News

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Attention to Pay

There is a proposal for a new negotiated pay system for faculty. Yours truly suggests you pay close attention since it is your pay that is involved. The cover letter indicates that employees (presumably faculty) should be consulted. The proposal is at: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/underreview/APM-668SystemwideReviewRequestandmaterials.pdf

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Report on UC’s Economic Impact on State

At the recent Regents meeting, there was a report on the economic impact of UC on the California economy. Yours truly has some reservations about the regional multiplier approach which is emphasized in the report. The short-term real multiplier to be emphasized, which I thought was not adequately highlighted in the report, is that the state puts about $2.5 billion into UC and gets an enterprise with a budget of around $20 billion. A lot of that budget comes from outside the state, i.e., federal research and other funds. And in the long term, the impact on California’s growth can…

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Advance Audio: Excerpt from Sept. 15 Regents Meeting

We previously posted the audio for the July 2011 Regents meeting. Normally, we have to wait until we can get the recordings from the Regents to post the audio. However, Prof. Jim Chalfant of UC-Davis recorded part of the Sept. 15 meeting including discussion of graduate student tuition and support. Eventually, we will post the full Sept. 13-15 meeting – once we get the recordings. In the meantime, below is the Regents agenda for Sept. 15 and below that is a link to the Chalfant recording. 8:30 am Committee of the Whole (public comment) 8:50 am Committee on Compensation (open…

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Audio: July 14, 2011 Regents Meeting (3rd Day)

The Regents met for the third day of their July 2011 meetings on July 14. Below is the agenda for that day’s session. The audio is divided into two parts. Previous blog posts have provided the audio for the first two days. Links are below the third day agenda. Below the agenda are links to the audio. 8:30 am Committee of the Whole (public comment) 8:50 am Committee on Compensation (open session) 9:15 am Committee on Finance (open session) 1:30 pm Board (open session) Part 1: Part 2:

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Audio: Regents July 13, 2011 (Second Day)

Yesterday, we posted the audios of the first day of the July 12-14, 2011 Regents meetings. (The first day was actually meetings of two committees.) Today we post the second day audio in two parts. Below is the agenda with links to agenda documents. We again note that the Regents live-stream the audio of their meetings and record them. But they do not archive the recordings for public access. Why not? We have to request the recordings and do the posting, an unnecessary step which – as is evident from the posting at this late date – involves a delay….

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Audio: July 12, 2011 (First Day) Regents Meeting

We have been promising audios of the July 12-14, 2011 Regents meetings and below are links to the first day in two parts. Yours truly again raises the issue of why – since the Regents live-stream and record their meetings – they don’t then archive the audio on their website. Since they don’t, we have to request the audios and then mount them on a platform to link to this blog. That is more laborious than it might seem. And it would be unnecessary if the Regents did their own archiving. The agenda for the first day of the July…

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No Smoking at the Regents

Despite the one-time endorsement of a past ex-officio Regent (see picture at left), the new headline is “UC Regents endorse Perata’s tobacco tax measure.” (Well, we did name the UCLA hospital after him.) Excerpt from news item below: Josh Richman, September 16th, 2011 The Regents of the University of California have endorsed the tobacco-tax-for-cancer-research ballot measure co-chaired by former state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, perhaps seeing a windfall of research dollars in their future. In a public hearing Wednesday, Perata – a 2010 Oakland mayoral candidate who now lives in Orinda – had told the Regents’ Committee on…

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Note for Late Night 405 Drivers Near UCLA

A full directional closure of the 405 Freeway in each direction will take place tonight for 10 hours from 10 p.m. for reconstruction work to be performed on the northern half of the Skirball Bridge, weather permitting. Only one direction of the 405 freeway will be closed at one time tonight starting at 10 p.m. …Ramps within the freeway closure limits may close as early as 7 p.m. and freeway lanes may close as early as 10 p.m., leading up to the full directional freeway closure beginning at midnight. Full article at http://www.smmirror.com/?ajax#mode=single&view=32870 And so we say:

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LAO’s Proposed Path for UC

In the Sacramento Bee’s article on the Regents meeting (see prior post), we find: …No one at the (Regents) meeting raised the possibility that UC might not need to increase spending as much as it has proposed. That view, however, could be found in the Capitol, where budget analysts said they were frustrated by the regents’ conversation. “UC is in effect saying that it plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more each year … at a time that inflation is at historic lows, when demographic growth in the college-age population is near zero and when most public agencies…