Author: admin

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    Now here’s a bright idea…

    Byadmin

    From Inside Higher Ed today: A powerful California lawmaker wants public college students who are shut out of popular courses to attend low-cost online alternatives – including those offered by for-profit companies – and he plans to encourage the state’s public institutions to grant credit for those classes. The proposal expected today from Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat and president pro tem of the state Senate, aims to create a “statewide system of faculty-approved, online college courses,” according to a written statement from Steinberg’s office. (A spokesman for Steinberg declined to discuss the bill.) Faculty would decide which courses should make the…

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    Nowhere to go on Sepulveda Boulevard

    Byadmin

    We might as well provide a pretty picture but the real news is: Southbound Sepulveda Boulevard at Constitution Avenue will be reduced to one lane beginning Wednesday.  The closure will affect commuters between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. through Friday while traffic signal reconfiguration is completed at Constitution Avenue, according to a Metro construction notice… Source: http://centurycity.patch.com/articles/sepulveda-closure-could-snarl-westside-traffic

  • Even if tempting, don’t click on anything you find in the comments

    Byadmin

    Online fraudsters put spam-type “comments” on our blogsite regularly.  We delete them as we find them. Some explicitly claim to offer porn. Some just offer websites and invite you to click on them. Don’t click on them!  You are more likely to get something harmful to your computer than anything else. A typical comment of this type will have a message that may say something like “What a great post!”  But it generally won’t have anything specifically relevant to the posting.  If you find such a comment that is more than a day old, we may have missed it when…

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    Harvard is Shocked and Appalled that Emails Aren’t Private

    Byadmin

    We have noted that at public universities such as UC, emails you may consider private might be demanded as part of a public documents request.  At private universities, of course, those external rights of the public to see such material doesn’t exist.  However, in this day and age, nothing online can be assumed to be private.  Recently, Harvard faculty and deans were shocked and appalled to find out that the powers-that-be in the administration were snooping in deans’ emails to find a leak:  From the Boston Globe: Harvard College issued a partial apology and a lengthy statement this morning offering…

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    Windfall Revenue Remains

    Byadmin

    In January, the state controller reported a surprise windfall of about $4 billion arrived in personal income tax revenue.  It was unclear why but possibly it had to do with speculation by wealthy taxpayers about the fiscal cliff or prospective income tax changes at the federal level.  No one knows.  An interesting question was whether the windfall would unwind in February, i.e., come in below estimates.  It did unwind a bit.  But basically, there still is an unforeseen extra $4 billion in revenue so far this year. What the impact might be on the state budget for the coming year…

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    I guess the chemistry was good

    Byadmin

    UC-Irvine has put a chemistry course on the web.  But it doesn’t give credit for it and isn’t using the Coursera website (although UC-Irvine is affiliated with Coursera) because it wants to give the course away free.  As for labs, it says that if some other institution wants to offer the course, it will have to provide the labs, etc.  We are likely to see a bunch of such offerings from the campus. They show the campus is up-to-date, complying with the Regents/governor desires, and yet – in the end – they commit to nothing.  Actually, yours truly has put…

  • More in our coverage of teaching innovations

    Byadmin

    Given the hunger at the Regents and with the governor for teaching innovations – notably online education – we have in past postings noted college courses on TV in the 1950s and on radio in the 1920s. Online ed is supposed to allow students to work at their own pace.  So may we present to you now, the Skinner teaching machine: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH3ob1IRFo?feature=player_detailpage]

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    UC-Riverside Pushes Ahead With Med School

    Byadmin

    UC-Riverside pushes on with its med school despite lack of state support.  From the Desert Sun: PALM DESERT — University of California, Riverside officials should know within two weeks whether the state will OK a land transfer critical to its new medical school’s presence in the Coachella Valley.  At issue is 11.5 acres along Frank Sinatra Drive, just east of UCR’s existing Palm Desert campus… The medical school plans to build an outpatient medical clinic there that can be used as a teaching facility for students and medical residents, Dean G. Richard Olds said… Olds said there is no plan…

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    Mark Yudof’s Not-So-Private Thoughts

    Byadmin

    “Yudof… said he opposes the privatization of parts of the UC, specifically mentioning the UCLA Anderson School of Management, which had been considering becoming financially independent from UC funds. He said he is concerned that privatization would shift priorities away from those of a public university.” Full story from yesterday’s Daily Bruin at:http://dailybruin.com/2013/03/08/mark-yudof-featured-speaker-at-institute-for-molecular-medicine-seminar/ Now he tells us!

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    A Modest Proposal from Joe Mathews

    Byadmin

    …The University of California badly needs a president who knows how to fight. For 25 years, the UC has been playing nice and doing the right thing. And that’s gotten the system nowhere. The UC opted to be responsible and not buy the kind of Prop 98-style protection that the K-14 system bought. The result: UC made itself easy to cut. The UC made a series of compacts with governors on cuts and spending – only to see those cuts exceed what was agreed to. And more recently, the UC has stood back, meekly, as the governor and legislators have…