Faculty associations address UCOP

The UCLA Faculty Association is part of a UC-wide coalition of faculty associations known as CUCFA–the Coalition of UC Faculty Associations. Through CUCFA, UC faculty are able to address the UC Office of the President on issues of importance to faculty, their students, and staff. Below is a round-up of recent communication between CUCFA and UCOP.

UC Union Coalition on Health Insurance Costs

CUCFA signed on to a joint letter from unions representing employees across the UC system expressing concern with large increases in the cost of health insurance. The unions requested a meeting to “address what appears to be a conflict of interest in how it negotiated the 2024 rate increases with the providers in its own system. Given that two of the major plans available to UC employees are based on the UC hospital system and professional medical groups, UCOP should have invited a third party to participate in the negotiations over the plan cost increases.”

Opposing Proposed Website Policy

Faculty addressed the UC Regents proposed new policy limiting statements on departmental websites: “At a time when free speech and academic freedom are under threat on many campuses, the proposed policy is recklessly ambiguous. The Regents are still debating whether the new policy will apply to all websites or solely to the landing pages of department websites, and that is a huge policy difference. In failing to adequately define what constitutes a political statement, it runs the risk of serious overreach and abuse. This is all the more alarming as the policy does not specify who is responsible for its enforcement: which university office or position will be responsible for policing the policy?”

Support for Math Standards in UC Admissions, Shared Governance

Addressing the Regents proposal to change math standards for admission, CUCFA wrote: “We are alarmed that the Regents have recently chosen to ignore the recommendations of the Academic Council and its systemwide Senate committees on a number of key issues. The centrality of faculty governance to the University of California is critical to maintaining its international reputation for excellence and recruiting the best scholars and teachers. It is especially concerning that the Regents have overruled their own faculty in educational matters–like admission standards, curricula questions, and academic freedom–over which faculty have greater expertise. While we consider harmful all the examples of the Regents’ interference in Senate faculty’s delegated authority and the principles of shared governance, here we are writing to address the most recent instance of the Regents substituting their wishes for the expertise of the faculty.”

Academic Council knocks UCOP data policy

The Academic Council of the UC Academic Senate called for significant revisions to a proposed new university policy on “Research Data and Tangible Research Materials.” The Council characterized the proposed policy as, “overly broad, difficult to enforce, and a potential danger to faculty intellectual property.” Previously, the Berkeley Faculty Association criticized the policy as a solution in search of a problem, and a danger to faculty academic freedom. As the BFA noted, the policy opens with a sweeping assertion of new university rights, “The Regents of the University of California owns all Research Data and Tangible Research Materials,” and goes on to specify how the Regents should manage these newly asserted rights. A potential danger, as the BFA noted, include the possibility that the university could re-use faculty data that it claims to own, dispossessing faculty of their intellectual property. The Academic Council recommended a total rewrite, something “more limited in its scope, perhaps targeted to areas for which there is a clear need and purpose.”

UCOP Response to CUCFA on Health Options

In April, the Council of UC Faculty Associations drafted a letter of concern over proposed changes to UC employee health insurance options. Over 2,500 faculty system-wide added their names in support of these concerns. Now we have a response from the UC Office of the President (UCOP):

Subject: Health care options letter
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 23:40:06 +0000
From: President at UCOP dot edu
To: info at cucfa dot org

Dear Professor Hays:

Thank you for sharing the Council of UC Faculty Associations’ letter of April 7 to President Napolitano regarding the possible restructuring of healthcare plans available to UC employees. I am pleased to respond on the President’s behalf. We appreciate having the Council’s concerns, and I hope you will share this response with your colleagues.

Let me begin by saying that there has been no decision to alter the existing portfolio of healthcare plans for employees, and there definitely will be no change in the healthcare plans offered for the calendar year 2016. Given the high cost of health benefits to UC as an employer (approximately $1.5 billion per year, and year over year increases in these costs of approximately 7 percent per year for the past five years), however, the University has a responsibility to ensure that it is making the best use of these funds to align them with the best interests of UC employees.

It is in this context that the President has had a series of discussions with Executive Vice President John Stobo, Human Resources, and representatives of the faculty Health Care Task Force (HCTF) to review our portfolio to determine whether it makes sense to expand the offering of self-insured healthcare plans. The principles of choice, access, affordability, and controlling overall costs for the University were our guiding principles. Going forward, we also want to be sensitive and avoid the necessity for faculty and staff to change doctors, so another objective is to minimize disruption to provider networks, with the major networks being Kaiser (a self-contained insurance company and network system), Health Net, and UC Care.

We have focused on self-insurance because this has the potential for providing the most affordable healthcare, it allows us to construct the provider networks as opposed to having those networks being disrupted by negotiations between the insurer and the provider (e.g., Blue Shield and PAMF at UC Santa Cruz), and it allows UC to have more control over the benefits provided. These discussions are ongoing, and they include the Health Care Task Force Chair, Professor Robert May, and Professor Emeritus Bill Parker, the UC Irvine HCTF Representative and former Chair of the University Committee on Faculty Welfare (UCFW). Included in these discussions are ways to include broader representation from faculty and staff.

Please be assured that we are deeply committed to the principles of affordability and accessibility with respect to our UC healthcare plan offerings for our employees, and we look forward to discussing this with you and your colleagues as we move forward.

Sincerely,

Aimée Dorr, Provost
Executive Vice President—Academic Affairs

cc: President Napolitano
Executive Vice President Nava
Executive Vice President Brostrom
Executive Vice President Stobo
Vice President Duckett
Vice Provost Carlson
Chief Risk Officer Lloyd

UCOP Study Shows Decline in Faculty Compensation

A year ago Colleen Lye and James Vernon, co-chairs of the Berkeley Faculty Association, drew the attention of faculty across the ten campuses of the University of California to the continuing degradation of their pensions, benefits and salaries. Increasing employee contributions to health insurance and pensions were compounding the negative impact of slow salary group, they argued, and retirees faced fewer choices for healthcare.

Now UCOP’s own study of total remuneration has confirmed much of their argument. The executive summary of this document contains the following depressing bullet points:

Between 2009 and 2014, UC’s total remuneration fell from 2% below market to 10% below market.
Health and welfare benefits fell from 6% above market in 2009 to 7% below market in 2014, primarily caused by higher medical employee contributions at higher salary bands compared to the market.
Changes to retirement plan designs since 2009 reduced positioning against market from 29% above market to 2% below market.
Total retirement decreased from 33% above market to 6% above market.
Total benefits decreased from 18% above market to 1% below market.

Napolitano Responds to UCLA’s Moreno Report

Moreno

UC President Napolitano issued a response to the (former California Supreme Court Justice Carlos) “Moreno Report” of Oct. 2013, formally titled “Independent Investigative Report on Acts of Bias and Discrimination Involving Faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.” It includes directives to all campus chancellors:

1) Every campus should designate an official to serve as its lead discrimination officer. This official is responsible for ensuring that an appropriate response is made to all reports of perceived acts of discrimination, bias, and harassment involving faculty, students, and staff from all parts of the campus.

* The discrimination officer will designate the individuals responsible for carrying out such activities as advising complainants, accepting complaints, carrying out investigations, recommending informal resolutions, and referring cases to the Academic Senate or administrators as appropriate.

* The Chancellor should ensure that he/she regularly meets with and reviews the work of the lead discrimination officer.

2) Every campus should have an official who serves as an ombudsperson, responsible on his or her own or through other staff for providing confidential advice about perceived acts of discrimination, bias, and harassment involving faculty, students, and staff from all parts of the campus. The ombudsperson will remain entirely independent from the lead discrimination officer and will be located separately from the lead discrimination officer. He or she may carry out some investigations and seek informal resolutions of complaints, as well as contributing data to the annual report.

3) Every campus should have a “one-stop shop” website on policies, procedures, and personnel covering discrimination, bias, harassment, as well as diversity. The site will be able to accept complaints filed electronically, including anonymous complaints; provide information for an annual report of complaints and their resolution; and offer education and training, as well as the reporting responsibilities of various administrators and staff.

4) The Chancellor of every campus should continue to advocate for diversity, inclusion, and respect for all persons and deplore any acts of discrimination, bias, and harassment. Messages on these topics should be widely distributed throughout the campus, including on the website described above.

5) Every campus should compile an annual report that includes the number and types of formal and informal complaints about perceived acts of discrimination, bias, and harassment, including confidential complaints, how they were investigated, the findings, and the consequences should a complaint have been found to have merit.

Her full statement is at http://www.ucop.edu/moreno-report/index.html

The Moreno report is at http://www.ucop.edu/moreno-report/external-review-team-report-10-15-13.pdf

We’re Not Alone in Pointing to the Risks of Open-Ended Capital Projects

Vannevar Bush

From: The Endless Frontier: Reaping what Bush Sowed?

by Paula Stephan (pp. 33-34)*

NBER working paper 19687 (Nov. 2013) Excerpt:

Overexpansion of research facilities

In recent years, universities have gone on a building binge, constructing a substantial amount of new research space which led to a 30 percent increase in net assignable square feet for research between 2001 and 2011. Most of this increase is for facilities in the biological, biomedical and health sciences—a response of universities to the doubling of the NIH. Some of this space has been paid for by private philanthropy. At MIT, for example, David Koch contributed $50 million to the construction of an institute for cancer research that bears his. But in a number of instances, campuses did not have the funds to construct the new buildings but instead did so by floating bonds, assuming that the debt would be recovered through increased grant activity engendered by better facilities housing more research-active faculty. A 2003 survey of medical schools by the AAMC found that the average annual debt service for buildings in 2003 was $3.5 million; it grew to $6.9 million in 2008. The brakes were applied to the NIH budget beginning in 2004 and in constant dollars the NIH budget shrank by about 4.4 percent between 2004 and 2009. It has continued to decline since, with the exception of ARRA. Success rates for NIH grants, as we have seen, declined, and universities found that revenues from grants did not live up to their expectations. The situation is not likely to improve in the near future given sequestration. This means that the only way a university can hope to cover the costs of these buildings is to outcompete over other academic institutions in bringing in grants. But, as Princeton’s President Shirley Tilghman notes, “this just can’t be true for every academic medical center. It does not compute.” Moreover, given that very top institutions have continued to maintain their share of NIH funding, the pain is most likely to be felt by institutions that historically have not received top funding. Somebody, especially at lower-tiered institutions, is going to have to pay for this substantial expansion and it is unlikely to be the federal government. It is more likely to come through a reallocation of resources within the university…

Full article at www.nber.org/papers/w19687.pdf

Note that while for a time, UC may be one of the more protected upper-tier institutions, continued squeeze on the federal budget will ultimately not insulate us. And someone will have to pay off bonds floated on the hopes of continued revenue. Anyone in UCOP or at the Regents paying attention?

*The Bush referred to in the title is not George H.W. and not George W. It is Vannevar Bush, FDR’s science advisor, who wrote a report entitled “The Endless Frontier” in 1945. His photo is above.

Mansion Awaits

From the LA Times:

Blake House, the Northern California mansion that is intended to be the official residence of the UC system president, may be coming back to life.

Because of its rundown condition, UC executives in 2008 stopped living in the Mediterranean-style mansion in the unincorporated Contra Costa County neighborhood of Kensington. With a financial crisis for the university at the time, nothing much was done to fix up the 13,200-square-foot house, which is surrounded by 10 acres of gardens.

Next week, however, the UC regents are expected to consider a plan that could start the ball rolling for a major renovation and a return to the tradition of presidents living there. According to an agenda item for Tuesday’s meeting in San Francisco, the regents will decide whether to spend $620,000 from a privately funded endowment on seismic improvements, roof repairs, other maintenance and architectural and engineering reports.

If a full renovation of the 1920s structure is approved later on, the cost could range from $3.5 million to $6 million. Officials say that could turn out to be a wise investment since the price of rental housing for UC presidents and holding functions at other locations would exceed the renovation costs in 15 years. Incoming UC President Janet Napolitano is expected to follow the example of current President Mark G. Yudof in residing elsewhere in leased houses paid for by the university, at least for now…

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-mansion-20130913,0,2609932.story

Looking Under the Egg

The latest “Our University” newsletter from UCOP has an article about the increase in pension contributions recently enacted by the Regents. When you look at the newsletter, there is a illustrative “nest egg” illustration – shown above – which you click on to read the article. Now it’s not clear what the chart below the egg shows. But let’s hope the downward falling line on the chart under the egg isn’t the future funded status of the pension plan. As readers of this blog will know, while back in the day, the plan was (more than) fully funded, the long pension contribution holiday, the effect of the financial collapse of 2008, and the ongoing demographics of the university have created a significant unfunded liability. To deal with that liability, there need to be contributions (some combination of employer and employee) that cover the ongoing growth in the liability and amortize – over a multiyear period – the unfunded liability. In theory, it is Regents policy to do just that. In practice, decisions are made year-to-year and there is no firm commitment to ensure that policy is met. It is assumed that the assets in the pension fund will earn 7.5% per annum over the long haul. Thus, when contributions fall below policy, the plan is essentially borrowing from the future at an assumed annual interest rate of 7.5%. It’s easy to shortchange the plan in any given year – it doesn’t run out of money to pay pensions – but 7.5% per annum is a steep rate of interest at which to borrow.

The newsletter is at http://ouruniversity.universityofcalifornia.edu/jul13/july13.pdf.

Straw into Gold? More Positive Spinning on the New UC Prez

An earlier post noted that there seemed to be some effort at positive spinning on the Regents selection of the new UC president. The latest example appears in the LA Times as the headline below suggests:

As Arizona governor, Napolitano put higher education on agenda

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-napolitano-gov-20130722,0,5155679,full.story

Of course, there are some dangers in such spinning efforts:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apZuO1nwSvQ?feature=player_detailpage]

No Wonder the Regents Wanted the New UC Prez to Have Washington Connections!

Inside Higher Ed alerted me today to this chart from the National Journal showing the university degrees of the top 250 Obama administration officials. UC is not – shall we say? – prominent. See:

http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/07/22/obama-administrations-private-university-background

and

http://www.nationaljournal.com/decision-makers/more-top-obama-officials-have-graduate-degrees-from-oxford-than-any-public-university-in-the-united-states-20130719 [Includes link to methodology]

But don’t worry about the apparent lack of a link between California and DC. With the telegraph replacing the Pony Express, coast-to-coast communication will soon be easier. Right, Janet?