Not Where You Would Expect
I guess the lesson is to do your marketing where you can.
News
CalPERS Long-Term Care: What Happens Tomorrow?
Although CalPERS doesn’t run the UC retirement plan, at one point CalPERS offered long-term care insurance to UC employees. It seemed to some folks to be a good idea at the time and they took out policies. Long-term care policies can be bought from commercial carriers. The problem is that you have to trust that these carriers will do right by you many years in the future when you may not be in the best condition to assert your rights. It appeared, however, that having CalPERS – a public entity – providing the policies might be a solution. Sadly, there…
Contemplating Tuition, Motherhood, and Apple Pie
Tuition is being studied up in Oakland by the UC prez, according to yesterday’s Daily Bruin: …“I want tuition to be as low as possible, and I want it to be as predictable as possible,” Napolitano said at a UC Board of Regents meeting in November. In a recent Google Hangout with students from various UC campuses, students asked Napolitano to talk about her current work in reforming the UC’s tuition policy. They also asked Napolitano how she plans to include student ideas in the reorganization of the tuition plan. Napolitano did not specify how student input would be…
Travel Focus Misses the Money Train
You may have seen the article in yesterday’s Daily Bruin about UCLA tightening up its rules on travel reimbursements. Why the tightening up? …Public records documenting the travel expenses of the university’s top brass, obtained and published by the Center for Investigative Reporting in August, drew national scrutiny last summer for the luxurious travel accommodations of UCLA’s leadership, sometimes in violation of University policy. The accommodations and pricy travel arrangements bloated the university’s travel budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars… Full story at http://dailybruin.com/2014/02/04/months-after-controversy-ucla-clarifies-travel-guidelines/ The problem with the original story is that it focuses on budget dust compared to…
UCLA History: Grove
As the caption notes, these trees were known as the sophomore grove at the old Vermont Avenue campus of UCLA, now the home of LA City College.
Actually, battleships can turn around but it depends on the captain giving the order
We’ve all heard the expression about how hard it is to turn a battleship around. Giant ships moving forward have momentum to keep going in a straight line. But they can be turned around. Yesterday we posted about the Judge Cunningham case. It is symptomatic of a larger problem in Murphy Hall. What should have occurred in that case is a prompt apology by the chancellor and appropriate internal action. If you were reading this blog at the time of the event, you would have found that suggestion. Instead, what occurred was defensive legalism which is still going on. So…
Anti-Pension Group Opens the Door to ID Fraud
That’s a harsh headline. But it applies to any group that publishes info on the web – because it is technically legal to obtain and publish it – that identifies incomes of individuals. And the same harsh headline applies to govt. salary data, not just pensions. It applies whether there is a political objective, as in the pension case, or just a way to get eyeballs to a commercial website. While there may be a case for such disclosures for top executives and elected officials, wholesale publication deserves harsh headlines. For details on the latest such development, see: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/04/6125543/government-reform-group-launches.html And,…
$10 Million
Faithful blog readers will recall that last November we reported on the case of Judge Cunningham, an LA Superior Court judge and former head of the LA Police Commission, who made the mistake of DWB (driving while black) in Westwood – not on campus – and had an encounter with the UCLA police because his seat belt was unfastened. We suggested some quick abject apologies from the chancellor at the time before the lawyers got hold of this matter. Like many of our suggestions, however, it was… well, you know, not given much weight. Anyway: An African-American family law judge…
Follow Up: Harvard B-School Says It is Improving Itself
Some loyal blog readers may recall our earlier posts (back in September) on attempts to reform a reported frat house climate of the Harvard Business School. We carried this quote from the NY Times: (M)any Wall Street-hardened women confided that Harvard was worse than any trading floor, with first-year students divided into sections that took all their classes together and often developed the overheated dynamics of reality shows. Some male students, many with finance backgrounds, commandeered classroom discussions and hazed female students and younger faculty members, and openly ruminated on whom they would “kill, sleep with or marry” (in cruder terms). Alcohol-soaked…
‘Tis a Pit
As can be seen above, in the “cloud” on Google Earth the old parking structure #6 and the bus turnaround still are smack dab in the center of the UCLA campus. But in fact the great pit for the Grand Hotel is underway, as seen in the recent photos below: Unfortunately, if we want to be “on the level” about the great pit, it is difficult to see due to the wall around it. Apparently, someone has decided that its vast size is something of a secret. But there is a little hole in the wall to peep through: Of…