UC Regents

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Audio: July 12, 2011 (First Day) Regents Meeting

Byuclafaculty

We have been promising audios of the July 12-14, 2011 Regents meetings and below are links to the first day in two parts. Yours truly again raises the issue of why – since the Regents live-stream and record their meetings – they don’t then archive the audio on their website. Since they don’t, we have to request the audios and then mount them on a platform to link to this blog. That is more laborious than it might seem. And it would be unnecessary if the Regents did their own archiving. The agenda for the first day of the July…

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No Smoking at the Regents

Byuclafaculty

Despite the one-time endorsement of a past ex-officio Regent (see picture at left), the new headline is “UC Regents endorse Perata’s tobacco tax measure.” (Well, we did name the UCLA hospital after him.) Excerpt from news item below: Josh Richman, September 16th, 2011 The Regents of the University of California have endorsed the tobacco-tax-for-cancer-research ballot measure co-chaired by former state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, perhaps seeing a windfall of research dollars in their future. In a public hearing Wednesday, Perata – a 2010 Oakland mayoral candidate who now lives in Orinda – had told the Regents’ Committee on…

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LAO’s Proposed Path for UC

Byuclafaculty

In the Sacramento Bee’s article on the Regents meeting (see prior post), we find: …No one at the (Regents) meeting raised the possibility that UC might not need to increase spending as much as it has proposed. That view, however, could be found in the Capitol, where budget analysts said they were frustrated by the regents’ conversation. “UC is in effect saying that it plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more each year … at a time that inflation is at historic lows, when demographic growth in the college-age population is near zero and when most public agencies…

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Regents Go Off UCOP Script

Byuclafaculty

Maybe next time, UCOP might try to put the Regents meeting at the above location rather than at UC-SF. See below: UC regents balk at mandating annual tuition hikes (excerpts) Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 16, 2011 San Francisco — The University of California regents dodged a controversy Thursday by ignoring a proposal from UC President Mark Yudof that would have mandated annual tuition increases of 8 to 16 percent for the next four years. Instead, the regents turned their meeting at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus into a therapy session of sorts, gnashing their teeth about the steep drop…

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Making Money?

Byuclafaculty

Above are two charts prepared for the Regents meeting which show the rates of return for various investment funds. You can see on the lower slide that UCRP (pension) has earned around 5% per annum over the last ten years ending June 30, 2011. That is less than the assumed rate of 7.5%. The upper slide shows an annual rate of 9.35% over twenty years, above the assumed long-term 7.5% rate. (Also shown on the lower slide are the rates for the GEP = General Endowment Pool and the STIP = Short Term Investment Pool.) The full set of charts…

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Graduate Tuition to Rise?

Byuclafaculty

As noted in the prior blog post, the Regents are meeting this week. One item before them is a report on graduate student tuition and sources of support. You can see one typical graphic from that report above. The report concludes: Next Steps for Graduate Tuition Increases The enormous shortfall in State support of the University’s budget has required the University to make difficult and painful choices. Tuition increases have been used as a last resort to preserve the quality of a UC education. To date, the University has adopted a strategy of across-the-board tuition increases for all students –…

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Look for UC Exec Pay Headlines Soon

Byuclafaculty

The Regents are meeting this week. (We expect to have the audio of the prior meeting up soon on this site. Eventually, we will have the audio for this one, too.) Anyway, look for headlines about senior executive pay at UC in the next day or so. One of the items on the Regents’ agenda today: The last comprehensive study conducted on compensation for chancellors was completed in 2008. Given changes in market hiring practices, due to the mounting economic pressures on universities nationwide to watch expenses while still recruiting and retaining leadership, an updated comprehensive study of chancellors’ pay…

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Up, Up, and Away

Byuclafaculty

Under plan, UC tuition could rise by 16% a year Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle September 13, 2011 The University of California would raise student tuition by at least 8 percent – or as much as 16 percent – every year through 2016 under a plan that UC leaders will propose to the regents Thursday in San Francisco. Basic tuition could top $22,000 in just four years, not including other mandatory fees, books, room and board, if the regents adopt the idea at their November meeting as part of a multiyear budget plan. Undergraduate tuition is currently $12,192. UC officials…

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Some Time – But Not Too Much – Can Go By on Pensions

Byuclafaculty

As has been stressed ad nauseum on this blog, UC could be swept into some statewide pension changes which would override the Regents’ action of December 2010. The legislature seems to be giving UC a bit of time to have some influence. See below: Lawmakers essentially threw in the towel Thursday on comprehensive public pension reform – at least for now. With this year’s legislative session scheduled to end at midnight today, the Assembly voted 51-21 to approve a last-minute bill declaring its commitment to pension reform but conceding that more time is needed. …The measure reads: “This bill would…

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Zen Vetoes

Byuclafaculty

Governor Brown has been vetoing and signing. Among the vetoes were two that would have made commercial initiative signature gathering more difficult. One was a ban on paying signature gatherers by the signature. They would have then been paid by the hour which would have changed the incentive structure in a way that would have undermined name gathering. In theory, they would have sat in front of supermarkets and watched the clock tick rather than annoy people into signing. And he vetoed another bill that would have required signature gatherers to wear large badges saying they were being paid. Presumably,…