News

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    Once Burned – Something Learned?

    Byadmin

    Like higher education institutions everywhere, the University of California is moving to expand its online course offerings, albeit slowly. The UC may be cautious for a reason: An earlier digital foray didn’t work out so well.UC Online Education launched as a pilot in 2010 with the expectation it would attract thousands of non-UC students willing to pay $1,400 to $2,100 per class. But the development and approval of courses were slow and the timing of the effort coincided with the growing enrollment in free online courses offered by elite universities, known as massive open online courses, or MOOCs. While more…

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    Underpaid

    Byadmin

    De Neve Plaza California’s labor commissioner announced today that she has ordered three contractors to pay more than $1.8 million forviolations in public works projects at UCLA, Saddleback Community College in Orange County and the Global Green Generational Charter School in Pacoima… Tile contractor B.A. Marble Granite Inc. was ordered to pay $539,051 in wages, $4,693 in apprenticeship training funds and $652,600 in fines for the failure to pay 55 employees the proper wage for installing tile in bathrooms at the De Neve Residence Halls project at the UCLA campus… Full story at http://business-news.thestreet.com/daily-news/story/north-hollywood-tile-contractor-ordered-pay-nearly-12m-labor-violations-work-ucla-housing/1  The official statement from the labor…

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    Trends

    Byadmin

    A report to the Regents’ Committee on Educational Policy for the May 15 meeting highlights the growth in the student/faculty ratio at UC.  [Click on the images above and below to enlarge them.] The report – entitled “Academic Performance Indicators at the University of California – more generally appears to be an attempt to respond to the governor’s push to make the UC budget contingent on meeting various performance measures such as graduation rates.  You can find it at http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may13/e1.pdf Note: An earlier post at http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-regents-meeting-preliminary-agenda.html provided the general agenda for the upcoming Regents meeting.  Apart from the item in…

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    The name seems to be taken

    Byadmin

    In a recent post, we noted the Regents will be taking up the setting up of an entity at UCLA to market university innovations, patents, etc.  The details are now up on the Regents’ agenda for their meeting next week. Excerpt: The President seeks the approval of the Regents to establish and participate in a separate §501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation (referred to herein as “Newco”), tasked with managing the types of intellectual property (IP) including technology transfer and industry – sponsored research contracting (ISR) at UCLA currently managed by UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research (UCLA OIP-ISR). The…

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    Hearing CalPERS Rate Hike for Long-Term Care Insurance

    Byadmin

    San Francisco’s Poor House As prior blog posts have noted, although UC is not under CalPERS, UC employees – because they were state employees – were invited to enroll in CalPERS’ long-term care insurance plan.  Such plans ostensibly protect enrollees against potential catastrophic expenses that can be entailed in major health crises.  Those who did enroll now find themselves facing large rate hikes or accepting an alternative less generous plan.  Many who enrolled did so assuming that CalPERS would protect them from such hikes.  Yours truly has encountered a number of folks who now find themselves in this predicament.  CalPERS…

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    More on the UCLA-Wake Forest University Monkey Dispute

    Byadmin

    An earlier post noted that there is a dispute between UCLA and Wake Forest U over joint operation of a primate research center.  You can find the earlier post – and a note that yours truly really doesn’t have the story on what led to the conflict – at:http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/03/complicated-monkey-business-involving.html The parties have been told that if they don’t agree to avoid a jury trial and allow a judge to decide the case, it will be a long time before a trial can be scheduled.  The report can be found at:http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_326729b0-b741-11e2-9eca-001a4bcf6878.html

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    How Big Is the Planned UCLA Hotel?

    Byadmin

    Once a year, the LA Business Journal provides a list of the largest 100 hotels in LA County ranked by number of rooms.  The latest list appears in the May 6 edition.  Of the top 100, the smallest is Shutters at the Beach with 198 rooms.  The planned UCLA hotel is on a par with the W Hotel in Westwood (258 rooms), a bit smaller than the Hotel Palomar (Wilshire – a few blocks east of Westwood Blvd. with 264 rooms), and notably larger than the Angeleno (Sunset and the 405 with 209 rooms).  In rough terms, 25-30% of the…

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    Ignorance May Be Bliss – But Ignoring Won’t Be

    Byadmin

    This post is going to be a bit complicated.  But note that you can think of ignorance in two ways.  One is just not knowing.  The other is a state of ignoring.  So here is what the powers-that-be at UC, systemwide and campus level, should know, and what they may be ignoring.  First, by now, everyone knows UC has an unfunded pension liability.  It grows over time unless adequate contributions are put into the pension fund.  Second, UC maintains a liquid cash reserve on hand to deal with ongoing needs for payments.  It maintains the reserve both for systemwide needs…

  • UC Seems to Be Opting Out (for now)

    Byadmin

    Inside Higher Ed today has a lengthy article on attempts to measure the “value added” of college education.  It notes that a group of public universities to which UC belongs has been promoting various forms of testing to measure student value added – under pressure from state legislatures from around the country.  (Value added testing involves giving tests to incoming freshmen and again when they graduate to see if their scores have risen.)  Other forms of testing are also being promoted.  UC has – so far – opted out of following the herd and participating, according to the article.  Will…

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    How to be really famous at Harvard

    Byadmin

    If you are wondering what he said, it had to do with Prof. Ferguson’s recent “contribution” to the advance of macroeconomic analysis: Well-known Harvard professor Niall Ferguson apologized Saturday for what he called “stupid and tactless remarks” suggesting sexual orientation influenced the polices of famed economist John Maynard Keynes.On Thursday, Ferguson suggested that the British economist lacked foresight about future generations because he was childless, and that he was childless because he was gay. Ferguson made the comments during a conference in Carlsbad, Calif., during a discussion on Keynes’ famous line, “The long run is a misleading guide to current…