  Below is the agenda as of today.  The attachments are not yet posted.  Yours truly has highlighted a few items of potential special interest in italics that may be listed in more detail in the days to come. Agenda: Wednesday, May 15 8:30 am Committee of the Whole (open session – includes Public Comment session) 9:30 am Committee on Oversight of the DOE Laboratories (open session)…

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    Cap Removed

    Byadmin

    Earlier posts on this blog have noted the controversy surrounding the lifetime cap on UC student health insurance.  Most students are healthy and never hit the cap.  But if a major illness occurs, the insurance, which students must have unless they have some other coverage, could run out. The new federal healthcare law generally forbids such caps but UC was able to continue it as a self-insured plan.  It appears, however, that after complaints about the limit, the cap will be removed. (We also noted in a recent post that UC-Berkeley was planning to pull out of the UC-wide plan…