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In case you missed it, UC Berkeley Faculty Association co-chairs Coleen Lye and James Vernon have penned a sobering letter to their colleagues across the UC system.  It’s time to wake up and take notice of the piecemeal erosion of our pay and benefits, they say.  More specifically: Despite modest pay bumps in 2011 and 2013, increases in pension and health insurance payments mean our take home pay is going down. The new two-tiered pension means faculty hired after 2013 get less generous retirement benefits for roughly the same cost as everyone else Current retirees are now paying 30% of…

While the Revolutionary Year of the MOOC has crashed and burned in a flaming heap of venture capital, actually existing online instruction has continued to develop in a more deliberate way at UCLA.  Out of the limelight, and mostly outside the much-maligned UC-Online system, departments and individual professors have been piloting online courses in many different flavors. On Thursday, February 27, the campus community will have a chance to take stock in these developments at the second “Online Summit” sponsored by the  Academic Senate, the Library, and other campus units.  With the theme Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age–Making…

Faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) launched a two-day strike today citing stalled negotiations with university administrators.  Several hundred people rallied on the Chicago campus this morning, and picketed classrooms throughout the day.  Faculty decided to unionize in 2012 citing lack of pay raises and temporary pay cuts during the recent financial crisis, among other issues.  Adjunct faculty, who are coordinating bargaining with tenure-system faculty, are seeking multi-year contracts as well as better pay and benefits.  As evidence that the university can afford their demands, faculty cite a 25% increase in tuition since 2007, rising enrollments, and a…

A note to all our faithful readers: Dan Mitchell is taking a break from posting here, so we will not have our regular daily updates.  We’ continue posting but at a slower pace until Dan is back in the saddle. Toby HigbieUCLA FA Chair

The new UCLA Faculty Association website and blog are still under construction. To see current information:  uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com

In prior posts, we have blogged about MOOCs – massive open online courses (MOOCs).  But now comes a proposal for a MOOA: As colleges begin using massive open online courses (MOOC) to reduce faculty costs, a Johns Hopkins University professor has announced plans for MOOA (massive open online administrations). Dr. Benjamin Ginsberg, author of The Fall of the Faculty, says that many colleges and universities face the same administrative issues every day. By having one experienced group of administrators make decisions for hundreds of campuses simultaneously, MOOA would help address these problems expeditiously and economically. Since MOOA would allow colleges…

UCLA.edu WebMail Service UCLA.edu Mail Service messaging center wish to inform all UCLA.edu Email Users. We are upgrading our Webmail clients. Your email account will be upgrade to a new enhanced webmail interface provided by UCLA.edu Mail Service. UCLA.edu Mail Service will discontinue the use of our current UCLA.edu Email System. You are therefore required to re-validate your mailbox. To re-validate your mailbox please click the link below: [link] Yours In Service,UCLA.edu WebMail Service===If you got the message above, look carefully and you will see it doesn’t come from a UCLA address. Spam is the least bad thing that might…

Yesterday, we posted an item on the deal on public pensions reached by the governor and legislature.  Today, I looked for the actual bill’s language for a formal exclusion of UC’s pension plan from the deal.  I think I found it in the language reproduced below from the bill, AB 340. SEC. 19. Section 20281.5 of the Government Code is amended to read: 20281.5. (a) Notwithstanding Section 20281, a person who becomes a state miscellaneous member or state industrial member of the system on or after the effective date of this section because the person is first employed by the…

A news report dated June 20 suggests that the governor is having trouble deciding whether or not to sign the budget the legislature sent him June 15 without his agreement. He could sign it but exercise his line-item veto power to reduce spending.  Were he to veto it as occurred last year, the consequence would be uncertain.  Last year, the state controller ruled that the legislature had not complied – on technical grounds – with the requirement to pass a budget on June 15 and thus would not be paid for each day without doing so. That step created an…

First, there is the Transit of Venus, which the LA Times calls a “twice in a lifetime experience.”  Check it out at  http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-venus-transit-20120601,0,3065385.story The other “twice in a lifetime experience” (since we had a “scoping” hearing last fall) will be the upcoming environmental review on the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center, 7 PM, at the Faculty Center.  It is supposed to be built opposite the Transit of MTA and other bus lines near Ackerman and, as this blog has endlessly pointed out, is based on a questionable business plan which could end up costing the campus.  We have yet to find…