News

  • More Good PR for UC

    Byadmin

    August 26, 2010, NY Times Bay Area edition University to Manage Home Costs of PresidentBy STEVE FAINARUhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/us/27bcyudof.html?_r=2&hpw The University of California has appointed an official to manage spending and operations at President Mark G. Yudof’s new private residence, after Mr. Yudof ran up nearly $700,000 in expenses and involved senior university officials in time-consuming personal matters over a rented mansion in the Oakland Hills. University officials said the action was necessary because of a lack of oversight and accountability during Mr. Yudof’s two-year stay at the Oakland property. The announcement came after The Bay Citizen disclosed the costly housing ordeal…

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    Ongoing CalPERS Scandals Make It Tougher for UC

    Byadmin

    UC’s pension plan has nothing to do with CalPERS. But CalPERS has had a series of scandals involving conflict of interest, bribery, and bad investments that tend to tar all public pensions in California including ours. CalPERS’ ongoing problems will complicate UC’s efforts to resolve its own pension unfunded liability. Continued unraveling of CalPERS scandals increases the chances that UC will be dragged into some statewide reform for all public pensions. The latest CalPERS scandal is reported today: CalPERS investment officer linked to bribery scandal resigns Thursday, Aug. 26, 2010, Sacramento Bee (Excerpt) A senior CalPERS investment officer resigned today…

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    Letter from President Yudof regarding proposed changes to UC retirement benefits

    Byadmin

    The following letter about the impending recommendations of the Post-Employment Benefits Task Force was emailed today. It is reproduced below for anyone who may not have received the email and to provide a continuing source of the text. Some parts have been put in bold in the reproduction below.=================== UCOP NewsSent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 11:23 AM To: UCOP-L@LISTSERV.UCOP.EDU Subject: A letter from President Yudof regarding proposed changes to UC retirement benefits Importance: High MEMBERS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY Dear Colleagues: I am writing to let you know that within the next few days, the Task Force on Post-Employment Benefits…

  • Gubernatorial Race: Who’s Up? Who’s Down?

    Byadmin

    An interesting item below posted on the LA Weekly website: Schwarzenegger Predicts Victory For Jerry Brown? By Gene Maddaus, Informer Blog/LA Weekly published: Wed., Aug. 25 2010 @ 12:34PM http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/politics/arnold-schwarzenegger-jerry-br/ ​So Patricia Sellers is an editor-at-large at Fortune, and as such she hangs out in L.A. restaurants where you might just happen to run into people like Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Upon bumping into Schwarzenegger on Monday at Le Pain Quotidien, Sellers asked the governor what he thought of Meg Whitman, about whom she wrote a profile last year. The governor’s answer was off the record, but it’s clear…

  • More on Online Higher Education

    Byadmin

    Inside Higher Ed alert points to “iTunes University” downloading from an Apple press release: Excerpt from release: iTunes U Downloads Top 300 Million CUPERTINO, California—August 24, 2010—In just over three years, iTunes® U downloads have topped 300 million and it has become one of the world’s most popular online educational catalogs. Over 800 universities throughout the world have active iTunes U sites, and nearly half of these institutions distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store®. New content has just been added from universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico and Singapore, and iTunes users now have access to over…

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    Robbed Blind: Governor is Heating Up Verbal Campaign on Public Pensions

    Byadmin

    The rhetoric around public pensions in California is heating up, as the excerpt below from a longer piece at http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/2010/08/24/budget-55-robbed-blind/#more-6347 suggests. As indicated in my previous posts on this issue, all of this rhetoric on pensions points to the need for a Regental plan for UCRS to be in place before the next governor takes over. But, of course, it matters what this plan will be. Note that the 1999 law which the governor decries below did not deal with UC’s pension. So we are potentially being pulled into a CalPERS issue. —————- Budget +55: “Robbed Blind” August 24, 2010,…

  • Order! Order! Another University Ranking

    Byadmin

    The Washington Monthly has a ranking of universities which puts an emphasis on such factors as “social mobility.” The top schools in its ranking are UC-San Diego, UC-Berkeley, and UCLA in that order. Perhaps more interesting than the rankings is that you can look at such factors as the percent of students receiving Pell grants. For details, go to http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2010/national_university_rank.php

  • UCLA Researcher “Firing” Questioned in Newspaper Editorial

    Byadmin

    A case of a UCLA researcher, James E. Engstrom, who was reported soon to be “fired,” has been making the rounds of the Internet and has now penetrated print media. See below. It is not clear to me exactly the nature of the appointment involved from web sources. Dr. Engstrom’s official UCLA webpage is still active at http://www.cancer.ucla.edu/index.aspx?page=645&recordid=83 Dr. Engstrom’s work apparently is controversial because it questions ill-health effects of diesel and other pollutants and from tobacco. Googling his name pulls up various controversies surrounding his work and related personnel actions. I have no other info on this matter beyond…

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    The Rent, The Rent! University Head’s Housing Raises Ire

    Byadmin

    August 21, 2010, NY Times (Bay Area Edition) University Head’s Housing Raises Ire By STEVE FAINARU Five minutes before midnight on June 30, movers hauled the last boxes from a spectacular rented home in the Oakland Hills. The tenant’s lease was about to expire, and in his haste to get out, he left behind thousands of dollars of damage to the hardwood floors and Venetian plastered walls. The tenant was Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California. His midnight move was the latest chapter in a two-year housing drama that has cost the university more than $600,000 and…