News

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Burning Sofas: A Lesson for the Governor on UC

Byuclafaculty

A column in today’s Sacramento Bee tells a tale about sofas with lessons for the governor.   Here is an excerpt: Gov. Jerry Brown is about to repent for a sin he didn’t know he committed in 1975. Ten months after Brown took office the first time, his administration produced a little-noticed regulation requiring that furniture sold in California comply with the strictest fire safety standard in the nation. Befitting its turgid language, the regulation came to be known as Technical Bulletin 117. Although it was supposed to save lives, another story has emerged in the intervening decades. Technical Bulletin…

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UC Student Medical Insurance Limits

Byuclafaculty

From the Contra Costa Times: UC Santa Cruz graduate student Micha Rahder suffers from a rare disorder that requires her to be hooked up to an IV over two days, five to eight hours at a time, every four weeks… In November, she got a letter from the university saying she had used $378,000 of the $400,000 lifetime limit for students on the University of California student health insurance plan (also known as UC SHIP), Radner said. In early January, a little more three years after her first treatment, she received another letter. “It comes from the Office of the…

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Peter Schrag on Yudof Retirement

Byuclafaculty

Peter Schrag, a former columnist for the Sacramento Bee, wrote an op ed about President Yudof’s retirement.  Excerpt: …All told, the UC is in far better shape now than when he came. But it’s unlikely that it can ever again exercise the kind of influence, both in this country and abroad, that it did in its glory days under Clark Kerr in the 1950s and 1960s. It was an era when new UC campuses and new programs were created one after another, when students paid low “fees” and not tuition, and when California adopted a master plan that promised every…

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Do as the governor says online; but not as he does

Byuclafaculty

Gov. Brown has been pushing online education as the key to closing the gap between what he proposes to give UC in his budget and what UC requests.  Various prior posts on this blog have dealt with that issue.  He also wants to foreclose tuition increases as a way to close the gap.  So let’s take a look at the governor’s use of online communications: Above is a screenshot of the governor’s multimedia element of his website: http://gov.ca.gov/home.php [click on multimedia].  It was taken at around 6 AM this morning. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]  If you are…

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Student Regent Asks Why Students Weren’t Consulted About Online Education (and no one quite answers)

Byuclafaculty

At the Jan. 16 session of the UC Regents dealing with online education, student regent Jonathan Stein asked why UC students were not consulted.  Various regents spoke in response.  Notably, Gov. Brown responded with the admonition to “get real” about the budget, but he did not address why students were not consulted.  In addition, UC-Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley – who has been active in UC online efforts – was asked to respond.  His response dealt with potential access by non-UC students.  But he also did not address the question of why UC students were not consulted. Stein’s remarks refer…

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Jerry Brown on Higher Ed Funding in the State of the State

Byuclafaculty

In case you missed it, Gov. Brown’s State of the State message yesterday contained only a brief paragraph on public higher education.  Most of his education remarks were directed at K-12.  Below is what he said about higher ed: “With respect to higher education, cost pressures are relentless and many students cannot get the classes they need. A half million fewer students this year enrolled in the community colleges than in 2008. Graduation in four years is the exception and transition from one segment to the other is difficult. The University of California, the Cal State system and the community…

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Regents Again Approve a UCLA Building Despite Cost Concerns

Byuclafaculty

Blog readers will recall that at a prior Regents meeting, UCLA produced a very sketchy and high cost plan for a new medical building, a “teaching and learning center.”  The presentation was so sketchy and the costs were so worrisome for the Regents to ask for a revised plan.  At the Jan. 16 meeting of the Grounds and Building Committee, UCLA came back with a revised plan for a $104.7 million project – said to be significantly scaled back – with more details.As with the earlier hotel project, UCLA apparently had offline meetings with Regents after the prior meeting (such…

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California Assembly Speaker John Pérez on the UC Budget, Tuition, Access, and Other Matters

Byuclafaculty

At the January 17, 2013 UC Regents meeting John Pérez spoke about the state budget and other issues. Pérez is an ex officio regent.  A summary follows and there is a link to an audio of his remarks at the bottom of this post: Summary: UC is unrealistic about increased funding from the state, backfilling of past budget cuts, or predictability for the university.  It is not addressing predictability for students.  UC was good at protecting the neediest students but not so good at protecting the middle class.  There are legislative concerns about graduate and professional school students, not just…

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Gov. Jerry Brown on Executive Pay at the University of California & Many Other Topics

Byuclafaculty

At the University of California (UC) Regents meeting of Jan. 17, 2013, Regent Leslie Tang Schilling asked Gov. Brown not to protest about UC executive pay.  The state portion of executive pay can be capped, she seemed to agree, but the Regents should then be free to raise private donations for increments of pay above the state portion.  She argues that UC will need high-quality leadership and must be free to compete for talent.  She expresses skepticism about psychic income. Brown responds at length with a learned discourse ranging from his one-time vow of Jesuit poverty to the history of…

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Demographic Shifts and Lulls

Byuclafaculty

The governor’s budget contains demographic projections for California.  A number of news stories have picked up on the fact that by mid-2013, the Latino and non-Latino-white populations will be equal, according to the projection.  It was pretty obvious from the 2010 Census that this development would occur soon.  However, another aspect of the projections – one more closely related to UC and budget issues – is the chart below: Apart from the fact – well known – that the population is aging, note there is little growth in the college-age population projected for the next few years.  Moreover, the K-12…