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]

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:

Chinese Dissent at UCLA

UCLA has a variety of exchange arrangements with China as the image of the UCLA Confucius Institute on the left suggests. While these arrangements can be mutually beneficial, the university can also find itself in a difficult position when and if things go wrong. The NY Times carries a story dated Feb. 9 about a professor from Peking University who was a visiting professor at UCLA. While here, he made some statements that ultimately led to his discharge at his home university and to quasi-exile in the U.S.:

…Peking University allowed Professor Xia to leave China to become a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, starting in July 2011 and then at Stanford the next year.

But in March 2012, as Professor Xia’s year at U.C.L.A. was nearing its end, Wen Jiabao, who was prime minister of China, gave a speech calling for reform of the Communist Party’s leadership and the country. Professor Xia took to social media, including his blog, to urge gatherings around China to press for change. His actions angered the Chinese authorities, who ordered him back to China in January 2013. He was told in June that there would be a vote on his employment at the university, and in October he was dismissed. Peking University has partnerships with many American universities, and as word spread that he would most likely be fired, Professor Xia became a symbol of Chinese scholars’ limited academic freedom…

Full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/us/chinese-dissident-lands-at-cato-institute-with-a-caution-to-colleges.html

Faithful blog readers will recall this item related to the most recent UC Regents meeting:

… 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.]…

From: http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2014/01/something-to-think-about-while-waiting.html

We look forward to any comments that anyone in Murphy Hall might have about Professor Xia.

Travel Focus Misses the Money Train

You may have seen the article in yesterday’s Daily Bruin about UCLA tightening up its rules on travel reimbursements. Why the tightening up?

…Public records documenting the travel expenses of the university’s top brass, obtained and published by the Center for Investigative Reporting in August, drew national scrutiny last summer for the luxurious travel accommodations of UCLA’s leadership, sometimes in violation of University policy. The accommodations and pricy travel arrangements bloated the university’s travel budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars…

Full story at http://dailybruin.com/2014/02/04/months-after-controversy-ucla-clarifies-travel-guidelines/

The problem with the original story is that it focuses on budget dust compared to the free-spending capital budget. There we are not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are talking about hundreds of millions and a Board of Regents incapable of evaluating and monitoring the endless flow. We are talking about the myth that if it isn’t state money, it doesn’t cost anything. You read about it here. Sadly, you won’t read about it anywhere else.

It’s hard to stop the real money train:

Listen to the Regents Meeting of Jan. 23, 2014

We continue indefinitely archiving the Regents meetings since – as numerous prior posts have complained – the Regents view an “archive” as lasting only one year. Below is a link to the meeting (open sessions only) of Jan. 23, 2014. We have previously posted the morning session of Jan. 22. The afternoon session of that date – which runs well over 4 hours – will eventually also be done. But it takes over 4 hours to do it so yours truly will get to it when he can.

At the Jan. 23 meeting, there were public comments involving (among other topics), outreach funding, a complaint by UC-San Diego students that the fall quarter calendar for 2014 (next fall) had been tailored to accommodate Jewish holidays, fossil fuel divestment, transfers from community colleges, complaints about complaints concerning the Israel boycott issue, and union issues regarding TAs. There was then discussion of the internal audits including issues related to sexual assaults and the UCLA Moreno report. (See our earlier post on Moreno.) There was discussion of various compensation issues related to coaches, a Berkeley provost, the acting chancellor for UC-San Francisco, and the new chief investment officer. One regent requested that coach compensation take account of academic achievement of athletes. The Lt. Governor and one regent dissented on the Berkeley provost’s pay. Finally, UC President Napolitano reported on various student and faculty honors. When the meeting was officially over, she can be heard thanking the session chair for “marshaling this herd through its paces.” Or maybe we should say she can be over-herd.

Click on the link below to hear the meeting:

Listen to the Regents Morning Meeting of Jan. 22, 2014

As promised in previous posts, yours truly is slowly working through the Regents meetings audio. Below is a link to the audio for the morning session of Wednesday, Jan. 22.

The Regents, for unacceptable reasons in an age where public meetings are archived indefinitely, archives them only for one year. Moreover, it appears to be policy not to make the audio files available directly. Hence, they can only be preserved by recording them from the temporary archive in real time. That is, to preserve one hour of Regents time requires recording from the archive for one hour.

To hear the meeting, click on the link:

Scroll down for a post that describes this meeting (in the update section):
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2014/01/something-to-think-about-while-waiting.html

The Resurrection?

[More in our Regents coverage. See earlier posts.] The Regents spent some time on the old Master Plan for Higher Ed. There was discussion, according to news reports, among representatives of UC, CSU, and the community colleges on better coordination.

…“This report shines an important light on the need to have a central body whose sole focus is guiding the Legislature, governor and our three higher education segments as we plan and build for the future,” (Assembly speaker John Pérez) said.

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-college-reports-20140123,0,5215408.story

Um, does no one remember CPEC, which still exists in ghostly form as a website (see screenshot above), after the legislature cut its budget to zero? It was supposed to be the coordinator. So will it be revived?

It’s really not so hard to recall such things!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2iIUcUL71s?feature=player_detailpage]

They’ve Got Plenty of Something

We continue our indirect coverage of the Regents. Eventually – as promised – we will post the audio for posterity. [The latest explanation I got for why the Regents post for only one year is that CSU does it that way. Hard to see putting a QED after that. As I have noted in past posts, my home city of Santa Monica posts indefinitely, so why not can’t the Regents do it that way? Oh well!]

Anyway, from today’s LA Times:

The UC regents on Thursday hired an executive of a Canadian investment fund to be the chief manager of the university system’s $82 billion in endowment and pension investments and will pay him more than $1 million a year if he achieves good returns. Although that pay package triggered little public discussion, the salary for another new executive hire attracted more opposition at the regents meeting here. Some regents opposed the $450,000-a-year salary for Claude Steele, who is becoming UC Berkeley’s provost and second-in-command. They complained that the pay is higher than that of some chancellors. For the new investments chief, Jagdeep S. Bachher, the regents approved a $615,000 base salary and set a maximum total payout of $1.01 million if UC investments perform well. That would be slightly less than the $1.2 million that Marie N. Berggren was paid in 2012, her last year before she retired in July. The compensation comes mainly from investment returns, not tuition or tax revenues, officials said…

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-me-uc-investments-20140124,0,6627219.story
Official statement at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/30598
At least no one will call UC cheap, cheap…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSNSTerj2Kc?feature=player_detailpage]

Issue Heating Up

We noted in yesterday’s posting (in the update portion) on the Regents public comment session that there were spokespeople complaining about anti-Israel activities on UC campuses including course credit on one campus, pushes for divestment, etc. Earlier postings noted statements by the UC prez and several chancellors (including Block) opposing an academic boycott of Israel by several academic societies. Today, the LA Times reports:

A group of lawmakers has formed the California Legislative Jewish Caucus to weigh in on issues of priority to members, including immigration, civil rights and Israel, according to its chairman, state Sen. Marty Block (D-San Diego)… So far, the new caucus has nine full members, including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento)…

Among the issues the group will address: In the last two years, some University of California student organizations and governments have approved resolutions urging the U.C. Board of Regents to divest from companies linked to the Israeli military. Block said there was also concern about incidents of anti-Semitism on California university campuses and cases in which professors have taught anti-Israel lessons…

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-lawmakers-form-new-california-legislative-jewish-caucus-20140122,0,7883863.story

We have also noted on this blog the progress being made in getting the state to assume responsibility for the UC pension. [Indeed, the UCLA Faculty Assn. made the first break-through with the Legislative Analyst’s Office on that issue.] The Regents also noted the progress so far and also the need for UC to be treated the same as CSU regarding pension funding. (CSU is part of CalPERS for which the state assumes liability.) Thus, calls for political use of pension and other UC funds (including continued calls on the Regents to divest from fossil fuels) could end up being costly for UC by undermining that progress. At present, UC gets about the same funding as CSU, but UC has to make pension contributions out of its state funding while CSU does not. As time goes on, and pension contributions have to be ramped up, this difference – if it persists – will be a source of an ongoing budgetary squeeze of UC and upward pressure on tuition.

Thus far, no one seems to have noted the interconnection between these various issues. So you read it here first.

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]