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LA Times Op Ed Says No Pay, No Say to Legislature

Byuclafaculty

Want more say over UC? Pay up (excerpts) The lawmakers outraged over tuition hikes are partly responsible for them by presiding over a sustained decline in public support for higher education. By Gary Fethke and Andrew Policano December 22, 2010, LA Times As The Times notes in its Dec. 17 editorial, California legislators — who increased state funding to the University of California system this year in exchange for greater control over finances — are incredulous over the university’s recent tuition increases. Their outrage is ill-informed. While they complain about rising costs, they fail to recognize that what has changed…

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Gov. Schwarzenegger Argues Against Legislative Control of Higher Ed; Defends Faculty Pay

Byuclafaculty

In a farewell interview with the LA Times editorial board, Governor Schwarzenegger covered a range of topics but a couple of minutes were devoted to public higher education. He argued against legislative control of higher ed including UC and defended high faculty pay as necessary in the marketplace. And he regretted recent tuition increases but said they were necessary given the economic circumstances. The full article is at http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/12/arnold-schwarzenegger-exit-interview.html An audio excerpt on higher ed can be heard below:

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More Rain on the Tuition Parade Arriving from Canada

Byuclafaculty

Another cautionary tale about self sufficiency and tuition hikes in a political context today, this one from Quebec, courtesy of Inside Higher Ed. McGill decided to raise its MBA tuition from C$1700/year (clearly a subsidized rate) to C$29,500, using a self-sufficient model. [US$1.00 = C$1.02 currently.] As prior posts have noted, the UCLA Anderson School has been pursuing a self sufficiency model. But McGill’s tuition hike is huge compared to anything Anderson is considering, in part because Anderson’s tuition is already in the ballpark of where McGill wants to be. The Quebec provincial government first threatened to take away an…

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Another Editorial Complaint About UC Retirement as Too Generous

Byuclafaculty

Yet another reminder that what the Regents did at their December meeting may not turn out to be the last word. Past posts on this blog have noted that via ballot initiative, UC could be swept into some general change in all public-sector retirement plans. Here is another editorial complaining about UC’s changes in its retirement plans. Retirement ruin? Riverside Press-Enterprise Editorial, 12-20-10, Excerpt A university system that faces repeated budget squeezes cannot justify siphoning money away from education and into lavish pension benefits. The University of California has to rein in the escalating costs of its retirement plan. And…

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Newspaper Editorial Unhappy With “Happy Talk” About UC Pension Fix

Byuclafaculty

Yet another reminder that the pension/retirement issue at UC did not end with the December Regents meeting below: UC president’s happy talk not helpful (excerpt) San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial December 20, 2010 Like so many public agencies in the Golden State, the University of California has promised vastly more in retirement benefits for its employees than it can afford. Taxpayers should find the UC system’s woes particularly appalling because of this fact: For two decades, the state and UC employees didn’t put aside any money at all toward future pension costs, leading to a current overall shortfall of $13.4 billion….

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Virginia Governor Proposes a De Facto 50% Tax on Tuition Increase for a State-Funded University

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today points to a conflict in Virginia in which Virginia Commonwealth University raised tuition and the governor proposes to cut its state appropriation by half of the added tuition revenue. One can look at this take-away as a punishment for raising tuition, as the article below does. Or one can consider it to be a way in which the state effectively grabs some tuition money for its own budgetary purposes. Your choice. Either way, this development is a cautionary note about the politics of tuition increases at public universities. The article: McDonnell punishes VCU for tuition increase…