Author: uclafaculty

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Who’s Behind the Temporarily Dead MOOC Bill?

Byuclafaculty

Readers of this blog already know that the bill sponsored by state senate president Darrell Steinberg that would have required MOOCs at UC, CSU, and the community colleges is dead (for now). What is interesting is how that bill is being seen in Sacramento: A bill backed by Coursera, a high-flying online education company, that would extend academic credit opportunities for California public university students is likely to be put on hold, the bill author’s office says.The Senate sent SB 520 by Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, to the Assembly in May over the opposition of teachers’ unions and higher…

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Sacramento Bee Slams UC Pay & Perks

Byuclafaculty

The Sacramento Bee has complaints about UC administrator pay and travel expenses.  (Of course, we never read in the Bee about pay and travel expenses of the Bee‘s employees or executives – or those of its parent company – which are not available online or through public records requests.)  You can read the Bee‘s editorial at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/07/5629077/uc-cant-gripe-about-cuts-while.html

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UCLA History: Moore

Byuclafaculty

Portrait of Ernest Carroll Moore who became the first “director” of the Southern Branch of the University of California, now UCLA.  Moore had been head of the State Normal School on Vermont Avenue which UCLA took over as its first campus. He oversaw the later move to Westwood.  (From a book published by the UCLA Alumni Assn. in 1937 entitled California of the Southland, a history of UCLA to that point.)

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The CalPERS Long-Term Care Affair

Byuclafaculty

We have noted in earlier posts that although UC employees are not covered by CalPERS, at one point in the past, they were offered the “opportunity” to buy long-term care insurance through CalPERS.  But then CalPERS began jacking up the cost and, for those who protested, offering inferior alternative policies. CalPERS position is that it didn’t deliberately lowball the initial premiums but instead just underestimated what the costs would be.  But some subscribers disagree and now there is a lawsuit. From the Sacramento Bee: CalPERS was sued Tuesday over the big rate hikes it imposed on its long-term care insurance…

Rank Congratulations to Our Colleagues at UC-SB

Byuclafaculty

From time to time on this blog, we have said skeptical things about the various rankings that occur in the world of higher education. But we do want to take the opportunity of congratulating our colleagues at Santa Barbara for their number 2 ranking among the top 10 party schools by the Princeton Review. From Inside Higher Ed today comes the story and here are the rankings: Princeton Review’s Top 10 “Party Schools”1. University of Iowa2. University of California, Santa Barbara3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign4. West Virginia University5. Syracuse University6. University of Florida7. Ohio University at Athens8. University of…

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ObamaJam May Be ObamaJelly

Byuclafaculty

It looks like the ObamaJam that we mentioned as a possibility for today and tomorrow in an earlier post will turn out to be more like ObamaJelly – at least in the Westside area near UCLA.  The President is coming but it appears most of his traveling will be by helicopter and what street closings there may be won’t be close to campus. More details at http://centurycity.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/officials-warn-of-clogged-traffic-as-president-visits-tuesday

The High Cost of Pepper

Byuclafaculty

UC Davis officials are making an expensive investment toward improving the college’s image. The university hired Luanne Lawrence, formerly of the University of South Carolina, as associate chancellor for strategic communications earlier this year. She will make an annual salary of $260,000, more than any other campus communications chief in the University of California system…Lawrence steps into her role as the university tries to put a public relations nightmare behind it: the 2011 incident in which campus police officers used pepper spray against students during a protest largely focused on tuition hikes… Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/05/5624083/ucd-pays-top-dollar-for-communications.html Things are definitely getting…

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ObamaJam Possible Tuesday-Wednesday

Byuclafaculty

From LAObserved yesterday: There are a few more details now about President Obama’s trip to the Los Angeles area on Tuesday to appear on the Jay Leno show. According to the White House schedule, Air Force One will arrive from Phoenix and land at LAX about 3:30 p.m. The president will be staying overnight… On Wednesday the president is scheduled to fly to Camp Pendleton to visit with military families and deliver remarks to troops, then make an mid-afternoon departure from LAX. Full story at http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2013/08/obamas_arrival_on_tuesday.php Since the ground routes have not been announced, the impact on Westside traffic near…

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Rank Order or Rank Odor

Byuclafaculty

From today’s Sacramento Bee: On the surface, it might seem self-serving for UC Davis School of Medicine to rip into the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings that rate it below the nation’s elite primary care schools. One might suspect it was sour grapes by a medical school unhappy with its rankings.The school poured four years of research and almost $10,000 of its own grant funding into a stinging academic critique of the news magazine’s ranking methodology.”These findings raise questions regarding the ranking’s validity and usefulness,” said the paper, published this month in the journal Academic Medicine. A primary…