From CSU Long Beach, an overview of the furlough plan. To view the information, you do have to download the pdfs. It looks like the furloughs will fall on 6 instructional days and 11 staff days. And that there is now precedent for arguing that furlough days at UC should also include instructional days.

The Edge of the American West is an award-winning blog that deals with history, philosophy, and Muppets. You can see for yourself here. However, they have some very troubling evidence (anecdotal evidence?) about First Amendment issues and UC, which might be of interest to our readers. However, the AAUP is taking this seriously, so we'll see.

In light of the troubling anecdote, let me also say that I am in no way writing this blog as a function of my official duties, but as a private citizen who is concerned with the state of higher public education in the United States.

I have received news from my department (Asian Languages & Cultures) that, over the next few days, all state-funded lecturers who teach in the humanities and social sciences at UCLA, as well as a number of lecturers in the sciences, will be receiving layoff notices with an effective date of August 1, 2010. This seems to be a work-around by the administration to procure the maximum amount of flexibility in budget cuts while adhering to the legal requirements in lecturer contracts that a full year's notice in case of termination be afforded.

The Humanities Division at UCLA is emphasizing that it hopes the layoffs can be rescinded, and we all very much hope that this will is true, that this is merely a cautionary step. Still, departments here affected by the new development should prepare for the worst. In Asian Languages, we are trying to increase our summer offerings to offset the budgetary cutbacks and to protect our lecturers. Other departments might want to consider similar steps.

We are committed to equal access to all forms of higher education for the people of the State of California. We support the historic Master Plan’s vision of the UCs as providing the top 1/8 of California’s high school students with a world-class education, to the great benefit of both our students and our state.

We voice our concern that the draconian cuts enacted by the Regents threaten the integrity of that mission—by weakening and/or shrinking our superb institutions and their capacity to serve those students, by necessitating a reduction in in-state admissions in favor of more lucrative out-of-state ones, and by forcing tuition increases at a time of economic hardship and diminishing loan availability.

We deplore those who would use an economic downturn to permanently reduce or divest the state of its commitment to supporting our educational mission, and the mission of all of the state’s public institutions of higher learning—including the Community Colleges and the California State Universities. To damage any part of this system is to jeopardize equal access.

We are alarmed not only at the potential reduction in the availability of a UC degree, but also at its potential depreciation in value for our graduates seeking employment or advanced degrees.

We believe these consequences have not been adequately brought to the public’s attention during the budget debates. Many of these potential consequences will, nonetheless, become reality if we maintain this course, and some may prove to be difficult if not impossible to reverse.


William Marotti
Ra'anan Boustan
Andrea Goldman
Kelly Lytle Hernandez
Peter Stacey

There is a petition here for the UCSB community to sign, demanding that furloughs be used for the purpose of education.

According to this CHE article, the news for public education outside of California isn't very encouraging. Colorado public colleges are looking at a 10% cut, while the Democratic governor of Maryland has cut $37 million from public higher education.

Here is a link to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) from the CSU furlough plan. There are a number of items worth noting.

3a. CSU President has the right to "designate specific furlough days as campus closure days, or partial campus closure days."

3e. The salary reduction "shall be 9.23% of the annual salary.

3h. No more than one furlough day per week.

4b. Part-time employees "shall be subject to furloughs on a pro-rated basis."

5b. "Prior to starting their assignment for any term...Faculty Unit employees shall certify in writing that: i. They will not work on the assigned furlough day; and ii. They will not work beyond the duties assigned for the furlough week.

5d. Furloughs will "have no adverse effect on the eligibility for, and award of, tenure."

6a. Furloughs will not "impact the accrual of vacation and sick leave or the payment" of health benefits.

6b. Furloughs will not affect "compensation levels for the purposes of CalPERS retirement," which will "be based on the unchanged salary rate."

7a. Employees with 100% grant funding/contracts are not subject to furloughs.

7b. Employees partly funded by grants will be pro-rated.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a distinguished professor of Chinese history at UC Irvine, makes an argument for how the budget cuts might impact the field of Chinese studies at UC -- and what this means for UC's reputation and standing.

Remember, today from 12 to 1 pm, the UCSB Community Coalition for Option 4 is holding a press conference in the courtyard of the Student Affairs Building.

More information can be found at http://option4.ning.com/.

UPDATE: There is now a video of UCSB graduate student Aaron Jones speaking at the press conference up on the option4 site, as well as photos. Still waiting on an official update.

Many of you may have already seen this, but I thought it was worth reposting the link to CUCFA President Bob Meister's report on the Regents Meeting. Much of what Meister is discussing has to do with the legality of the Regents' actions on J1 and J2. There are a number of interesting points in the report, but let me highlight just one here. Meister notes,

Both General Counsel and President Yudof indirectly conceded CUCFA’s argument that J2 cannot be passed under the authority of J1 (as a declaration of “financial emergency”). Their new theory is that J2 falls under the Regents’ “inherent power” and does not (never did) require the Standing Order amendment in J1. If this is so, all the language in J2 declaring a “financial emergency” is irrelevant this time around. It will become relevant only if the “financial emergency” is renewed under the procedures specified by J1.

Like Meister, I find this very strange. If J1 isn't necessary for J2, then why pass J1 first and then invoke it? Either the Regents have the "inherent power" for J2 or they don't. Moreover, the question of what is meant by "inherent power" deserves much more scrutiny, and it appears that CUCFA will continue to press for clarifications. At present, it sounds a lot like legalistic buttressing for a theory of absolute (Schmittian) sovereignty.

From Erik Tarloff, a novelist and sometime speechwriter during the Clinton years: a personal lament over the end of UCB, published in the Atlantic.

Update: And a response by UCB Chancellor Birgeneau. (Thanks, Gerry!)

By Chris Newfield

- This year's cuts do not simply impair the University of Califorinia, but redefine it. They do this by ending the UC promise of broad access to a top quality undergraduate education.

-That quality had two elements: 1) a superb research faculty that brought cutting-edge knowledge into the classroom. 2) small classes, where face-to-face, active learning gave hundreds of thousands of California students access to "ivy League"-style abilities to invent, build, lead, create, and originate with the knowledge they had acquired. This innovative and yet large scale UC-educated middle class was a cornerstone of California's famed rates of economic and social progress.

- Prior to this crisis, California had already neglected to renew higher education at the necessary rate. Contrary to myth, state spending had merely kept pace with population growth for most agencies (Hiltzik, 5/09 LAT), while higher education had seriously lagged, threatening quality even before these cuts. The Regents were fully briefed in 2007 about looming budget problems, and took no action.

- State general funding is now cut back to 1999 levels, a year when UC had 170,000 instead of 220,000 students and when each dollar went about 30% farther. UC had not recovered from the 2002-05 cuts before this latest round, and now has been hit with the largest reductions in the history of modern higher education.

- The most influential units of UC - the professional schools - protected their revenues by ending the low-tuition tradition that was tied to public funding. UC Regents approved a plan to charge market tuition by 2011 or so at units like Berkelely law, where fees next year are over $36,000.

- UCOP and the Regents have not explained that UC as a whole had the same choice: to maintain quality, they EITHER receive strong general funding OR they are forced to charge high tuition. The result: more damage to core campus funds (highly dependent on GF) and to the core undergrad and "academic" PhD mission than to medical and law schools.

- The UC system is also being broken down into two tiers, one for research with no teaching mission, and the other (supposedly) research with teaching mission. Under the furlough plan, all personnel who teach students or support them administratively are cut 4-10%. Personnel who never see students (non-state funds) receive no cuts.

- Because of preexisting allocation formulae, the newest campuses with the highest proportion of undergraduates receive the least money per student (e.g. Riverside, Merced, and Santa Cruz, but also Irvine and Santa Barbara). In all cases but Santa Cruz, the poorest campuses are those with the highest proportion of students from underserved populations. Rather than look at all revenue sources in order to protect a high-quality instructional program for California's highly diverse (and educationally endangered) population, UCOP and the Regents allowed the largest cuts to be inflicted there ($3000 per student lost at Santa Cruz, according to its chancellor).

UCOP and the Regents must stop forming commissions to ask questions that have been repeatedly answered, and indulging in imaginary solutions like covering some large portion of the undergraduate curriculum to distance learning. They need to tell the public the truth about the choice between high state funding and high tuition, and tell them about the implications of lowered quality for the economy, racial equity, and social progress. When Sacramento makes a choice like it did this year, the public should at least understand what it means for the future of the state.

UC COMMUNITY COALITION FOR OPTION 4
Santa Barbara campus
www.option4.org
“The mind and intellect of man is the very essence of the soul.”
--St. Thomas Aquinas

July 24, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Please distribute widely
CONTACT:
Aranye Fradenburg
805-895-1847
lfraden@english.ucsb.edu
Robert Williams
robertw@arthistory.ucsb.edu
Jonathan Forbes
jforbes@umail.ucsb.edu
805-276-5440
Sonya Baker
sonyabaker@gmail.com
805-451-1573
UC Community Coalition for Option 4
Press Conference
Wednesday, July 29
12:00 Noon
Courtyard - Student Affairs/Administration Building, near the Visitor Center (1102 SAAB)


The UC Community Coalition for Option 4 (UCCC4O4) will hold a Press Conference Wednesday July 29th, 12:00 Noon, at the Courtyard of the Student Affairs Administration Building, near the Visitors Center (1102 SAAB) on the UCSB campus. University of California faculty, staff, and students are mobilizing in response to recent decisions made by the UC Regents and UC President Mark Yudof. We span the 10 campuses of the UC system, with affiliates throughout the CSU, Community College and K-12 systems. We support top-quality public education for our state. We urge Californians to take back their schools and end the incompetent stewardship of the UC Office of the President (UCOP), the UC Board of Regents, and the Schwarzenegger administration, before it is too late.

• The UCSB CC4O4 rejects the Regents’ decisions (1) to ratify Yudof’s requests for emergency powers, and (2) to cut faculty and staff salaries and essential programs and services. We also repudiate the justifications for these decisions and the process leading up to them. Prior to the Regents’ meeting, Yudof asked for the UC community’s responses to only three options: salary cuts, furloughs, or both. The University can overcome the challenges it faces in other ways. We demand Option 4: no salary cuts, no furloughs, and the pursuit of alternative budgetary avenues.

• We demand transparency and democratic participation in financial planning and the budget process at all individual campuses and at UCOP. We call upon Chancellor Henry Yang to permit the full participation of the entire UCSB community in all determinations of our campus’s response to the Regents’ vote.

• The only vision of the University’s future acceptable to our coalition gives first priority to the needs of all of our students. We ask that Yudof redesign the Commission on the Future of UC to represent a real variety of viewpoints and student concerns. We ask that the Commission’s first actions be directed toward immediate redress of recent budget cuts, and general reform of education funding and the state budget process.

KTVU in Oakland featured a story on July 14 concerning the disconnect between increased UC administrative spending and the UC budget crisis -- which leads to criticism from the likes of Leland Yee. Their story is here. If UC employees don't want Leland Yee speaking on their behalf, there needs to be a UC response to the discrepancy between executive spending and employee furloughs.

On a side issue, note President Yudof's defense of the 27% salary increase (with a number of perks) for the incoming chancellor at UC Davis: he argues that she is the holder of 16 patents. (This is part of a larger argument. Elsewhere, Yudof has also argued for the need to pay market rates for the best and brightest administrators.) By pointing to the number of patents held by the incoming chancellor to justify her increased compensation, Yudof is (1) making a non sequitur; and (2) drawing on the myth of science-research profitability and self-sustainability (science research pays for itself) to justify her higher pay.

I'm not commenting the specific patents here, or trying to attack the work of science researchers at UC. Rather, I want to draw attention to Yudof's rhetorical maneuver. Chris Newfield, in Unmaking the Public University (which everyone should read), has noted how the majority of patents do not reap profits for universities. As he notes, "The market results of innovative research are, as research results, close to nil. This is as it should be: the purpose of innovative research is innovation -- discovery, invention, and scientific progress. This research has great long-term and social value that could not be captured as licensing revenue or estimates of the market value of patents" (Newfield, 204). Imagine now, if Yudof had hired a humanities scholar to the same post. Would his argument have been to highlight the three major books and numerous articles she had published? The problem is that scientific research is seen as inherently profitable, while humanities research is seen as costly (or cost-ineffective). In this way, then, the rhetoric of scientific productivity can be harnessed to then support increased spending in certain parts of the university, while cutting other parts. Scientific and humanities researchers should be on the same page -- none of our work should be "for profit"; all of what we do is in the pursuit of more information and education; indeed, all of what is done at the university is cost-ineffective and should be, at least, from the limited market perspective of short-term gains. If Yudof wants to justify higher pay for the incoming chancellor (during a period of drastic cuts to the faculty, staff, and employees), then he has to do so on other grounds than the number of patents she holds.

This is a statement from 35 UCI faculty and graduate students:

"We, the undersigned members of the UCI Academic Senate who have come together to respond to the budget crisis affecting the University of California, petition the Academic Senate Cabinet to endorse the Furlough Implementation Recommendation passed unanimously by the Senate Executive Committee at UC Santa Cruz on July 17, 2009, the goal of which is to coordinate furlough days on campuses during teaching quarters in the most visible manner possible.

We further call for the Cabinet to support a statement calling on the UC Regents to reconsider and restructure the just established "Commission on the Future of UC" to be more representative in its make-up, and to include a wide range of faculty and staff from across the numerous schools that comprise each of our ten campuses.

We look forward to being in touch with the leadership of the Academic Senate and the UCI Administration in the near future to coordinate the most effective possible response to the current crisis."

A petition for UCI Senate faculty can be found here.

There is also a petition for the UCI community here.