UC

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Hiking

Byuclafaculty

Earlier blog posts have noted that CalPERS‘ premiums for long-term care are going nowhere but up.  Another rate hike is being announced with an option instead to move to a lesser-value plan. UC employees and faculty are normally not covered by CalPERS’ pension and health care plans.  However, as state workers, they were offered the chance to enroll in CalPERS’ long-term care program when CalPERS got into that business.  Unfortunately, there was no guarantee concerning what the premiums would be over time.  From the Sacramento Bee‘s State Worker blog: The California Public Employees’ Retirement System today is mailing some 150,000…

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Audio of Steinberg & Powell on Online Higher Ed at State Senate Committee Hearing 4-24-13

Byuclafaculty

An earlier post dealt with the state senate hearing on online higher ed this past week and provided a link to a video of the hearing.  Embedding the official video of the hearing into the posting did not work well so a link was provided instead.  However, that link also doesn’t work especially well.  Below is a link to two excerpts from that hearing.  They are audio tracks with a still picture, first of Senate president Darrell Steinberg and then of UC Academic Chair Robert Powell.  Steinberg is the proposer of a bill which in its original form mandated 50…

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Oil Tax for Higher Ed Initiative

Byuclafaculty

As we have noted many times, it is very hard to get an initiative on the ballot without hiring signature-gathering firms (which will cost $1-$2 million).  And if the initiative gets on the ballot, millions more will be needed for TV ads, etc., if there is opposition.  An oil severance tax to fund higher ed would clearly have such opposition – from the oil industry.  All that said, there is such an effort underway (as noted in prior posts): …Conceived by UC-Berkeley students, the California Modernization and Economic Development Act places a 9.5 percent tax on oil and gas extracted…

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Yesterday’s State Senate Hearing on Online Higher Ed Bill

Byuclafaculty

A California State Senate committee held a hearing yesterday on SB 520, a bill that in its original form mandated 50 online courses at UC, CSU, and the community colleges.  The bill is being pushed by Senate President Steinberg. At the hearing, he offered amendments setting 50 as a goal rather than a mandate and allowing “public-public” partnerships as opposed to public-private.  The latter refers to deals with private MOOC companies.  Public-public would include, for example, cross-campus courses.  He also offered an amendment that no public monies would be used for the private side of any public-private partnerships. (It’s not…

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Strike Vote to Be Taken at UC Med Centers

Byuclafaculty

Strike at UCLA hospital in 2008 With contract negotiations stalled, union workers at University of California hospitals… say they will vote next week on whether to strike. The strike talk started Friday with a statement from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents about 13,000 employees at university medical facilities across the state… The university attributes the current strike talk to a refusal by the union “to agree to UC’s pension reforms,” which require employees to pay a larger percentage of their incomes toward pensions starting July 1… But the union says just the…

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Out-of-state and international students rising at UCLA

Byuclafaculty

  The numbers are out on UC and UCLA freshman applications and admissions.  Among the findings is the fact that the proportion of non-California admits to UCLA have risen.  Two years ago, three out of ten admits were non-Californians.  A year ago, the proportion rose to four out of ten where it remains this year.  You can find these and other data at http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/fall2013adm.html [Note that admissions are not the same thing as eventual enrollments.  Note also that undergrads also enter UCLA through community college and other transfers.]  

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Things to Come?

Byuclafaculty

Just a note to whoever is in charge that we are waiting to see the results of the campus climate survey taken last winter.  The survey was sponsored by UCOP in response to Regental concerns relating to certain campus-level incidents.  Results are supposed to be available “sometime in spring 2013” according to http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/28359.  At the time the survey was under consideration, the UCLA faculty welfare committee raised some concerns about response rates and response bias so we will assume those issues will be addressed in the report on the survey results. The rumored cost of the survey informally conveyed to…

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You can’t take it to the bank exactly, but…

Byuclafaculty

The state auditor prepares a kind of balance sheet for the state as a whole and for individual components of the state such as UC. For the year ending last June 30, the accounts show that UC had assets of $58.0 billion (including buildings – construction costs minus depreciation) and liabilities of $34.6 billion for a net asset total of $23.4 billion. (pages 58-60)There is an ongoing issue of the degree to which the state is responsible for the UC pension.  The report indicates that $6.4 billion of the liabilities of UC are “net other postemployment benefits obligations” which probably…

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Thanks, But No Thanks

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today notes that it appears that the Academic Senates of the three tiers of California public higher ed are decidedly unenthusiastic about the proposed legislation to mandate online courses under certain conditions.  Previous posts on this blog have reported on the controversy.…Academic senate leaders from all three public higher ed systems – UC, Cal State and the California Community Colleges — now outright oppose the efforts, though their full senates have yet to take formal votes…In particular, faculty representatives are concerned California lawmakers are preparing to hand over untold thousands of students to for-profit companies that have not proven…