Category: UCOF

Differential Tuition at UC?

University of California weighs varying tuitions at its 10 campuses (excerpts)

Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2011

Should an education at UC Berkeley cost more than one at UC Santa Cruz? Should a student pay $11,000 in tuition at UC Riverside while his friend is billed $16,000 at UCLA?

…Nationally, UC is late to the debate, with many other state university systems long ago having established differential tuitions for their campuses…

…Perhaps not surprisingly, officials at UC Berkeley and UCLA have been among the most vocal advocates for some freedom in setting undergraduate tuition rates, which now are established uniformly by UC’s Board of Regents. The board has raised basic in-state tuition 8% for next school year, to $11,124. Campuses charge varying other fees for student activities, health, parking, and room and board that can bring total costs to more than $27,000 a year. UC’s graduate and professional schools set varying tuitions, with approval from the regents.

UC’s Commission on the Future, a panel studying reforms and ways to increase revenues, did not fully endorse differential tuition in its report in December, but it said UC should find ways to implement variable fees if the state’s fiscal crisis worsens…

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/education/la-me-uc-tuition-20110509,0,491002.story

CUCFA statement about the Dec. 13th special Regent’s meeting

Council of UC Faculty Associations statement about the Dec. 13th special Regent’s meeting

At their Special Meeting on Monday, December 13, the Regents of the University of California will be making decisions on two significant issues
– endorsing the principles of the UC Commission on the Future (UCOF) and drastically changing the University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP).

“One thing we can agree on, said Robert Meister, President of the Council of UC Faculty Associations “is the first sentence of the UCOF Report: ‘UC is at a crossroads.'” Meister continued, “Unfortunately the University leadership has ignored the outcome of this year’s election and is about to enshrine outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s vision of a privatized higher education system. The result will be a lower quality more expensive institution financed by ever increasing student debt.”

While faculty now use online tools to enhance their classroom teaching, CUCFA is concerned that the move toward fully online courses “taught” by non-research faculty and grad students, coupled with a push toward three-year degrees, means that future UC undergraduates will be trained in job skills rather than educated as citizens, leaders or thinkers. “On-line ed, apart from its notorious drop-out and failure rates, is designed to impart information, not create reflective, creative and articulate citizens,” argued Wendy Brown, co-chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association. She added, “the three year degree path will inevitably compress breadth and major requirements, discourage double majors and further attenuate aspects of an undergraduate education that broaden the individual and shape a thoughtful citizenry to engage an increasingly complex world.”

The UCOF also envisions increasing out-of-state undergraduate enrollment to raise more money. “Increasing out-of-state enrollment would raise revenues for only a few campuses — not the system as a whole — while decreasing the opportunity for Californians wishing to attend UC,” according to Meister. “The result,” he said, “will be increasing enrollment pressure on CSU and the Community Colleges.” To raise revenue, he argued “UC should make private businesses pay the full cost of the research they hire it to do, rather than losing money on such contracts as it presently does.”

CUCFA continued to express concern about proposals to reform the University of California Retirement Plan. Christine Rosen, Berkeley Faculty Association co-Chair and CUCFA Secretary, said, “I am still concerned about the inequitable two-tiered nature of the new proposal. Employees hired on or after July 1, 2013 will only have access to a pension plan with lower benefits.”

Rosen continued, “despite large increases in the UC and employer contributions, the new plan still does not adequately address the unfunded liability created by the 20-year suspension of contributions by the UC, the State of California, and UC’s employees.” It is not likely, she argued, that the still very vague proposal to borrow from the University’s Short-Term Investment Pool (STIP) and/or restructure University debt using STIP interest to fund the UCRP Annual Required Contribution (ARC) will be enough to raise the $4.5 billion needed to bridge the gap identified by the PEB Task Force between the funds raised by the contribution increase and the sum needed to fully fund the ARC prior to 2018, when contributions are supposed to reach a level where they can satisfy the ARC. Rosen also expressed concern that the plan seems to put UC on track to funding UC pension liabilities in part by charging employees more for health care. “The proposal to increase employee contributions to their healthcare premium, coupled with a big increase in employee contributions to their retirement
plan, represents a cut in take home pay that will make it increasingly difficult for UC to recruit and retain outstanding faculty and staff.”

Because this is happening without a plan to fully fund the ARC, she argues, the pension plan’s unfunded liability will continue to grow, putting its future increasingly at risk, despite the sacrifices UC and its employees are making to increase their contributions.

In his October 14 letter to President Yudof, CUCFA President Meister warned that, “a never-ending cycle of … more contribution increases, and more benefit cuts [would make] anticipated benefits … less cost effective, less calculable and less secure, [and lead] many lower and middle income employees [to] demand a defined contribution opt-out. Our defined benefits system would then collapse due to adverse selection.”

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Note: The UCLA Faculty Assn. is not a member of CUCFA. This blog entry is for your information. It should be noted, as readers of this blog will know, that the STIP borrowing proposal arose originally out of discussions about pension bonds and other forms of IOUs meant to speed the employer contribution on behalf of state-funded employees. Outside non-state sources account for roughly $2 out of $3 of contributions that go into the pension fund. However, outside funders will not pay more than is charged for state-funded employees. The idea behind borrowing is thus to collect $2 for every $1 that is transferred into the pension fund on behalf of state-funded employees, the sooner the better. Borrowing from STIP is not a vague idea, which the statement above seems to imply. What is unclear (vague) is whether more could be borrowed from STIP than is currently planned, thus putting $2 into the pension fund for every extra $1 that is borrowed.

Audio of Regents Meeting of 12-13-10: UCOF Approval & Post-Employment Benefits Plan Approval

Below are links to the audio of the Regents meeting of 12-13-10. There are 13 segments. (A couple of minutes of noise at the beginning of Part 1 have been omitted during which there were problems in linking two locations. The meeting officially began once the link was established.)

At this meeting, the Regents approved the UCOF (University Committee on the Future) report as well as the Yudof plan for post-employment benefits (pension & retiree health care). The Regents meeting took place with a video link to UCLA where some Regents attended.

As the previous post on this blog noted, the Yudof plan document was recently modified to omit certain limits on higher-level pensions. Other than an acknowledgment that there was a modification, there was no discussion of the reasons for the change or what the change entailed.

The public comment period ran about three quarters of an hour which appeared to be less time than the agenda indicated. There were comments on both the UCOF and retirement issues. Union representatives argued for representation in controlling the pension, against a two-tier pension approach, against raising the retirement age to 65 for workers doing physical labor, and for a progressive schedule of recipient payments for retiree health. (Higher income recipients would pay more.) Also in the public comment segment was an appeal for aid for undocumented students.

The Berkeley Faculty Assn. asked both for a faster ramp-up of contributions and against STIP borrowing. It is unclear whether the BFA representatives understood the potential contradiction between those positions or the $2 for $1 problem that is behind the STIP borrowing. (STIP borrowing is intended to speed the ramp-up of funding into the pension plan and – by accelerating the state contribution – to bring in contributions from non-state sources. Roughly $2 out of $3 of contributions comes from non-state sources that can’t be tapped for more than the rate the state/Regents pays.)

A CUCFA representative began a discourse on an economic history of California since the end of World War II which was cut off because of time limits imposed on those who speak during the public comment period. It is not clear what the conclusion to be drawn was.

Following the public comment period, there was some discussion of both UCOF and retirement issues. Then the meeting turned specifically to the UCOF report. There was some confusion among the Regents as to whether approving the report would amount to approving the contingencies for funding listed in the report. (The report listed some more drastic/controversial contingent steps UC might have to take if the state funding crisis continued but did not make formal recommendations.) Two Regents voted against the UCOF report which nonetheless passed. Because there was a yes-or-no vote on the entire report, a Regent who objected to any element had to vote no on the whole package.

On the Yudof plan for retirement benefits, three Regents ultimately voted no: Bonnie Reiss, Eddie Island, and Charlene Zettel. Only Reiss gave a detailed explanation – basically that the lower-tier pension plan was still too generous and out of step with what public pensions of the future will offer. Reiss speaks at the beginning of Part 13.

There was no option included in the plan as approved for incumbent employees to switch to the lower-tier. As prior postings have noted, although there has been discussion of offering such a choice, IRS approval would be needed.

On the retirement age issue, there were several assertions that UC expected the age issue to come up in future collective bargaining negotiations.

Annoying element: Peter Taylor characterized the two-decade contribution holiday as one in which employees did not contribute. In fact, there were no contributions, employee or employer. Had there been contributions, the bulk would have been from the employer.

UPDATE: A report on the meeting in the San Francisco Chronicle is at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/BANF1GQ0FF.DTL The LA Times version is at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/education/la-me-uc-pension-20101214,0,7451598.story

Regents meeting 12-13-10 (Audios from Facebook)
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13 (end)

The Future Lies Ahead: Final UCOF Report

Press release from UCOP issued yesterday at:

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/24629

UC Commission on the Future (UCOF) final report released

Date: 2010-12-06

The final report of the University of California Commission on the Future, convened last year to map out strategies to preserve excellence and access through the state fiscal crisis and beyond, was unveiled today (Monday, Dec. 6).

The 20 recommendations endorsed by the commission address five broad categories: teaching and curriculum, undergraduate enrollment and access, research and graduate education, fiscal discipline and administrative reform, and public education and advocacy.

The commission also cited contingency actions that, if the fiscal situation worsens, might be required to sustain a world-class institution crucial to the economic and cultural health of California. The full report, to be presented to UC Regents at a special meeting Dec. 13, is available online.

Some of the endorsed initiatives already are under way — such as an online education pilot project, streamlined pathways for transfer students and administrative initiatives to achieve efficiencies and significant cost savings. Other proposals call for improving time-to-degree and increasing nonresident undergraduate enrollment; strengthening the research infrastructure and graduate student involvement; increasing cost recovery from federal grants and contracts and revamping fundraising efforts; and expanding public education and advocacy.

Though not endorsed by the commission, recommendations for a multi-year tuition schedule and differential tuition by campus are worthy, at this time, of additional study, according to the report. In addition, contingency recommendations that the commission said might be necessary to protect the university’s mission and goals include curtailing enrollment, reducing the faculty and staff work force, and reducing financial aid support.

The Board of Regents, the governing body charged with setting policy or delegating responsibility for implementation, will be asked to endorse the principles of the final report at its Dec. 13 meeting. For each recommendation, there are specific assignments, deadlines and follow-up reports. Most of the recommendations — involving the academic realms of instruction, curriculum, academic personnel and research — cannot become fully effective without the active engagement of the Academic Council, divisional senates and faculty committees.

The UC Commission on the Future was created in July 2009 by Board of Regents Chairman Russell Gould, with UC President Mark G. Yudof serving as co-chair. Five working groups contributed substantially to the recommendations; they were composed of faculty, students, staff, alumni and administrators from all 10 UC campuses, as well as regents and individuals from business and labor organizations.

The 50+ page report is at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/dec10/b1attach.pdf

A quick scan suggests no surprises from earlier versions. However, you might look at page 27 where certain contingent recommendations are listed – not as things the Commission recommends, but as things that might have to be considered if dire financial conditions continue. (Page 27 of the report; not pdf page 27)

There is a write-up on the report in the Sacramento Bee at http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/06/3237202/uc-panel-offers-ideas-to-cut-costs.html#mi_rss=AP%20State%20News

I am always a bit leery of attempts to peer into the future:

Update: A newspaper editorial supporting the recommendations of UCOF is at http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101208/A_OPINION01/12080305/-1/A_OPINION

Regents Agenda for December 13 Special Session is Now Posted

The Regents have long scheduled a special session to deal with post-retirement benefits but it did not appear on their website until yesterday. You can find the posting at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/dec10.html

No new materials are attached to the posting for December. So presumably, what will be discussed is what was distributed at the regular November meeting. You can find that material at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov10.html

Apparently, some discussion will occur on the report of the Committee on the Future (UCOF), at least during the beginning of the meeting.

I don’t expect any fireworks from the Regents at this meeting, but in the photo above they are visiting the National Ignition Facility.

Fast Online Degrees

One of the issues raised by the recent review of the University Committee on the Future is the possibility of three-year undergraduate degrees. Efficiency through online courses is another topic that has been raised. Some faculty are concerned that such accelerated degrees would leave students missing something that they might gain through the more traditional four-year approach.

In a 1971 radio broadcast, commentator Jean Shepherd seems to have arrived at a substitute for whatever might be missing. A quick click where indicated below suggests the alternative. A modest proposal.

Three-Year Undergrad Degrees

One of the ideas that has been surfaced as part of the UC Commission on the Future was a three-year undergraduate degree option. The article below notes that a campus of the U of Massachusetts is moving in that direction.

UMass will offer 3-year degree plan: Amherst school, following national trend, cites costs (excerpts)

By Tracy Jan, Boston Globe | September 27, 2010

Seeking to trim the cost of a college degree at a time when many families are struggling with tuition, the University of Massachusetts Amherst this fall plans to introduce a program to make it easier for students to graduate in three years.

By introducing a formal three-year degree option, UMass joins dozens of other schools around the country that have decided that students’ desire to save money in some cases trumps officials’ traditional concerns that they have a full four years to explore and grow intellectually and socially.

“As the state backs out of support for public higher education, and families take on a bigger chunk of the burden, we need to try to mitigate that,’’ said James Staros, UMass Amherst provost. “We thought, ‘What can we do to shorten the time and cost for a UMass education, without diluting the degree?’ ’’

Although many colleges allow some students to graduate early, UMass will be the first major university in Massachusetts to offer a formal program, which will include advisers who can help students plan a path to a three-year degree…

At UMass Amherst, this year’s freshmen majoring in economics, music, and sociology will be able to join the three-year degree track; eventually, students in one-third of the university’s 88 majors will be eligible.

…(T)his fall, Staros said, students entering with enough Advanced Placement credits will find it easier to graduate in three years, with the help of advisers trained to steer them through a sequence of courses that may include online offerings and summer classes.

About 10 to 25 percent of the university’s 4,500 freshmen enter college with enough Advanced Placement credits to qualify for three-year degrees, Staros said. He said he expects that the number of students who seek to graduate in three years will grow as a result of the new formal option.

“It’s a very focused program,’’ he said. “It’s not for students who go to college and take a year to figure out what they want to do.’’

Because of the heavier course load required to graduate in three years, the expedited degree track would not be a good option for students who want to study abroad, double-major, or conduct independent research, he said. Some of those students could be steered toward a new five-year program, during which they could obtain both a bachelor’s and master’s degree.

…This fall, more than 50 schools in the United States will have the three-year option, or have plans to introduce it…

Many schools offering three-year options are small, private colleges trying to compete with for-profit schools for students… Others are public universities that have been mandated by state legislatures to provide the option; the University of Rhode Island has done that, and the Ohio and Tennessee legislatures are considering it…

Full article at http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/09/27/umass_amherst_to_offer_three_year_degree_program/

And a little music for fast degrees:

U of Texas Has a UCOF-Like Committee: Endorses Online Ed

Report: Shift colleges’ focus

Committee suggests better use of online classes and ‘no-frills’ education

By MELISSA LUDWIG
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

An advisory committee tasked with making Texas higher education more efficient recommended Thursday that the state make better use of online courses and “no-frills” education and tie state funds to course completion rather than enrollment.

Other suggestions included pushing students to finish college in four years and requiring them to complete 10 percent of their degrees outside the classroom.

Mandated last year by Gov. Rick Perry, the 20-member committee of business and education leaders presented a draft report to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board meeting in Austin. A final report will go to the governor’s desk by Nov. 1.

Jesse Rogers, president of Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls and a member of the committee, said the state’s college enrollment and graduation rates range from “poor to awful” and that Texas must get better results for the money it is spending.

“We have built a system of higher education in Texas that we can no longer afford to fund as it has been in the past,” Roger said.

Many of report’s suggestions are likely to spark controversy, but committee members said the state’s economic forecast calls for dramatic changes.

Full story at:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7131352.html

UC to develop online undergraduate degree program


Published Thursday, Jul. 15, 2010, Sacramento Bee

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/15/2892158/uc-developing-online-undergraduate.html

SAN FRANCISCO — University of California regents have agreed to develop an Internet-based undergraduate degree program that will save money and expand access to tuition-paying students.

Regent Sherry Lansing told regents at Wednesday’s meeting in San Francisco that the leading-edge online program gives the university system an opportunity to show everyone else how to do it.

Regents Chairman Russell Gould says it’s one of the ways UC might thrive in an era of shrinking financial support from the state.

An estimated $6 million in private donations is planned so faculty can begin designing dozens of online classes this fall in UC’s most crowded courses, including calculus, chemistry, physics and freshman composition.

UC already has 1,250 courses online.

Note: A more complete version of this story can be found at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/15/BAC61EEDI4.DTL&tsp=1

UC must put emphasis on education, not brand


UC must put emphasis on education, not brand

Timothy Hampton, Garrison Sposito

Tuesday, July 13, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle

The UC Board of Regents will discuss this week a proposal by the University of California president’s office for an ambitious plan to market UC online. The proposal entertains the vision of an eventual online bachelor’s degree that could tap new students throughout the world, from “Sheboygan to Shanghai.”

In fact, the track record for online higher education is very uneven. It requires enormous up-front investments and continual investments for upgrades. Given these high stakes and the financial pressures on UC in the current economic climate, it is crucial for California’s public university to move prudently.

As educators and scholars, we are, like our students, increasingly “wired in” and use the Internet every day in our research and teaching. For this reason, we recommend that the following three things be kept in mind:

Online teaching cannot replace the classroom experience. Internet use is most effective if it supplements the face-to-face dialogue that is the hallmark of university education. Knowledge moves too fast in the contemporary world to justify any teaching medium that is not extremely flexible, and the most flexible medium of all is conversation. It is no coincidence that the main technology firms – Apple, Cisco, Google and Microsoft – all have central campuses, where innovators consult and work together. We need to exploit technology as a way of serving the speed and ongoing innovation of teaching.

UC serves California. Previous experiments and preliminary estimates suggest that financial gains from an online UC are decades away – if, in fact, they materialize at all. Given these dim prospects, the only sensible reason to expand online teaching is as a service to California – to UC students, and to those students who would transfer into UC from California State University system campuses and community colleges. UC must avoid investing its precious resources in some “UC Brand” to be marketed across the globe. Such branding would require outsourcing teaching to part-timers who are not researchers, resulting in a decline in quality for those students who are our primary responsibility.

Teaching and research are one. One of the hallmarks of UC is the combination of excellence in teaching and research at all levels. Teaching and research feed into each other over time through extended work. Simply to extract bits of teaching and put them online out of context would sever the links between teaching and research that make UC special.

Most of the discussion about online education has come from administrators who are far removed from the experience of teaching and thus the logistics and consequent financial realities of moving courses and curricula online. UC has hundreds of superb teachers who have scarcely been consulted. However, it is obvious that it is teachers, not administrators, who should be the architects of this initiative, and at every step.

These commonsense suggestions must be kept in mind as UC explores online learning. If not, the university runs the risk of destroying its reputation and excellence in the name of marketing a brand. The taxpayers and students of California will be much the poorer.

Timothy Hampton is a UC Berkeley professor of French and comparative literature and was named a distinguished teacher in the arts and humanities last year. Garrison Sposito is a UC Berkeley professor of ecosystem sciences and received a distinguished teaching award last year from the College of Natural Resources. They are joined in this view by UC Berkeley professors Wendy Brown, Kristie Boering, Steven Goldsmith and Kevis Goodman.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/13/ED5J1ED4V1.DTL

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If you missed the link in an earlier post, here is a 1950s version of online education:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Q-Mw6qH9k&fs=1&hl=en_US]
These “Sunrise Semester” programs offered courses for credit in New York City beginning in the 1950s.