mortiz055

This week's UC Regents meeting is the tenth anniversary of a Senate First and, so far, a Senate last--a direct presentation to the UC Regents of a faculty view of the budget. In May 2007, Senate chair John Oakley and UC Provost Rory Hume arranged for me as the chair of UCPB to present the budgetary conclusions of what came to be known as the Futures Report . It had, over a two year period, been researched and written by UCPB, approved by Academic Council, and submitted to President Bob Dynes for transmission to the board. John and I spent a fair amount of time with Rory boiling the report down to the simplest possible slide deck for our 15 minutes. We also picked the lowest-tech slide design we could find, to symbolize our humble professorial communion with the facts. The whole project emerged from a period when it seemed that UC was capable of choosing its own path. It also seems that the faculty as a whole would play a meaningful part in that complex choice. I had hoped it...

The Governor's May budget revision is the first concrete sign of UC's weakened condition following the release of the Auditor's Report on the Office of the President .  Although there is relatively little change in the State's overall funding to UC, two things stand out. First, the Governor has made it clear that his trust in the University administration has been further damaged. As part of the May revision he has sequestered $50 million until the University completes demonstrates both that it has begun to implement the Auditor's proposals and that it has made progress on pilot budget projects at Riverside, Davis, and Merced as well as admitting one transfer student for every two first year students. ( 3-4 )  In linking these disparate initiatives together the Governor has simultaneously moved towards even more interventionist budgeting (he is sequestering general funds based on new benchmarks as opposed to offering targeted new funds for specific initiatives) and ...

As expected, the State Auditor's report on UCOP has triggered a huge political uproar. The charges of secret reserves, out of control personnel policies, special benefits for executives, and UCOP interference into the audit process have been explosive to say the least.  There have been two legislative committee meetings that addressed it, numerous statements from politicians about its implications for UC, and editorials and op-eds expressing justifiable outrage about UCOP secrecy and management practices. Predictably enough, some legislators have called into question UC's constitutional autonomy.  Despite, or perhaps because of, efforts by UCOP and the Regents to explain away some of the problems, the damage to the University's reputation has been considerable.  This report is going to haunt the University for a good while. Amidst all of the heated disagreement, however, there has been one fundamental, and fundamentally wrong, point at which all of the arguing parties app...

The new UCOP scandal is the worst in a long-running series.  This one was prompted by a state audit of the Office of the President's budget, which found issues the auditor claimed cast doubt on UCOP's honesty and competence. State officials reacted angrily to the four biggest of a number of charges from State Auditor Elaine M. Howie (pictured):  that UCOP spends a good chunk of money from an "undisclosed budget" that is separate from its public budget; that it affords this undisclosed spending with a tax on the campuses that yields more revenue than it needs; that it spends this excess money on systemwide programs that could go instead to students on campuses; and that it  appears to have changed the results of the auditor's campus surveys  to make itself look better.  The auditor also rekindled longstanding claims that UCOP hires too many administrators and then overpays them.  It even dragged pension underfunding into the mix.   The interaction...