News

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Listen to Gov. Brown Say He is President of UC at Nov. 27, 2012 Special Regents Meeting

Byuclafaculty

The Regents held a special meeting to approve the new UC-Berkeley Chancellor and the interim UC-Riverside Chancellor on Nov. 27, 2012.  You can hear that meeting at the link below.  Governor Brown , Lt. Governor Newsom, and one Regent (Zettel) voted against the pay package for the new Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks which paid $50,000 in sslary more than the previous chancellor.  (The increment was from private funds.)  All three voted for the appointment but against the pay. Brown’s comments are particularly interesting and occur roughly between minute 5:50 and 10:50 on the recording.  He says that the state funding…

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Timing is Everything

Byuclafaculty

The state controller’s monthly cash report through December is out today and on the face of it there is less revenue than anticipated and more expenditure than anticipated for the first half of the year.  However, the controller in footnotes and in a supplementary statement attributes these results to timing rather than some fundamental departure from budgetary expectations.  Certain sales tax receipts that would normally have gotten into the general fund in December were not transferred there until January.  And certain local expenditures were paid out earlier than had been expected. In any event, these figures are too recent to…

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Things are heating up – particularly with regard to state politicos – concerning online ed at UC

Byuclafaculty

From the L.A. NOW blog of LA Times:Conference about online education attracts major players to UCLA January 8, 2013, Larry Gordon A national conference at UCLA on the future of online college education attracted some of the biggest names in the industry Tuesday, as well as politicians and faculty leaders from state universities. …Speakers at the event included Daphne Koller, the Stanford professor who is one of the founders of Coursera, a MOOC that offers courses from prestigious universities for free but usually without college credit, and Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford faculty member who co-founded Udacity, another MOOC that has…

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Crime Issues at UCLA

Byuclafaculty

UCLA Police Dept. building Winter quarter seems to have opened with some crime issues according to the Westwood-Century City Patch:  UCLA students were being warned Tuesday to be on alert after reports of two students being the victims of separate crimes about 90 minutes apart early Monday on or near the campus. About 12:05 a.m. Monday, a male student was walking north on Veteran Avenue from Gayley Avenue—adjacent to the west side of the campus—when a man approached him from behind, “placed a handgun in his back, and demanded his property,” according to UCLA police…The second crime occurred between 1:15…

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A whisper about higher ed in the forthcoming state budget

Byuclafaculty

In earlier posts, we have noted the practice of hints about the state budget proposal coming out before the official unveiling.  Up to now, the education hints have focused on K-12.  Today, the headlines were mainly about the governor’s complaints about the federal court jurisdiction over the state prison system.  However, he paired that complaint with a whisper about higher ed by saying it would be better to spend prison money on education.  And he did mention higher ed in that context. “We’re proposing increases in education at the higher level and in K through 12,” Brown said at a…

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Apparently, UC’s Online Courses Didn’t Knock Their Socks Off

Byuclafaculty

As earlier posts have noted, the governor at a recent Regents meeting pushed for a presentation on the progress being made by UC in pitching online courses.  Such a presentation will be made at the next Regents meeting.  But it appears there will be some explaining to do: The University of California is spending millions to market an ambitious array of online classes created to “knock people’s socks off” and attract tuition from students around the world. But since classes began a year ago, enrollment outside of UC is not what you’d call robust. One person took a class. “It’s taking longer…

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Seven

Byuclafaculty

There are seven years in a sabbatical.  Snow White had seven dwarfs.  There are seven deadly sins.  And Prop 30 – the governor’s now-enacted tax initiative – raised taxes for seven years. So legislative Republicans are pushing for a seven-year freeze on public university tuitions.  Now it is true that the Republicans are in a diminished situation with Democrats holding a supermajority in the state legislature.  But the idea of a tuition freeze will have an appeal beyond Republican ranks. The PolitiCal blog of the LA Times has the story (excerpt): Legislative Republicans on Monday proposed a seven-year freeze on…

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A Forget-Me-Not About the Grand Hotel Project

Byuclafaculty

Over many past postings, we have noted problems with the Grand Hotel plan UCLA is determined to pursue.  Now a lawsuit is pending and an op ed has appeared in the Daily Bruin concerning the deficiencies of the project: [excerpts] Proposed UCLA conference center too costly, ignores tax code and zoning  Laura Lake, co-president of Save Westwood Village, 1-7-13 The University of California is a public trust, a public treasure, an institution of world renown, not because it operates campus hotels, but because of its faculty and student body. Broken down by square footage, the 250-room, $162 million Luskin Conference…

Help Wanted

Byuclafaculty

When UC-Berkeley looks for someone to hire, it isn’t just a matter of putting up a sign, even though it is “financially secure.”  From a recent email: Our client, the University of California, Berkeley, is seeking a Human Resources Leader that desires a blank slate opportunity to develop and drive the HR Policy and Practice function in a brand new direction, advancing the legacy of success on behalf of an institution that has been ranked as high as third in the world, a premier, internationally renowned, financially secure teaching and research university that is consistently rated among the best in…

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More on the Powers That Be

Byuclafaculty

In an earlier post, we noted the names of state assembly members dealing with higher ed.  The state senate has a more general education committee that does all levels of education.  It will be chaired by Carol Liu who represents a district that runs from the Burbank/Pasadena area all the way east to Claremont and beyond.  Despite representing a southern California district, she has ties to UC Berkeley, especially the School of Education there. Poking around on the web, I find she at one time was on the UC-Berkeley Foundation Board of Trustees and that she and her husband have…