News

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Dig a Deeper Hole?

Byuclafaculty

The plaintiffs in the case against the UCLA Grand Hotel have filed an amended brief.  You can read it at the link below.  There are actually two cases, one involving environmental and other matters and another regarding the tax issue.  The environmental case will be heard in September.  And there is legal skirmishing around the tax case. The tax issue is basically that if the hotel is a commercial operation, it has to pay taxes just as would any other hotel.  There is also an issue of whether the Regents can run a commercial enterprise and, if that’s what they…

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MOOCs in the Muck

Byuclafaculty

Good question! Inside Higher Ed today runs an article on MOOC offerings at the U of Texas and Cornell.  At the former, there are the usual extremely low completion rates.  At the latter, resident students are asking the question in the photo at the right: …”A year after UT began rolling out nine Massive Online Open Courses, the results are in,” The Daily Texan wrote in a Jan. 29 editorial… Among the “results” are completion rates ranging from 1 to 13 percent, the lack of credit granting courses and the $150,000 to $300,000 production costs…  (S)tudents at Cornell voiced similar concerns,…

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Tradition!

Byuclafaculty

The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) has issued a report on UC and CSU funding.  LAO is usually viewed as a neutral agency.  But it is a component of the legislature.  So it tends to favor approaches that add to legislative control as opposed to, say, gubernatorial control.  This report is no exception. LAO seems to want to return to what it terms the “traditional” approach to funding, but with bells and whistles added to monitor legislative goals.  The traditional approach seems to be one focused on undergraduate enrollment.  But in fact the tradition – such as it is – has…

What would Judge Cunningham say?

Byuclafaculty

The LA Times picks up a story about an anti-Asian flyer – possibly from the Daily Bruin‘s earlier coverage – that has provoked student protests.  You can find the Times‘ story at:http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ucla-police-black-judge-racial-profiling-20140203,0,4010058.story Faithful blog readers will know that we are tracking the sad tale of LA Superior Court Judge David Cunningham III who was caught driving while black in Westwood by UCLA police and has filed a $10 million complaint against the university.  The good judge is a past head of the LA Police Commission.  There was no apology from Murphy Hall.  There was just a vague statement that we…

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7 Wasn’t So Lucky

Byuclafaculty

The cash statement from the California state controller for the first seven months of fiscal year 2013-14 is out.  Revenues are up about 1% from last year at this time.  That gain is not very good.  However, it may be largely due to an aberration last fiscal year when there was a surge of personal income tax revenue in January 2013.  The surge seemed to have something to do with antics back then in Washington over fiscal cliffs, etc., which might have resulted in some tax changes (but didn’t).  The current DC crisis de jour is the debt ceiling, but…

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Chinese Dissent at UCLA

Byuclafaculty

UCLA has a variety of exchange arrangements with China as the image of the UCLA Confucius Institute on the left suggests.  While these arrangements can be mutually beneficial, the university can also find itself in a difficult position when and if things go wrong.  The NY Times carries a story dated Feb. 9 about a professor from Peking University who was a visiting professor at UCLA.  While here, he made some statements that ultimately led to his discharge at his home university and to quasi-exile in the U.S.: …Peking University allowed Professor Xia to leave China to become a visiting…

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Oversize Load?

Byuclafaculty

From the Sacramento Bee: …(T)the University of California’s academic student workers union recently filed a complaint against the UC Office of the President demanding that discussions about class size be a part of their contract negotiations. The union has been bargaining with UC since last summer, and its contract expired at the end of the year… The UC Student-Workers Union, which represents more than 12,000 teaching assistants, tutors and readers across the UC system, is seeking a regular forum to talk about class size with faculty and UC management, said Josh Brahinsky, a Ph.D. candidate in the history of consciousness…

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Networking

Byuclafaculty

Simon and Garfunkel once sang about the “Sound of Silence.”  When rain forced the weekly networking event at Anderson indoors last Thursday, silence was not what was heard: It was more like a typical deafening LA trendy restaurant.  Back in Simon and Garfunkel’s day, the occupation of choice was in “plastics.”  Soon it will be in hearing aids.