Author: uclafaculty

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Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheap, Cheap? Privates in Tuition Competition with UC

Byuclafaculty

Excerpt from today’s Sacramento Bee: Despite steadily rising tuition, California’s public universities still can look like a bargain when compared with nonprofit private colleges. With room and board factored in, a year at UC costs about $28,000, while a year at Stanford costs around $50,000. But dig a little deeper and the difference isn’t as great as it appears at first glance. That’s because on average students at nonprofit private schools are paying less than half the so-called “sticker price.” And many students whose families earn too much to qualify for grants at public schools can receive substantial scholarships at…

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Free Speech at Irvine (and Elsewhere)

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today features an article about a legal case the right of public university faculty to criticize administrators. The case at hand arises from a complaint by a UC-Irvine professor who claims he was denied a merit increase after he made such criticisms. A lower court cited another local-origin case – this one arising from the LA County district attorney’s office (Garcetti v. Ceballos ultimately decided at the U.S. Supreme Court). In that case, an employee claimed retaliation for similar criticisms. The UC-Irvine case was appealed to the Ninth Circuit which – while not ruling on the validity…

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Inching Toward Michigan

Byuclafaculty

The main event of the upcoming Regents meeting is discussion (not decision) on the Yudof recommendation of Option C on the pension plan. But there is also scheduled a discussion of enrollment of out-of-state students at UC. You can find the announcement at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov10/e1.pdf It is scheduled on the morning of Nov. 17, after an open public comment session. (Those open comment sessions have tended to be a bit raucous of late.) If you click on the link above to the out-of-state student session, you won’t find any back-up material. The announcement just says Provost Pitts will review past enrollment…

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UCLA Academic Senate Opposes Anderson Self Sufficiency

Byuclafaculty

The Academic Senate has sent a letter to EVC Scott Waugh dated Nov. 1 opposing the Anderson “self sufficiency” funding plan (which some see as a form of privatization). Among the complaints are that salaries at Anderson are already at competitive levels with other business schools, that the proposal might overemphasize teaching relative to research, and that if the revenues projected fell short, there might be a financial risk to UCLA. You can find the Senate evaluation and other documents related to this issue at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/documents/AGSMFSS_AcademicSenateResponse.pdf A little self sufficient music: UPDATE: The Daily Bruin has an account of a…

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More Reality Comes to the Regents on Nov. 18

Byuclafaculty

Even more reality will arrive on the morning of Nov. 18 at the Regents, when they take up pensions and retiree health care. The documentation for that session is at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov10/j3.pdf A quick review of that documentation suggests that the $2 for $1 issue is not well explained when borrowing from STIP is discussed. But that is not new; it wasn’t well explained at the campus sessions. In a previous post, you can hear yours truly make that point at the UCLA session. Anyway, in a few decades we can all sing:

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The Horror, The Horror, the State Budget

Byuclafaculty

The Legislative Analyst has come out with his budget outlook. Guess what? It’s a horror story. In rough terms, last year’s budget (with all the trickery involved) was “balanced” in the sense of inflows = outflows. But it contained a legacy of past sin to the tune of about $6 billion. The budget recently enacted for this year is also roughly “balanced,” but it also carries forward the $6 billion in past sins. So if that were the extent of the problem, we would probably do what Schwarzenegger did when he took office, i.e., finance the past sins by some…

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Do Onto Others But Not Onto You

Byuclafaculty

Background: With the late Keith Richman, OC supervisor John Moorlach has been a major figure in the movement to move public employees in California from defined-benefit pension to defined contribution. (Meg Whitman had favored DC and might have put it on the ballot, had she been elected governor. That possibility – a ballot initiative – still exists.) When confronted with changing his pension to DC, Mr. Moorlach seems to be having second thoughts: Supervisors Will Study Giving Up Pensions November 9, 2010, Voice of OC Newly elected Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson made another baby step Tuesday toward his goal…