News

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    The Obama Shake Coming

    Byadmin

    Shakey’s Model for a Grand Bargain? Higher ed excerpt from today’s presidential speech: …(T)his week we’re working with both parties — (applause) — this week we’re working with both parties to reverse the doubling of student loan rates that happened a few weeks ago because of congressional inaction. (Cheers, applause.) So this is all a good start, but it isn’t enough. Families and taxpayers can’t just keep paying more and more and more into an undisciplined system where costs just keep on going up and up and up. We’ll never have enough loan money, we’ll never have enough grant money…

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    Why Jerry Should Love Higher Ed

    Byadmin

    Gov. Brown often seems a bit exasperated with UC at Regents meetings. But the latest Field Poll indicates higher ed is doing a great job for him:Percent of Voters Supporting Brown’s Re-Election in 2014: High school graduate or less…..37%Some college/trade school……..37%College graduate……………..45%Post-graduate work……………57% Poll results at http://www.field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2446.pdf So, the more we teach, the more they love him:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KiO42i7uVM?feature=player_detailpage]

  • More Pepper?

    Byadmin

    Remember the pepper spray affair at UC-Davis?  The LA Times has a report on a lawsuit brought by the Times and the Sacramento Bee demanding that the names of all police officers listed in an official study of the affair be made public. That study was released with most names redacted.  A lower court ruled that the names had to be made public but that decision was appealed.  Now an appeals court indicates that the names cannot be withheld.  However, this may not be the end of the pepper story since a further appeal to the state supreme court by…

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    Would it get under your skin if university administrators poked around in your emails?

    Byadmin

    Located in Boston, not far from Harvard Some blog readers may recall the brouhaha that erupted at Harvard when some administrators poked around in university emails trying to discover who was leaking info about a student cheating affair.  A dean apparently ended up resigning when the email searching became known.  The Boston Globe is reporting that a Harvard-commissioned report has determined that the administrators were acting in “good faith.”  See http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/07/22/outside-counsel-harvard-acted-good-faith-covert-mail-searches/jvB5oSwd8MZL2m0wlTuLSP/story.html.  A shorter version of the story from Inside Higher Ed is at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#label/subscription/1400ab32f5244acf. Moral: Don’t put anything in email you wouldn’t want made public. Unless, of course, you believe…

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    The Story of UC and the “Troll”

    Byadmin

    Bloomberg and other sources are reporting that UC and a firm described in the news media – particularly news media sympathetic to the high-tech sector – as a patent troll have lost an appeal concerning an internet patent.  On the other side of the appeal were Amazon and Google.  In an earlier trial in a lower court, the patent was invalidated.  Yahoo and J.C. Penney were also involved in the lower court case. [“Patent trolls” are companies that acquire patents – particularly patents that seem to involve a broad range of activities – and then sue firms that use the…

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    Straw into Gold? More Positive Spinning on the New UC Prez

    Byadmin

    An earlier post noted that there seemed to be some effort at positive spinning on the Regents selection of the new UC president.  The latest example appears in the LA Times as the headline below suggests: As Arizona governor, Napolitano put higher education on agenda http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-napolitano-gov-20130722,0,5155679,full.story Of course, there are some dangers in such spinning efforts:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apZuO1nwSvQ?feature=player_detailpage]

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    The Appeal of the Japanese Garden

    Byadmin

    The Facebook page of the group trying to save the UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden from sale and possible destruction is carrying this notice:EXCELLENT NEWS! The Court of Appeals has scheduled Oral Arguments for the Appeal on August 28th. This means that they recognize the urgency and importance of the Garden and do not wish to keep us in limbo any longer! We may get their decision (and opinion) later in the fall. Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-the-Hannah-Carter-Japanese-Garden/189816991118293

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    No Wonder the Regents Wanted the New UC Prez to Have Washington Connections!

    Byadmin

    Inside Higher Ed alerted me today to this chart from the National Journal showing the university degrees of the top 250 Obama administration officials.  UC is not – shall we say? – prominent.  See: http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/07/22/obama-administrations-private-university-background andhttp://www.nationaljournal.com/decision-makers/more-top-obama-officials-have-graduate-degrees-from-oxford-than-any-public-university-in-the-united-states-20130719  [Includes link to methodology] But don’t worry about the apparent lack of a link between California and DC.  With the telegraph replacing the Pony Express, coast-to-coast communication will soon be easier.  Right, Janet?

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    Pro and Con

    Byadmin

    In a TV interview airing today, Assembly Speaker John Pérez managed to be both pro and con the appointment of Janet Napolitano as the new president of UC.  He was against the search process which he said was not open enough.  On the other hand, due to what he said was luck despite the bad process, UC has ended up with an “incredibly talented” executive.  The fact that she has a political background, Pérez said, didn’t have anything to do with regental concerns about interventions by the governor and legislature in UC affairs.  He said he had had concerns about…

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    The Medium is the Message at the Site of the UCLA Grand Hotel

    Byadmin

    We noted in an earlier post that after blocking off the Ackerman bus turnaround and parking structure 6 – the site of the planned UCLA Grand Hotel – not much had been done other than messing up some landscaping in the area.  It appeared that the intent was really to mark the territory in the face of pending litigation.In any case, yours truly went by the site late last Thursday to see if anything visible had been accomplished on the site.  As the photos below indicate, it’s still much as it was earlier.  Messed up landscaping at some locations but…