News

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The Clock is Ticking on UC Pension Reform

Byuclafaculty

The clock is ticking. An interview with gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman reported today in the online Capitol Alert service of the Sacramento Bee serves as a reminder of the need for the Regents to put together a UC pension reform plan before January. In the interview, she pushes for new hires to be under a defined-contribution plan and hints that a ballot proposition to do that might be her approach. Any such proposition might well not exclude UC if UC has no plan by January. UC might then be swept into some larger statewide change. Of course, there is no…

A cautionary note about recent higher ed critiques

Byuclafaculty

A cautionary note about recent higher ed critiques and proposals for reform appears in the excerpt below from “Schoolwork,” Talk of the Town section, New Yorker, 9/27/10: …In higher education, the reform story isn’t so fully baked yet, but its main elements are emerging. The system is vast: hundreds of small liberal-arts colleges; a new and highly leveraged for-profit sector that offers degrees online; community colleges; state universities whose budgets are being cut because of the recession; and the big-name private universities, which get the most attention. You wouldn’t design a system this way—it’s filled with overlaps and competitive excess….

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LA Times Editorial Frets About Privatizing UCLA Anderson and Implications for UC

Byuclafaculty

The writer of the LA Times editorial today on the “self sufficiency” model for the UCLA Anderson School of Management seems conflicted. (See earlier posts on the Anderson proposal – a proposal yet to be approved by UCOP and the Regents.) On the one hand, the editorial seems sympathetic to the School’s proposed plan, given current budgetary realities. It seems sympathetic to the idea of diverting money saved from state funding of Anderson to educational programs that are less able to support themselves. On the other hand, the Times is concerned that de facto privatization is occurring throughout UC via…

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Health Care Costs & Public Higher Ed

Byuclafaculty

In an op ed in the NY Times, Peter Orzag – former Obama OMB director – makes a point that others have also made. Public higher education nationally is squeezed indirectly by rising health care costs. When state legislatures are faced with rising costs of health care for their share of Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California), they tend to reduce public higher ed budgets to pay for those costs. Most likely, this effect is a reflection of the fact that unlike many other public programs, higher ed has a potential non-tax source of funding: tuition. In any event, some excerpts:A Health…

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U.C. Proxy Voting on Investment Portfolio Said to Skirt Social Issue Review Guidelines

Byuclafaculty

U.C. Proxy Voting Skirts Review Guidelines, Documents Show (excerpts) Tess Townsend, NY Times/Bay Area Citizen, 9/16/10 The University of California, which prides itself as a leader on social and environmental issues, voted against hundreds of shareholder resolutions designed to promote human rights, environmental sustainability and efforts to fight discrimination, a review of U.C.’s voting record shows. The resolutions involved corporations like Exxon Mobil, PepsiCo and Occidental Petroleum and pertained to about one-third of the university’s $65 billion investment portfolio, a portfolio that includes some 5,000 companies. Like many other universities, U.C. employs a private firm to manage its investments and…

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Listen to Audio of Regents Meeting of 9-16-10 (Approval of Increased Pension Contributions)

Byuclafaculty

The Regents provide a live audio stream of their meetings but they don’t place the recordings online afterward. However, yours truly recorded the Regents meeting of earlier today. It involved preliminary discussion of the retirement system – pension and retiree healthcare – and the raising of the employer and employee contributions to the pension. Also approved was an augmentation of the members of the Investment Advisory Board to the pension fund. See the earlier post on this blog on that subject. I had to convert the audio into videos (just a still picture on the screen) so that it could…

If You Build It, the Money Will Come Seems to Be Theory Behind UC-Merced Med School

Byuclafaculty

UC Merced, Davis to train students in valley’s clinics (excerpts) Modesto Bee By Ken Carlson and Jamie OppenheimSeptember 15, 2010, posted 9/16/10 UC Merced has entered a partnership with the University of California at Davis School of Medicine, which brings the university closer to establishing a medical school at the Merced campus. In fall of 2011, the school will enroll six medical students in the partnership program. For the first two years of the program, students will take classes in science and medicine at the University of California at Davis medical school campus. Their second two years will be spent…

Rank Order (Odor?)

Byuclafaculty

If you like rankings of universities, here is what the Times of London produced for the entire world: UC-Berkeley 8; UCLA 11; UC-Santa Barbara 29; UC-San Diego 32; UC-Irvine 49, UC-Davis 54; UC-Santa Cruz 68; UC-Riverside 117 Methodology at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/analysis-methodology.html Complete rankings at: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html