Budget Lessons for 2010

Budget Lessons for 2010

The good news in 2009 was that a few truths went public.  Today I'll start with two cats in particular that got out of the UCOP bag: Major cuts in public funding are bad for UC.  This seems obvious, but UCOP minimized or denied the problem for years.  Less than a year ago, UC's President Yudof thanked the governor for cuts that were not "disproportionate" and that...

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's Bob and Charlie

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's Bob and Charlie

While I have been grossly neglecting our Bizarro World Gov, various budgetary dreamworks, and the Regents meetings - I plead four simultaneous paper deadlines - others thankfully have not.   Charlie Schwartz addressed the Regents on apparent lapses in oversight of their bond indebtedness.  Bob Samuels fired away at the "latest list of the approved exceptions to...

One Way Forward

One Way Forward

Charles Scwhartz has a new proposal for how faculty and others might respond to the State of the State and Arnold's proposed budget up at his blog universityprobe.org. In it he outlines a variety of ideas and arguments to further both funding and reform of the UC system. Given the productive debate that followed Gerry Barnett's recent post on Charlie's new model for UC we thought...

A Method to the Madness?

A Method to the Madness?

By Michael MeranzeWhile it is too soon to tell the true implications of the Governor’s State of the State and his proposed 2010-2011 budget certain strategies seem clear and they should give pause to any enthusiasm that might have greeted Arnold’s general statements about shifting priorities from punishment to education. I think that we need to try to seize the rhetorical opening...

Fixing the Research Funding Structure

Fixing the Research Funding Structure

Gerald Barnett and I have a piece in today's Chronicle of Higher Education that combines some of this blog's consistent themes: full costing, budgetary transparency, the value of research, and matching public funding to our actual public ambitions.  The article also ties in with recent posts and commentary on the position of science in public higher ed.  Subscribers...

A View from a Science Department: Parts 3 and 4

A View from a Science Department: Parts 3 and 4

This post continues Part 1 and Part 2 Part 3:  Does extramural research pay for itself? Extramurally funded research has sometimes been described as "revenue generating".  In fact, the leaders of our research unit have argued to higher administrators that we should not suffer further budget cuts because we provide a large amount of indirect cost recovery (ICR) to UC...