uc funding

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If You’ve Got a Few Hours to Spare Staring at Your Computer Screen: 2 Suggestions

Byuclafaculty

The Economist magazine and the Lewis Center of the Luskin School of Public Affairs sponsored a forum at UCLA on April 26 on governance problems in California. You can see a video below (which runs about an hour and a half). Yours truly is at minute 45 to minute 51 and at later points. The forum centered on the Economist issue of that week which focused on California and tended to put the blame for current dysfunction in Sacramento on direct democracy – the initiative process. Earlier, former UCLA Chancellor gave the 2011 Bollens-Ries-Hoffenberg lecture in which he outlined his…

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Chancellor: UC Berkeley becoming a federal university

Byuclafaculty

Chancellor: UC Berkeley morphing into federal university (excerpts) February 23, 2011 | Louis Freedberg | Californiawatch.org As it gets more funding from the federal government, and less from Sacramento, UC Berkeley is effectively morphing from a state university into a federal university, according to Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. In an interview yesterday, Birgeneau said the transformation will “require us to think through what our role is both in the state and nationally.” He first made the compelling case for applying the “federal” label to California’s most famous public university at a conference organized by the Travers Program in Ethics and Accountability…

Silicon Valley CEOs Advocate Stable Funding for California Higher Ed

Byuclafaculty

Governor Brown asked a group of Silicon Valley CEOs for suggestions as to how to stimulate employment growth in California. Among their suggestions:Develop a reliable and equitable financing and fee structure for state institutions of higher education and strengthen the buying power of the Cal Grant program for both public and private universities to encourage graduate and undergraduate student development. You can find the complete document at http://svlg.org/docs/whitepaper_govbrown.docx Note that the opening statement in the document that California did not create jobs during the past decade is misleading. Below is a graph of California nonfarm payroll employment I pulled from…

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Yudof Explains Tuition Increase in Public Letter: Tries to Mitigate Bad News with Good News But Comes Across as an Apology

Byuclafaculty

Most of the media coverage in fact focuses on the tuition increase, not the mitigating subsidies to lower income student nor the material on the quality of UC. Whether intended or not, the letter was likely seen as an apology for the increase.———————–Open letter to California fromUC President Mark G. Yudof 2010-11-08 The University of California was conceived in the immediate aftermath of the Gold Rush, and ever since the fortunes of the state and those of the university have been entwined. One would not be the same without the other. The university is both a creation of and the…

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Duelling PEB Reports

Byuclafaculty

When the Post-Employment Benefits (PEB) Task Force finished its deliberations, it published a majority and minority report. See earlier postings. UCOP responded to the dissenting report with a rebuttal. The dissenters replied to that response. In turn, UCOP responded to that response. Depending on when you looked at the UCOP webpage on PEB, you may not have seen the full back and forth. So here is the menu as of today: The full report of August 30 is at http://universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/ucrpfuture/files/2010/08/peb_finalreport_082710.pdfThe minority dissenting report of August 30 is http://universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/ucrpfuture/uncategorized/files/2010/08/peb_dissenting_082510.pdf The UCOP response to the dissent of Sept. 14 is at http://universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/ucrpfuture/files/2010/09/peb_dissenting_response_0910.pdf…

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UCLA Management School Plans to Move Away from State Funding Due to California’s Budget Crisis

Byuclafaculty

Giving Up State Funds (excerpts)September 7, 2010Inside Higher Ed How bad are things in California? The budget cuts and fiscal uncertainty are so severe that the University of California at Los Angeles’s business school is proposing that it give up all state funding — in return for greater budget flexibility and the right to raise out-of-state tuition to the levels of private institutions. The plan has been approved by UCLA, but is awaiting a review by Mark G. Yudof, president of the university system. Leading public universities regularly complain about the decline in the shares of their budgets that come…

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More Moving Towards Michigan

Byuclafaculty

Money may not grow on trees. But under the so-called Michigan Model – after a plan adopted by the University of Michigan – out of state students are an attractive substitute for a money tree because they pay full tuition. UC-Berkeley has already headed in the direction of pulling in more out-of-staters. Now it is reported that UC as a whole is likely to be moving in that direction under a recommendation of the Committee on the Future. From the San Francisco Chronicle (Excerpt): UC sees money in out-of-state students Wednesday, September 1, 2010, Nanette Asimov Ask any University of…

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Whitman Radio Ad Proposes Transfer of $1 Billion from Welfare to Higher Ed

Byuclafaculty

The latest radio ad from gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman proposes adding $1 billion to the budget for UC and CSU. The money is to be obtained from reductions in welfare spending by tightening up the welfare program. Click on the video at the bottom of this post (the big round circle in the center) to hear the ad. Joe Mathews, author of the Schwarzenegger bio book, “The People’s Machine,” critiques the ad at http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/prop-zero/A-Meg-Idea-That-Doesnt-Add-Up-101817413.html Excerpt from Mathews: Meg Whitman’s new radio ad features what sounds like a good idea: Take $1 billion from what she describes as California’s bloated welfare…

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Do Student “Fees” Support Financial Aid? Depends on How You Divide the Pie Says LAO

Byuclafaculty

The Legislative Analyst’s Office put out a “policy brief” on that question Aug. 6. You can find it at http://www.lao.ca.gov/sections/higher_ed/FAQs/Higher_Education_Issue_19.pdf Essentially, LAO says that since student costs are partly paid by the state’s general fund and partly from student fees, when you divert some of the total (state support + student fees) into aid, it is impossible to say from which part the aid comes. In short, LAO seems to say that you can divide the pie any way you like to get any answer you like. However, there is a potential problem with that approach. UC in particular has…

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Political Deadline on UC Pension & Its Dangers

Byuclafaculty

I have been posting material related to the two gubernatorial candidates’ positions on public pensions. As noted, Brown mentions UC explicitly in his pension program – although he does not say anything in particular about it. Whitman does not explicitly reference UC. The key points to keep in mind are: 1) Unlike other public pensions, UC has the $2-for-$1 problem. In essence, 2 out of 3 dollars of employee contributions to UC’s pension fund come from non-state sources such as research grants and hospital patient revenues. If the inflow of pension money is too low, the $2 cannot be recouped…