News

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    Public-Private Pay

    Byadmin

    From time to time, news sources such as the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Chronicle update their databases of pay of state employees including UC. Yours truly from time to time has posted objections on privacy and ID theft grounds to such posting and has challenged the news sources to post their own payroll data.  Not surprisingly, they have yet to agree – and for good reason. It’s not that there cannot be salary abuses – either in the public or the private sector.  But there are ways to deal with that problem, mainly by posting pay by occupation…

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    A little bit of action on the UCLA Grand Hotel

    Byadmin

    I took my weekly perambulation to the “work” site of the Grand Hotel on campus this past Wednesday morning, about 9:30 am.  As noted in prior posts, although the area was fenced off July 8, the “groundbreaking” is not scheduled until Sept. 10.  So not much seems to be happening other than some digging up of landscaping. Anyway, I did see a few construction vehicles on the site. (If you click on the two bottom photos and look closely, you might be able to make a couple of the vehicles out.) The only person I saw in the site wasn’t…

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    Audit coming to Berkeley and one other UC campus

    Byadmin

    According to the San Francisco Chronicle, after a hearing at the legislature on complaints that UC-Berkeley failed to follow up adequately on student allegations of sexual assault, there will be an audit there and one other yet-to-be-named UC campus.  Excerpt: …The audit will take up to seven months and will look at practices at UC Berkeley and three other campuses to be determined: one at UC and two at CSU. Representatives of UC and CSU at the hearing were clearly moved by the testimony and said they would cooperate with the audit. “As a woman, as a mother who has a daughter…

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    The Bus Plan for Higher Ed

    Byadmin

    The White House released the plan for higher education this morning.  As per yesterday’s post, the plan will be promoted via a presidential bus tour.  Before I get into the plan, I might note that like the Regents and governor, the President is interested in use of technology – think MOOCs – to reduce costs, etc.  And like the Regents and governor, he seems to have problems with his own use of technology.  The screenshot you see here was take 3 hours and 45 minutes after the plan was officially released, but it doesn’t show the plan.  All that was…

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    Movers and Shakers on the Tuition Bus

    Byadmin

    The original Shakers didn’t have a bus. From Inside Higher Ed: President Obama plans to take on rising tuition prices with speeches later this week that the White House promises will include fresh, serious proposals. But those claims were met largely with skepticism here, even from supporters of the president’s repeated pledge to “shake up” higher education. On Tuesday the White House distributed a message from Obama in which he said would seek to make college more affordable with “real reforms that would bring lasting change.” The president said he would release the plan’s details during a two-day bus tour…

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    Regents: Have We Got a Deal for You!!

    Byadmin

    The image shown here is from a November 2004 video of a Santa Monica city council meeting, which appears to be the first such meeting the city videoed.  It is still on the web nine years after the event.  In contrast, the stated policy for Regents meetings is that video will be preserved for one year only.    The current policy also seems to mean that audio of the event as a file is not being made available as a public document as it was before the current calendar year.  To obtain the audio to archive under current policy –…

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    UCLA History: Cord

    Byadmin

    During the summer doldrums, we continue to provide scans of pictures from UCLA’s history as shown in the book, “California of the Southland,” published by the alumni in 1937.  You can pick what you like as interesting from the 1936 picture above.  There is the presence of Gov. Frank Merriam who had been Lieutenant Governor and then became governor on the death of the sitting governor.  Merriam was elected in his own right, defeating author Upton Sinclair in 1934 in the great EPIC campaign.  If you don’t know about that, you should.  So start by Googling it. Another item of…

  • See No Evil

    Byadmin

    The caption to this photo from the Bangkok Post reads “Students wear paper blinker ‘anti-cheating’ headgear as they take an examination at Kasetsart University’s agro-industry faculty.”  The article goes on to report that the experiment has been abandoned.  Inside Higher Ed pointed me to this story. See http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/08/19/thai-university-abandons-use-anti-cheating-hats and http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/364942/students-came-up-with-the-idea-themselves-says-course-lecturer. A modest proposal: Instead of hats, how about earphones playing:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS4LCoh0VGQ?feature=player_detailpage]

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    Directional Issues

    Byadmin

    Good advice from Horace because of you’re traveling east on Wilshire and want to go north on the 405, you are soon to have problem.  And others will likely have a problem as those who want to go north shift to the Sunset Blvd. on ramp – or just get confused. See below:The eastbound Wilshire Boulevard on-ramp to northbound 405 Freeway will close for 90 days starting Thursday, Aug 22. Once rebuilt, the on-ramp will have nearly 300 percent greater capacity. It is the last extended ramp closure that will be required for the Wilshire Interchange, as well as the…