News

Radio Program on MOOCs

Byuclafaculty

Warren Olney You can hear a program on MOOCs on Warren Olney’s KCRW program, “To the Point,” at the link below.  The program segment on MOOCs starts at minute 8:06 and ends at 42:14.  It aired yesterday.  From the segment description: Massive open online courses — MOOC’s — held the promise of higher education for millions who can’t now afford it. But, despite big investment from Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Silicon Valley, MOOC’s have not lived up to their billing. We hear about new ways of using the Internet to meet the worldwide demand for focused learning. Click on the…

UC Berkeley prof says its future is as a ‘finishing school for the superrich of Asia’

Byuclafaculty

The headline for this posting is a direct quote from a headline to an article in the San Francisco Business Times which you can find at www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2013/12/16/uc-berkeley-finishing-school-asia-rich.html The (economics) professor in question is Brad DeLong.  For your information, below is the portion of his post on the Berkeley Blog that deals with the subject of that headline: …(Partially) a Finishing School for the Superrich of Asia The first priority of the chancellor is to successfully execute a strategy to keep Berkeley great–to reinforce the reasons that it is worthwhile keeping a university like Berkeley around at all.The days of Clark Kerr…

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Closing

Byuclafaculty

The I-405 Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project contractor is scheduled to implement a full directional closure of the Southbound I-405 between Santa Monica Boulevard and National Boulevard in West L.A. the night of Tuesday, December 17, from midnight to 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning, December 18.  The closures will facilitate the realignment of lanes to accommodate roadway widening and drainage work along the freeway median.  ·         Lanes will begin to close at 10 p.m.·         Southbound Sunset on-ramp closes at 7 p.m.·         Southbound Wilshire on-ramps close at 10 p.m.·         Southbound Santa Monica on-ramp closes at 10 p.m. Full article at http://centurycity.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/southbound-lanes-on-405-freeway-to-close-overnight-on-westside-centurycity Seems like we are always closing:

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UC Prez has some online ed doubts

Byuclafaculty

…In a departure from some of the online education hype that marked the early part of the year, [CSU Chancellor Timothy] White and [UC President Janet] Napolitano said they didn’t see online course technology as a solution for lower-division or remedial course work — though they said it is promising for some specialized courses. White went further, calling a recent San Jose State experiment with the online startup Udacity — in which fewer than half of the students passed online courses — a failure.  “For those who say, ‘Well, Tim, you’ll save a lot of money if … you do…

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Transfer Program With UCLA (or not)

Byuclafaculty

On the one hand, there is an article that says UCLA has joined a for-profit program to encourage community college transfers: The for-profit company Quad Learning announced Friday it has recruited UCLA and Occidental College to be part of a national community college transfer alliance — but the program doesn’t come cheap. For about twice the cost of regular tuition, American Honors gives community college students extra support, coaching and smaller classes to help them transfer to 27 partner universities, including Purdue University and Ohio State.Chris Romer, co-founder of American Honors, said the universities have agreed to be “transfer friendly” to American…

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Wait and See

Byuclafaculty

We posted earlier about general plans for the state budget by the legislative Democrats which promise “more” for higher ed and UC than the Legislative Analyst’s projections seemed to imply.  It is unclear if there is more than what the governor will propose in early January. Below are two slides from a presentation by the legislative Democrats.  But wait and see is probably the best advice at this moment.  Note that the projections all assume uninterrupted economic expansion which is hard to guarantee. You can find the full set of slides at http://asmdc.org/issues/budget-blueprint/images/2014-15-blueprint-for-a-responsible-budget-v7cw.pdf

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Maybe It’s Better to Get Than to Give

Byuclafaculty

We have been following the issues of online education on this blog.  $10 million has been earmarked by UC for online course development.  So what is currently on offer?  And who is doing the offering? Above is the current listing.  [Click to enlarge and clarify.]  Berkeley, Riverside, Davis, and Irvine seem to be doing the offering.  UCLA students can take these online courses (Spanish is now fully enrolled) but UCLA isn’t offering any such courses to other campuses, at least according to the UC websites below.  So, despite the holiday season, maybe it’s better to get than to give.http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/30393 http://crossenroll.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/all-courses.html…

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Community College Transfers to UCLA

Byuclafaculty

Yours truly came across a news article indicating that Santa Monica College provided more undergraduate transfers to UC than any othre community college.  You can find the article at: http://www.smmirror.com/articles/News/Santa-Monica-College-Number-One-In-Transfers-To-University-Of-California/39064 So he poked around the website for the community college system to find out which community colleges led in transfers to UCLA.  The pie chart above shows the results for all community colleges providing at least 100 transfers in academic year 2012-13.  [Click on the chart to enlarge and clarify.]  More than half of the transfers came from colleges providing under 100 students.  Santa Monica was again the leading transfer…

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We Got a Mention

Byuclafaculty

Maybe not so fast An earlier post on this blog described the recent Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) report that projected that, with a combination of continued economic growth and Prop 30 revenues while they are in effect, California’s “structural” deficit had ended.  We also noted that included in the LAO projections was what me termed an ungenerous assumption about spending on UC.  We have also been posting excerpts from Regents meetings in which the governor and Speaker Pérez have also made ungenerous remarks.  [Pérez, however, is now in the race for state controller and indicated that a transition to a…

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The Brand

Byuclafaculty

We’re still fascinated by that page on the UC website that provides “brand guidelines” so that we can all “speak UC.” You can find it at http://brand.universityofcalifornia.edu/. Clicking around and you will learn that “University of California” is actually a “wordmark.” And you probably thought it was just the name of the UC system!  In fact, the “University of California” wordmark serves as the primary graphic identifier of the university for systemwide communications. However, the visual identity is more than just the wordmark. Photography, other graphics, typography, color palettes—all these elements help form the “visual ecosystem” for the name of the…