Jerry Brown Looks for an Online Course that Requires No Human Interaction

At the Regents meeting of January 22, 2014, Gov. Brown seems to be searching for an online course that requires no human interaction. Such a course, he reasons, could have unlimited enrollment because it is completely self-contained. He gets some pushback from UC Provost Dorr, who thinks courses should have such interaction.

You can hear this excerpt at the link below. The entire meeting of the Committee on Educational Policy of the Regents was posted yesterday.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tYFLJvrE3g?feature=player_detailpage]

Jerry Brown Suggests Master Plan is Dated

Our previous post covered the Jan. 22 meeting of the Regents’ Committee on Educational Policy. As noted, there was discussion of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, considered a major accomplishment of Brown’s father when he was governor.

Below is a link to Brown’s comments in which he suggested the Plan was now dated.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RmjI4gVync?feature=player_detailpage]

Listen to Part of the Regents Afternoon Session of 1-22-2014

As we have noted in numerous prior posts, the Regents refuse to archive their meetings beyond one year. So we dutifully record the sessions in real time. Below is a link to part of the afternoon session of Jan. 22. This segment is mainly the Committee on Educational Policy. Gov. Brown was in attendance. We will separately (later) provide links just to certain Brown segments. But for now, we provide a continuous recording.

There was discussion of designating certain areas of UC-Merced as nature reserves, followed by discussion of a new telescope. The discussion then turned to online ed and the governor seemed to push for courses that involved no human interaction so that there could be unlimited enrollment. At a later point, Chancellor Block made a comment about the virtue of “residential” education which seemed aimed at the governor’s online push. He talked about a digital divide in which better off students would have traditional in-person classes and poor students would have mainly online offerings. There was discussion of the old Master Plan. Heads of the three segments in the Plan – UC, CSU, and the community colleges – were part of the discussion. Brown indicated that the Master Plan was a political compromise of an earlier era and that it needed to be questioned as to today’s needs.

The president of the UC Students Assn. spoke in support of a larger state budget allocation than the governor was proposing, an oil tax to fund education, divestment from fossil fuels, and other items.

You can hear this portion of the afternoon session at the link below:

Whatever happened to the era of limits?

In his first iteration as governor, back in the 1970s and early 1980s, Gov. Brown emphasized the “era of limits.” Yesterday at the Regents, however, he apparently wanted to push those limits when it came to online education:

Jerry Brown pushes UC to find “outer limits” of online education

…Sitting in on part of Wednesday’s meeting, Brown challenged regents to develop classes that require no “human intervention” and might expand the system’s reach beyond its student body.

“If this university can probe into” black holes, he said, “can’t somebody create a course — Spanish, calculus, whatever — totally online? That seems to me less complicated than that telescope you were talking about,” referring to an earlier agenda item. After receiving pushback from UC provost Aimée Dorr, who delivered the presentation, that students are “less happy and less engaged” without human interaction, Brown said those measurements were too soft and he wanted empirical results…

Full story at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/01/am-alert-302.html

Note: As yours truly reported yesterday (see the prior posting), due to teaching and other obligations, it will take awhile before the full Regents meeting can be posted for posterity (or at least longer than the one year Regents are willing to do.) But we will get there.

It’s just a matter of limits:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CtjhWhw2I8?feature=player_detailpage]

Something to Think About While Waiting for the Governor and Regents

Snow at UCLA in 1932

The governor is due to give his State of the State address today. What, if anything, he will say that might have a connection to UC and higher ed is unknown. The Regents are also meeting today (and tomorrow).

Inside Higher Ed today is running a list of average annual snowfalls (in inches) at selected universities. So whatever happens at the State of the State or the Regents meeting (or if you have followed weather reports for other parts of the country today), remember that things could be worse:

1. Michigan Technological University: 200
2. Syracuse University and SUNY Oswego: 124
3. University of Rochester: 99
4. State University of New York at Buffalo: 94
5. University of Minnesota at Duluth: 86
6. University of Vermont: 81
7. Southern New Hampshire University: 69
8. Western Michigan University: 67
9. Cornell University: 65
10. University of Alaska at Fairbanks: 62

Full story at http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/01/22/10-snowiest-college-campuses-sort

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTQqpYBHQ8?feature=player_detailpage]

UPDATE: Yours truly was able to hear most of the governor’s speech. Why “most of”? Because the calchannel system evidently was overwhelmed by folks tuning in on the web. So, again, a cautionary note on the technology solutions to higher ed costs is warranted. The speech did mention UC in connection with research. Other than that reference, however, the governor focused on fiscal prudence, debt, drought, K-12 funding changes that divert resources to disadvantaged students, “subsidiarity” (mainly local assumption of prisoners), environment and greenhouse gas, and poverty.

At the same time the governor was speaking, the UC Regents web broadcast also had problems. Parts of the public comment session I heard involved fossil fuel divestment, complaints about anti-Israel lectures and course credit for such lectures, and sexual assaults at Berkeley. I heard part of UC president Napolitano’s report. Among the topics: cap on UCOP staff, consultants, travel. There was a reference to development of a new funding model for tuition to be unveiled in the spring and “efficiency” initiatives. Academic Senate chair William Jacobs spoke mainly on UC undergraduate programs.

The Committee on Finance heard a report on federal budget issues, particularly the squeeze on research funding. Federal funds also flow to UC through student aid, Medicare at the hospitals, etc. The latest budget deal in Washington was seen as a positive. As far as the state budget proposal of the governor is concerned, UCOP noted (as it has before) the CSU’s pension is taken car of by the state via CalPERS but not UC’s. It was noted that the governor now lists the UC pension as part of state debt and the Legislative Analyst is moving toward that position. Since the Leg Analyst is projecting more dollars than the governor, perhaps – at the time of the May revise – UC might get more funding and put some of it in the pension fund. The tuition freeze was noted as well as lack of an explicit enrollment growth factor in the governor’s budget.

The Committee on Health Services looked at a UCLA health take-over of a program previously run by USC. It’s not on the agenda documents, as far as I can tell – at least as of today. There is also a proposal for a joint lab in China that would conduct clinical trials. Significant skepticism was expressed by regents about the risks entailed and having UCLA’s name linked to an outside entity – a private firm. [Only one regent seemed to want to ask whether clinical trials in China are subject to the same kinds of controls, regulations, and human rights protections, that exist in the US. UCLA says it will apply US standards.]

A review of the nuclear labs followed. It was reported that past-due pension contributions for the labs had been partly paid and that the rest is expected due to the Washington budget deal.

Note: There is a notice on the governor’s website that he will attend the afternoon session of the Regents meeting. http://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18374

===========

Yours truly is teaching this quarter and his ability to record and post audio of Regents meetings is limited by other commitments. Nonetheless, it will (eventually) be done because the Regents continue their policy of archiving meetings only for 1 year. Presumably, calchannel will have a link to a recording of the governor’s speech so you should have access to that event soon.

UC Is Drying Up

You’ve probably heard that Gov. Brown has declared a drought emergency. So UC is there – Johnny on the spot – with a pledge to save water for the guv:

University of California President Janet Napolitano today (Jan. 16) announced a goal of reducing per capita water use by 20 percent throughout the UC system by the year 2020. As California experiences some of its driest weather on record, Napolitano said the university must step up and contribute to the preservation of the state’s most precious resource. “The University of California has long been a leader in conservation efforts,” she said. “This new 2020 goal complements the university’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative and its broader award-winning sustainability efforts. UC is prepared to play a leadership role in response to California’s current water crisis by demonstrating water sustainability solutions to the rest of the state.” Every UC campus already has established its water usage baseline against a three-year average, and the 20 percent reduction goal will be pegged to each campus’s baseline…

Full media release at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/30584 Inside Higher Ed pointed yours truly to the story at http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/01/21/u-california-pledges-20-reduction-water-use-2020

Anyway, it’s going to be tough:

New and Old at the UC Regents

The Regents in 1964

1-17-2014

SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the following appointments.

Richard C. Blum, 78, of San Francisco, has been appointed to the University of California Board of Regents effective March 2, 2014, where he has served since 2002 and was chair from 2007 to 2009. Blum founded Blum Capital Partners L.P. in 1975 and serves as chairman and president. He has been chairman of the CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. Board of Directors since 2001. Blum has been a member of the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business Advisory Board since 1984 and was chair from 2012 to 2013. He is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank Economic Advisory Council and the National Democratic Institute’s Board of Directors and an appointee to the President’s Global Development Council. Blum is a founding member of National Geographic’s International Council of Advisors and founder of the American Himalayan Foundation and the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the Honorary Consul of Nepal and a member of the board of trustees at the Brookings Institution, the California Academy of Sciences, the Carter Center, the Glide Foundation, the Wilderness Society and Central European University. Blum earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Berkeley. This position requires Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Blum is a Democrat.

Monica Lozano, 57, of Los Angeles, has been appointed to the University of California Board of Regents effective March 2, 2014, where she served from 2001 to 2013. Lozano has held multiple positions at ImpreMedia LLC since 2004, including chief executive officer, chair of the board and senior vice president of newspapers. She has held multiple positions at La Opinion L.P. since 1985, including owner, chief executive officer and publisher. She was a member of the California State Board of Education from 1998 to 2001. Lozano is a director at the Bank of America Corporation, the Walt Disney Company, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Weingart Foundation. This position requires Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Lozano is a Democrat.

Norman Pattiz, 70, of Beverly Hills, has been appointed to the University of California Board of Regents effective March 2, 2014, where he has served since 2001. Pattiz has been chief executive officer of Courtside Entertainment Group since 2011. He held multiple positions at Westwood One from 1976 to 2010, including founder and chairman. Pattiz was an appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors of the United States of America from 2000 to 2006. He is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Relations. This position requires Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Pattiz is a Democrat.

Richard Sherman, 61, of Pacific Palisades, has been appointed to the University of California Board of Regents. Sherman has been chief executive officer at the David Geffen Company since 1992. He was a partner at Breslauer Jacobson Rutman and Sherman from 1977 to 1992 and a senior accountant at Peat Marwick and Mitchell from 1973 to 1977. Sherman is a member of the Aviva Family and Children’s Services Board of Directors, the Geffen Playhouse Board of Directors and the David Geffen Foundation Board of Directors. He was a member of the Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc. Board of Directors from 2008 to 2013. Sherman earned a Master of Business Taxation degree from the University of Southern California. This position requires Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Sherman is a Democrat.

From http://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18369

New appointment is in italics. Lozano was on the Regents before but her appointment expired in 2013. So she is being returned after a hiatus. Blum is husband of U.S. Senator Feinstein.

The LA Times has the story at http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-uc-regents-20140118,0,3872109.story

She Sure Didn’t Bumble Her Meeting with the Bee

UC prez Napolitano had a meeting with the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee recently and, evidently, said the right things:

Editorial: Janet Napolitano is showing a clear-eyed view of UC mission

By the Editorial Board

Published: Thursday, Jan. 16, 2014

UC President Janet Napolitano has her priorities for the university system in correct alignment; the question will be in the execution. In a visit to The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board on Wednesday, Napolitano showed she is a quick study…

Importantly, Napolitano was clear-eyed on the basic point that UC was “designed to build California,” and that its role in educating the children of California “has to be one of our primary missions.”

“We teach for California,” she said. “We research for the world.” …

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/16/6075778/editorial-janet-napolitano-is.html?storylink=lingospot_related_articles#storylink=cpy

Full eidtorial at: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/16/6075778/editorial-janet-napolitano-is.html

And, also from the Bee, there is this article which pretty much echoes the official UC approach of saying nice things about the governor but asking for more:

Janet Napolitano on Wednesday called Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent budget outline a “good starting point” for higher education funding in California. Meeting with The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, Napolitano did not explicitly call for more funds, but said: “We’ll have a discussion about what else can the university do and what other needs that we have.”…

Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/15/6076136/napolitano-sees-browns-budget.html

We couldn’t bug the room where she met the Bee’s editors but it sounds like a total lovefest:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/15/6076136/napolitano-sees-browns-budget.html#storylink=cpy

Is there a Changing State Attitude Regarding the UC Pension? Reading Between the Lines

As blog readers will know, UC has had difficulties in getting the state to recognize that its pension liabilities were ultimately those of the state, just as CalPERS and CalSTRS liabilities are liabilities of the state. Thanks to the two-decade hiatus of contributions, the state seemed to forget about UC’s pension. However, there is beginning to be recognition that although you can say the pension is a liability of the Regents, in the end the Regents have no sources other than the state and tuition to deal with it.

We noted recently that in his budget document describing his proposal for 2014-15, the governor listed the UC pension and retiree health obligations along with those of other state plans. The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), which at one time was adamant about the liability not belonging to the state, has not been repeating that position of late. Indeed, the LAO has just released its summary of the governor’s budget plan. It notes that the governor is trying to move to what can be seen as a block grant approach to UC (and CSU) funding, rather than one based on enrollments or particular programs. LAO complains that such an approach reduces control by the legislature. In citing examples of an alternative approach, the LAO says [page 30]:

For example, the state could allocate new funding for specific purposes such as a COLA, maintenance projects, or pension obligations.

You have to read between the lines to take this as a shift in attitude towards the UC pension. But LAO could have picked other examples.

The LAO document is at: http://lao.ca.gov/reports/2014/budget/overview/budget-overview-2014.pdf

Budget Leaks Turn into a Flood of Biblical Proportions

We noted in prior posts that there were some leaks of the governor’s proposed budget for 2014-15, which was supposed to be unveiled on Friday. The leaks turned into a flood of Biblical proportions when first the Sacramento Bee published some summary information about the budget yesterday, said to come from the actual budget that the Bee had obtained somehow. Then what appeared to be the budget “summary” – actually a document of 271 pages – appeared online. And then it was announced that the official unveiling would be today at 9 AM instead of tomorrow, confirming that what was online was the real thing.

At the moment, the unofficial/official budget is at:

http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/docs/CAbudget2014.pdf

Presumably, the official documentation will soon be on the Dept. of Finance website. The governor and his finance director generally are the presenters at the media event in which the budget is unveiled. (An advance leak/flood of this type and then a resulting hurried-up media event occurred once under Schwarzenegger.)

First, let’s start – based on what’s currently posted – with the UC news. Two versions of general fund payments to UC appear in the summary document. My guess is that the version with somewhat higher payments to UC included the debt service deal made with the state. (UC has a better credit rating than the state and can borrow at lower interest rates. UC assumed state debt for some past facility obligations and the refinancing saves the state some money.) Version 1 (page 35) shows a 5.7% increase over the current fiscal year; version 2 (page 37) shows a 5.5% increase. There is a lot of language about higher ed needing to be more efficient and innovative – a previous gubernatorial theme. The budget proposes a $50 million innovation fund for all three segments of higher ed to be controlled by a committee involving all three segments plus the Dept. of Finance. Alert #1: Some folks might get nervous about that type of curriculum intervention.

Alert #2: As prior leaks have indicated, there is a lot in the budget document about paying down debt. At one point, there is a chart (page 4) which includes the UC pension and retiree health care unfunded liabilities as part of state debt. This is a BIG DEAL since the Legislative Analyst keeps insisting that the UC retirement unfunded liability is not something for which the state should be considered liable. If the governor and the Dept. of Finance now say that it is a state liability in an official document, that assertion should close the issue. (It won’t, of course, but progress has been made.)

As for the budget itself, it continues the general miasma of state accounting. Yours truly will await the governor’s media conference. But for the moment, let’s focus on the reserve in the General Fund. At the end of last year (June 30, 2013), the state controller put the reserve on a cash basis at MINUS $2.5 billion. The governor, on an accrual basis, put it at PLUS $872 million and now says it was actually PLUS $2.5 billion. No reconciliation between cash and accrual is provided. There is no doubt that with Proposition 30 and the improvement in the state economy, the budget situation has improved. But absent a reconciliation, the suspicion has to be that for cosmetic reasons, the governor wanted a final positive number in the reserve at the end of 2012-13 in his version of the budget – and he got one.

There is much focus in the new budget proposal on creation of a rainy day fund. Of course, the reserve is a rainy day fund (when it is positive) but both Brown and – before him – Schwarzenegger have liked the idea of carving out a kind of additional reserve and labeling that one the rainy day fund. That’s fine, but a reserve is a reserve is a reserve.

If we use the governor’s accrual version of a reserve, he expects to end this year with $4.2 billion in the reserve (June 30, 2014). A year later (June 30, 2015), he proposes in his budget that the reserve plus rainy day fund will total $1.9 billion + $1.6 billion = $3.5 billion. (Page 14) Note that $3.5 billion is less than $4.2 billion, so if the total reserve (including the rainy day fund) is declining, expenditures have to be exceeding revenues, something that ordinary folks would call a deficit. I doubt the word “deficit” will be uttered by either the governor or the finance director. And the governor would say he is paying down past debts that have accumulated to the tune of $11.8 billion in the proposed budget, both to Wall Street (the Schwarzenegger Economic Recovery Bonds) and internally, e.g., debt to K-14 under Prop 98. (Page 9) There is, however, ordinary debt service and discretionary debt service. The Economic Recovery Bonds have to be paid off unless the state were to default. Some of the other internal debts are more “adjustable.”

Stay tuned for more after the media conference.

And finally note that the mishaps in getting out the budget – where a few modest leaks earlier in the week have now become an online sea – may be a bit of online education for the governor. An interesting ride in the last 24 hours, thanks to the governor, in any case:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5tIHtbctFQ?feature=player_detailpage]