Or maybe it was just irresistible:
Christmas day tends to be a slow news day. However, for those who didn’t see it, the LA Times carried a front page story about UC’s online offerings which allow cross-campus credits. You can find the article at:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-uc-online-20131222,0,6798231.story
Blog readers will be familiar with these offerings. We noted in a prior post that UCLA seems to be a taker rather than a giver in this endeavor. That is, other campuses’ online courses are available to UCLA students. But UCLA is not offering courses to the other campuses. Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, and Riverside seem to be the offerers.
Now, how about next year’s UC budget, governor? The headline above should make you happy:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-rBZREQMw?feature=player_detailpage]
We’ll just let you read about it:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-walking-dead-uc-irvine-course,0,2291650.story
And then we’ll hear what Ethel has to say:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFLM1z4v1pI?feature=player_detailpage]
Note: In the future, there are likely to be more such questions – of the type excerpted below – about campus plans for new programs, schools, and even grand hotels.
Dan Walters today in the Sacramento Bee:
Was UC-Irvine’s Law School Strictly Necessary?
Six years ago, yours truly wrote a column about a proposed law school at the University of California’s Irvine campus, suggesting that it was more about academic ego and Orange County boosterism than a shortage of lawyers. The column pointed out that the state already had 25 accredited law schools and the number of graduates taking the State Bar examination had been rising steadily to nearly 7,000 a year. It also cited a study by the California Postsecondary Education Commission’s staff, concluding that there was simply no need for another law school, especially one whose construction and operation partially depended on public funds…
UC – both its Irvine campus and the statewide Board of Regents – ignored the commission’s criticism and created the law school anyway. Fast forward to 2012. The UCI law school graduated its first class and boasted that 46 of its 51 graduates who took the State Bar examination passed… Fast forward again. Last week, the Los Angeles Times published a lengthy article describing the angst felt by recent law school graduates who cannot find jobs while struggling to repay huge loans they took out to finance their legal educations.CPEC was absolutely correct six years ago in concluding that the state had more than enough lawyers and didn’t need another expensive, taxpayer-subsidized law school….
There is – or should be – a lesson in this tale.
Full column at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/08/v-print/5323708/dan-walters-was-uc-irvines-law.html
Contemplating necessity isn’t always pleasant:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xq7i1vmon0?feature=player_detailpage]
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| UCLA co-generation plant |
California’s cash-strapped public universities would save millions of dollars under legislation by Orange County state Sen. Mimi Walters, but the bill’s prospects are uncertain because it would alter a landmark global warming law beloved by environmentalists. Walters’ proposal seeks to exempt University of California and California State University campuses from the new cap-and-trade program established under the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, otherwise known as Assembly Bill 32 or AB32, one of the nation’s most ambitious environmental laws…
At least five UC campuses, including Irvine, UCLA and San Diego, qualify for the cap-and-trade program in 2013…
The UC system has budgeted $8 million to comply with AB32 – for just the next fiscal year.
For that much money, the UC system could accommodate another 800 students, UC Vice President Patrick Lenz told members of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee last month. He and the system later backed off those comments, saying there is “not a direct correlation” between student enrollment and the money for cap-and-trade. He also later noted in a letter to committee chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that it’s possible the system won’t have to buy any credits to cover its 2014 emissions…
Full story at http://www.ocregister.com/news/trade-501273-cap-emissions.html
The following is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in 2011 by UC campuses covered under the AB32 cap-and-trade program. The emissions are displayed in units of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
UCLA – 205,299
UC San Diego – 160,579
UC Irvine – 69,979
UC San Francisco – 68,566
UC Davis Medical Center – 63,693
UC Davis – 62,259
Well, the emissions could be worse:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaN7xuAIjXI?feature=player_detailpage]
UC-Irvine has put a chemistry course on the web. But it doesn’t give credit for it and isn’t using the Coursera website (although UC-Irvine is affiliated with Coursera) because it wants to give the course away free. As for labs, it says that if some other institution wants to offer the course, it will have to provide the labs, etc. We are likely to see a bunch of such offerings from the campus. They show the campus is up-to-date, complying with the Regents/governor desires, and yet – in the end – they commit to nothing. Actually, yours truly has put several lectures of his own on the web. If anyone wants to see them, just let me know and I will supply the links. I am awaiting full praise from the Regents.governor but so far it hasn’t happened.
You can find the UC-Irvine announcement at:
http://learn.uci.edu/openedweek/opchem.html
An Inside Higher Ed article about the Irvine course is at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/03/11/irvine-offers-full-chemistry-curriculum-online-and-free
Actually, good chemistry has already been available for some time:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXnXtHbEclI?feature=player_detailpage]
