Caption of this photo reads: Panoramic view of Westwood Village on December 13, 1937, taken from Sepulveda Blvd. looking east. The plowed field in the foreground is used for raising lettuce. UCLA can be seen on the extreme left of the photo in the distance. (LA Public Library photo collection)
Photo dated Nov. 18, 1959 above shows actress Marion Davies who donated funds for the Marion Davies Children’s Center. Caption reads: Marion Davies, for whom new Marion Davies Children’s Clinic at UCLA Medical Center is to be named, examines architect’s sketch of new facility with Congressman Joe Holt (R-22nd Dist.), left, and UCLA Vice Chancellor William G. Young. Clinic, to be under construction by spring, was made possible by Miss Davies’ gift of $1,900,000 to Medical Center. (From LA Public Library photo collection.) Davies – William Randolph Hearst’s mistress – was not the bimbo depicted in the film “Citizen Kane.”…
Proposition 26 on the November ballot would require a 2/3 vote in the legislature for state imposition of various “fees.” It applies a similar restriction to local fees. A 2/3 vote of the electorate would apply to such fees at the local level. At the moment, there is a distinction made between a “tax” (which is subject to a 2/3 vote) and a fee. During budget crises, governments in California have tended to raise fees, which escape the 2/3 requirement, since tax raising is more difficult. Essentially, Prop 26 tightens up the definition of fee, putting more of them under…
Is affirmative action for men the answer to enrollment woes? In Canada’s medical schools, the predominance of women is seen as another sign of how young men are falling behind academically Carolyn Abraham and Kate Hammer, Globe and Mail, Oct. 21, 2010 For Harold Reiter the tipping point was the entering class of 2002. As the new chair of admissions at McMaster University’s medical school, he took one look at the proportion of women admitted – a whopping 76.9 per cent – and wondered what had happened to the men. The gender gap at the university’s Michael G. DeGroote School…
The Public Policy Institute of California has released its latest poll data. Jerry Brown seems to be pulling ahead of Meg Whitman. The poll covers the period including the last debate and “whore-gate.” (If you don’t know what that is, it apparently doesn’t matter to voters so forget it.) As far as UC goes, Whitman favors defined contribution pensions for new hires of public employees, but it appears the Regents will select a defined benefit option. Would she insist on DC for UC? As noted in earlier posts, regardless of who wins, there could be a ballot initiative mandating DC….
When the stock market fell and rich higher ed institutions such as Harvard looked at the absolute value of their loss, they froze in panic and cut budgets. But yours truly predicted that the day would come when the Harvards and Stanfords of the world would realize that they are still rich with what remains. (Their losses would be proud endowments for many institutions!) That realization is beginning to settle in – as the excerpt below from the Boston Globe indicates. Harvard is making various adaptations to increase its liquidity. It has suspended certain additions to its physical plant. Now…
The Sacramento Bee reports good news/bad news on the UC budget. Although the article doesn’t say so, part of the funding for UC (and CSU) for this fiscal year is coming from federal stimulus monies which disappear next year. After massive cuts, higher ed funding rises in new California budget (excerpt) Oct. 20, 2010, Laurel Rosenhall A wave of mass student protests, a new lobbying strategy by university leaders, and the governor’s desire to leave a positive legacy in education during his final year in office led to a remarkable turnaround for California’s public colleges in the budget he signed…
A report based on U.S. Bureau of the Census data notes that the proportion of full-time, full-year employees in the private sector that were participants in some kind of pension plan (defined benefit or defined contribution) has been dropping over the past decade. The participation rate was about 60% in 1999. In 2009, it was about 54%. There is no breakout of California data. The decline suggests why public pensions have become an issue, even apart from concerns about pre-funding. In an earlier post, I noted that much of the focus in the UC discussion of its retirement plan has…
An earlier post on this blog noted that CSU was trying to use a state law to ban commercial sales of student notes from classes. The notion behind the law is that the class materials are the property of the instructor. Today, the LA Times editorializes against the law. Excerpt: The law goes too far… If the notes belong to the students who jotted them down, the state has no business interfering with what they do with them — share or sell (assuming they could actually find a buyer). And copyright laws already exist to protect the professor’s words from…
A UC-Berkeley study released recently indicates that California state and local workers receive roughly the same total compensation as private workers, once you standardize for various demographic variables and education via regression analysis. Taken together, public workers receive about 6% less in wages and salaries. But they get higher benefits so that the difference washes out, i.e., no statistical difference between public and private. Although the authors don’t say so directly, nationally – as a table in the study shows – non-mandated benefits are about 30% of total comp for state and local workers. (Mandated or legally-required benefits are things…
