UC Budget Reality: 2 Graphs

UC Budget Reality: 2 Graphs

Last week's UC news of $500 M in untapped administrative savings eclipsed the real story, which is that like CSU, UC's state funding remains destructively...

Strange Defeat

Strange Defeat

By Michael MeranzeIf some future historian comes to write the History of the Decline and Fall of the University of California she undoubtedly will puzzle over the administrations of Robert Dynes and Mark Yudof. The former’s problems were legion—from the Compact with the Governor, through myriad administrative scandals, to the alienation of the Regents and their increased efforts...

Administrative Overhaul at UC?

Administrative Overhaul at UC?

So reported the Chronicle yesterday, with supposed savings of $500 million.  The changes involve procurement streamlining, increased software compatibility, etc. It is presumably Regents item F3, but as of this posting there are no public materials to review. Quite gratuitiously, "Peter J. Taylor, the university's chief financial officer, told The Chronicle that adopting...

Arnold's Modest Proposal

Arnold's Modest Proposal

By Michael Meranze Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying,...

Attention All Crypt-Dwellers!

Attention All Crypt-Dwellers!

The Berkeley Faculty Association has released a report on the preliminary UCOF recommendations and Dean Edley's apparently undead proposal for a Cyber-campus. Please take the time to read it. It offers a very important take on where UCOF may be leading the University and just as importantly indicates that, in the face of insufficiently quiescent working-groups, UCOP has decided...

Notes from the Field

Notes from the Field

In the past 10 days I have lectured at San Francisco State, at the University of Washington,  and at half of UC's campuses. I have had the pleasure of spending several hours at each place with faculty and staff who are trying to keep things one their campus from getting worse, and picked up a few repeat issues. No expansion, all contraction.  Like Herbert Hoover before...