Suggested Better Budget Process

Suggested Better Budget Process

The extraordinary budget disaster facing public higher ed in California - and in many other states -has not been matched by extraordinary improvement in management practice.We have instead a traditional top-down structure of the kind that is regularly blasted as ineffective by management theorists, but which remains the default in almost all US institutions.For the public university,...

Bubble Planning

Bubble Planning

Private colleges are increasing tuition "only" 4.3% this coming year, according to a NAICU survey - the smallest increase since 1972-73. Congratulations are in order - inflation went negative in December 2008, so this raise is only 5% above what we're likely to see next year!Endowments went famously negative too - here's a picture.These consistent tuition increases are a big...

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland

Punishment is supposed to fall on those who have been bad in some way. Bad in terms of illegal behavior: those are given their day in court. Bad in...

Where's the Public?

Where's the Public?

I was happily off-line from California budget news, and returned today to see that understanding of the budget proceeds even more slowly than the budget deal itself. A key question: is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger really trying to use the budget crisis to "reform state government," or is he ready to wreck state services during a major recession in order to block any imaginable...

Premature Fatalism

Premature Fatalism

Just as the faculty are starting to get worked up, messages are coming down of the cuts as a done deal. At UC Santa Barbara, Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas, someone I like quite a bit, passed on a message announcing a hiring freeze that reads in part as follows:we are estimating that, factoring in current fee increases and the salary savings for 2009-10 from the pay reduction...

University Budget Blood 1

University Budget Blood 1

I've been trying to find public universities that are slated to get cut as much as my own, the University of California, whose President as of June 17th...