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 … Continue reading UCOP Response to CUCFA on Health Options
Category: UCOP
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, … Continue reading UCOP Study Shows Decline in Faculty Compensation
Napolitano Responds to UCLA’s Moreno Report
MorenoUC 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 … Continue reading Napolitano Responds to UCLA’s Moreno Report
We’re Not Alone in Pointing to the Risks of Open-Ended Capital Projects
Vannevar BushFrom: 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 … Continue reading We’re Not Alone in Pointing to the Risks of Open-Ended Capital Projects
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 … Continue reading Mansion Awaits
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 … Continue reading Looking Under the Egg
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 agendahttp://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-napolitano-gov-20130722,0,5155679,full.storyOf course, there are some dangers in such spinning efforts:
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-backgroundandhttp://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 … Continue reading No Wonder the Regents Wanted the New UC Prez to Have Washington Connections!
Pro and Con
In a TV interview airing today, Assembly Speaker John Pérez managed to be both pro and con the appointment of Janet Napolitano as the new president of UC. He was against the search process which he said was not open enough. On the other hand, due to what he said was luck despite the bad … Continue reading Pro and Con
Listen to the Afternoon Regents Meeting of July 18, 2013 [UC prez appointment]
We continue to provide alternative audio archiving of Regents meetings due to the regental policy of maintaining archives for only one year. As noted in the earlier post of the morning session, you can find this policy at http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/videos.html. The statement there reads: Video Archives of Regents Meetings: 2013Video files for past open session meetings … Continue reading Listen to the Afternoon Regents Meeting of July 18, 2013 [UC prez appointment]