Interesting article that ties in with our concern that the Regents are top heavy in investment bankers which makes the possibility of deals such a problem. “An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ruled that the University of California must disclose how its investments in two of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms have performed.”
pdelevett@mercurynews.com – mercurynews.com – 2/6/13
Raising revenue has become such a taboo subject in California politics, but restoring quality public higher education in California can be done. For the median California tax return (individual or joint), restoring the entire system while rolling back student fees to what they were a decade ago would cost $48. next April 15. Read “Financial Options for Restoring Quality and Access to Public Higher Education in California: 2012-13” at the Keep California’s Promise website.
It has been two years since my last presentation of data on the bloated growth of management at the University of California, covering the span 1991-2010.
The following graph includes the newest official data: up to October 2012.
This shows the continuing outsized growth of the management cadre (defined as the employees classified in Senior Management Group and Management & Senior Professionals): their numbers grew by 252% over the 21 year period while total employee numbers grew by a mere 51%. (The total number of employees shown in this graph is scaled down so that one can compare the relative growth, over time, of each population.)
For another comparison, the latest total number in this management category (SMG + MSP) is 9,457 FTE (full time equivalent employees) while the number of Regular Teaching Faculty is 8,657 FTE.
Similar graphs for each individual campus of the university system can be found here (.doc) or here (.pdf). For several campuses we note a mild decrease in the Management numbers in the past few years but then a new upward surge with the latest data.
Elsewhere I have written about the repeated requests for UC’s top officials to either justify this apparent bloat or to get rid of it; and their inability to do either. My previous estimate was that, if the apparent excess is not justifiable, then UC is wasting something like $1 Billion per year.
The Governor has recently shown some interest in the University and its financial problems. He has called for lowering costs, avoiding further tuition increases and reducing executive salaries. Many people have criticized the Board of Regents for setting corporate scale salaries for the top executives they appoint at UC; and fixing that bad habit would be good for the soul of this public institution. In defense, the UC President and his minions often point out that the total amount of money paid to the Senior Management Group is rather small. So, a better line of attack would be to hold them accountable for this whole mass of bureaucratic excess which they have created.
Chris M. Kelty Chair, University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communications
January 10, 2013
Dear Professor Kelty,
We write to you on behalf of the Berkeley Faculty Association to express our concern that the proposed policy to expand open access to research publications fails to address many of the issues faced by faculty whose articles, books, and other publications include embedded copyrighted material. This problem was originally brought to your attention in a September 2012 letter signed by Margaretta M. Lovell and a number of other professors. We agree with the concerns expressed in this letter and want to be sure that the problem is resolved in an appropriate way.
Certainly the ability to opt out of the open access policy still allows these articles to be published. However, this is less than an ideal solution, for as the previously mentioned letter said, it requires faculty “to negotiate as individuals between two sets of intransigent powerful parties with incompatible interests.” At a minimum, this proposed policy must be modified so that it automatically excludes articles with embedded copyright content from its strictures.
We support the university’s effort to tackle the absurd increases in cost of journals for libraries. We remain concerned, however, that, as currently written, this open-access policy lacks the scope and sophistication to solve the wide range of problems associated with the rise of for-profit publishers. These problems threaten to compromise not only public access to faculty research, but also the quality of research.
Among other concerns, we fear that the proposed policy may actually add to the pressures on the struggling non-profit academic publishers who still publish most of the research of faculty in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, providing the most prestigious and widely available outlets for their work. We also find nothing in this policy that allays our concerns about the shifting of publication costs to faculty. It is often incorrectly assumed that scientists and engineers can cover this cost from their large research grants, and this is certainly not the case in the humanities and many social sciences, where large research grants are very rare.
The September 2012 letter focuses on the special problems faced by faculty whose research involves studying art and material culture. What these faculty, and all faculty, need is access to experienced campus or university staff who can assist them in negotiating the use of embedded copyrighted and privately owned material. If specialized legal counsel is not currently employed by the University, then it should be engaged, just as all sorts of outside consultants are engaged by the University for the critical legal concerns of its mission. We understand that the university once had a program that provided assistance to faculty who needed help negotiating copyright with publishers several years ago, but that it collapsed when it became clear that the real problem was the lack of symmetry in power between the commercial publishers and individual academics, not the lack of expert advice to individual faculty members. We think this issue needs to be revisited from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including that of faculty whose research involves analyzing and interpreting cultural artifacts subject to the copyright claims of the owners of these materials, for whom negotiating these rights has become an increasingly time-consuming and costly burden.
In short, we do not think that the proposed open access policy will actually solve the problem it seems intended to solve, even with the modification we are urging. We would like to work with you to ensure that our faculty can continue to publish their research in high-quality venues and make their findings widely available at an affordable cost.
Equally importantly, please broaden this initiative to address the needs of faculty in all the humanities and social sciences, as well as all the sciences and all the professional schools. This is not a problem of specific academic fields, but of the principles of droit d’auteur and droit morale that are intrinsic to all intellectual and scholarly creativity.
We urge Academic Senate leaders to continue to work with leaders in peer universities and colleges to devise creative, joint strategies for dealing with the changes in the publishing world that threaten all of us who seek to conduct and publish academic research. Remember that it was mainly the UC library system, in concert with peer universities, that broke the choke-hold of Elsevier on monopolistic practices in science publishing. UC should not regard this problem as unique to itself.
Thank you for your consideration,
Sincerely,
Louise Fortmann and Christine Rosen Chair and Vice Chair, Berkeley Faculty Association
cc: Robert Powell, Chair, Academic Council Martha Kendall Winnacker, J.D., Executive Director, Universitywide Academic Senate
In its first year, the IFA was successful in its opposition to the changes in APM 016 which, broadly interpreted, could have been used to nullify the protections of APM 010 and 015 and subject a faculty member to “administrative actions” for statements or behaviors that are viewed as inconsistent with any ad hoc or arbitrary proclamation by any administrator.
IFA member Rei Terada worked with the IFA Board to write an Op Ed with CUCFA chair Bob Meister on this topic that was widely published, including at : http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2012/05/ucops-latest-threat-to-faculty-freedom.html.
The following link is to the UCOP Final Review of Proposed Revised APM-o15 in which it states that APM-010 and APM-016 is no longer in consideration.
http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/FinalReviewCoverLetterAPM-015.pdf
September 5, 2012
Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. State Capitol, Suite 1173 Sacramento, CA 95814 Fax: (916) 558-3160
Re: UC Faculty Support SB 259
Dear Governor Brown,
We of the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) wish to alert you to the fact that many faculty support SB 259, which would allow UC’s Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs) to unionize. We affirm the right of all employees to organize and we also affirm the importance of Graduate Student Researchers helping to shape the contract stipulating conditions of their work.
UC’s stated arguments against allowing GSRs to unionize are:
1) It would change the relationship between faculty and GSRs, and specifically “supplant the student-faculty relationship with a labor-management relationship…” In fact, GSRs and faculty already have a complicated student-faculty and labor-management relationship. Moreover, any changes that would occur in the case of unionization would happen at the administrative level, not at the level of individual relationships: Currently all faculty employing GSRs must use the contract UC requires for graduate student researchers. This would continue to be the case if unionization occurred; however, the contract would be one that the union helped to shape. We would add that while the “special faculty-student relationship” is indubitably an important part of academic culture, it is also precisely what makes GSRs occasionally vulnerable to being overworked, underpaid, or arbitrarily treated. The right to unionize reduces this vulnerability.
2) Students might negotiate a bad contract. UC first worries that a union’s likely goal of limiting paid research time to 8 hours a day would not allow GSRs enough time to do the research necessary to graduate. In this, UC’s argument conflates a graduate student’s own unpaid dissertation research with the paid research they do as a GSR for a faculty employer. UC also argues that this likely union goal would interfere with what is currently stipulated by UC as no more than a 50% time position. UC then worries that a GSR union would not negotiate a high enough salary to attract graduate students to UC. This seems unlikely. Moreover, UC ignores the fact that this legislation would not assign a union to GSRs but only to give GSRs the right to choose a union. If UC is really a benevolent and magnanimous employer, GSRs will not choose to be represented by a union.
The Dean of the Graduate Division at Berkeley has further argued that UC Berkeley GSRs are paid better than GSRs at other UC campuses, which might be precluded by a systemwide union negotiated contract. This preclusion is questionable (it does not currently hold for Graduate Student Instructor union contracts), but the argument itself attacks both the principle of the “power of Ten” at the heart of the quality of the UC system and the principle of equal educational opportunity at the heart of the California Master Plan for Higher Education. It is a “Berkeley for itself and by itself” argument that erodes both principles.
We urge you to sign SB 259. Thank you for considering the views of the faculty represented by the Council of UC Faculty Associations.
Sincerely, Robert Meister, President, Council of UC Faculty Associations Professor History of Consciousness and Political and Social Thought, UC Santa Cruz
Bob Meister, President of CUCFA (Professor of Political and Social Thought, UCSC)
On June 27, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed language inserted by both houses of the legislature that would have tied UC funding to admitting a minimum number of students (the same enrollment target as in previous budgets). His veto message says as follows:
“Deletes provision 15 of item 6440-001-0001 from AB 1497, because the requirement contained in this provision that the University achieve an enrollment target of 209,977 resident full-time equivalent students creates unnecessary cost pressures on this item and is unnecessarily restrictive.”
Is such language no longer necessary? In the Schwarzenegger years the state budget set an enrollment target for UC and required that funds be “reverted” to the state if UC did not meet that target. Jerry Brown’s first budget maintained the goal of a minimum expected enrollment but explicitly rejected the reversion penalty. This year, the enrollment target itself was missing from the Governor’s January budget and from the May revise. Aafter the LAO noticed its absence, the state legislature put it back.
Governor Brown’s veto means that, although Master Plan eligibility still exists on paper the state will no longer monitor UC’s compliance with Master Plan expectations. The Governor’s veto should thus be read as a symbolic repudiation of the Master Plan’s link between UC’s state funding and its commitment to admit all eligible Californians. Maybe UC will keep its in-state enrollments constant for next year. But if you want a sense of where things are headed, just listen to President Yudof crow: “[The] bill included California resident enrollment target language that is not consistent with funding levels provided from the State… In accordance with my request the Governor vetoed the budget provisions on the enrollment target ….” (Yudof to Regents, June 29, 2012)
On Friday, June 30, Eric Hays (The Council of UC Faculty Association’s Executive Director) and Joe Kiskis (CUCFA’s VP for External Relations) attended a meeting at UCOP in which the likely outlines of the Governor’s compact with Yudof were revealed. Joe reports as follows:
In the event that Brown’s ballot initiative does pass, the governor has promised to dust off the multi-year (4-year? 5-year?) UC funding agreement that was apparently worked out between OP and the Governor during the spring and has since been on hold. The present version of this has a 6%/yr increase in state support for UC. That is the 4% previously rumored plus 2% for UCRP. In that eventuality, OP would likely ask the Regents for a 6%/yr tuition increase. (You read that right.) In the event that the ballot initiative does not pass, OP will probably ask the Regents for a tuition increase sufficient to make up for the $250M trigger, the lost $125M tuition buy out, and some other increasing fixed costs for a total increase of 20.3% to be effective Jan. 1, 2013. Yes, mid-year.
So here’s the deal. Jerry Brown will allow UC’s in-state tuition to compound, even in his best-case scenario, and has agreed with Yudof that UC will no longer be accountable for replacing California students with non-residents, each of whom yields a surplus revenue of c.$22,000. The UC campuses that displace California students will, moreover, will be allowed to keep all the extra money this brings in thereby increasing their budgetary advantage over campuses that meet what were once regarded as Master Plan expectations. (See http://cucfa.org/news/2012_jun24.php) But from now on there will be no Master Plan targetsstated in the budget, and thus no official reason for the Governor or his Department of Finance to keep track of whether the UC system and its individual campuses are complying with the Master Plan’s commitment to find a place for all eligible Californians. If they don’t, who will? The California Post-Secondary Education Commission, which was created for this purpose, was abolished in last year’s budget. When the Legislature tried fulfill this Master Plan role, the Governor used his line-item to block this at Yudof’s request.
Eric Hays has kept track of how far the Governor Brown has moved away from Master Plan language in the Schwarzenegger budgets:
UCOP has proposed changes to the Academic Personnel Manual concerning faculty rights and discipline of faculty conduct. They are posted for comment at http://www.ucop.edu/acadpersonnel/apm/review.html, and they need attention. A close reading of the proposed changes suggests that they enlarge in an unlimited manner the zone in which faculty are exposed to “administrative actions” without the due process specified by the Faculty Code of Conduct. Recently, three UC faculty have been charged with criminal offenses related to protesting UC policies: Celeste Langan of UC Berkeley, whose charges have since been dropped; Ken Ehrlich of UC Riverside; and Joshua Clover of UC Davis. None of them have yet been subjected to university discipline under the Faculty Code of Conduct. Could these events be related? Yes, indeed. By the logic of one of the changes proposed, in the future the university could discipline faculty in their position outside the guidelines of the Faculty Code of Conduct and without any peer review whatsoever.
UCOP here proposes changes to three sections of the APM: APM-010 on Academic Freedom; APM-015, Part I of the Faculty Code of Conduct, on Professional Rights of Faculty; and APM-016, University Policy on Faculty Conduct and Administration of Discipline. The proposed changes begin promisingly. To a sentence in APM-010 naming the freedoms that faculty currently enjoy–“freedom of inquiry and research, freedom of teaching, and freedom of expression and publication”—is added a new “freedom,” “freedom to address any matter of institutional policy or action when acting as a member of the faculty whether or not as a member of an agency of institutional governance.” It’s true that APM-015 already states that professors “maintain their right to criticize and seek revision” of University regulations” (APM-015, Part II C). But this statement has turned out not to be enough to protect faculty in all cases. In a recent federal lawsuit (Hong v. Grant), the Regents zealously and successfully defended UC Irvine for denying a merit increase to a Professor on the grounds that he publicly criticized his department for relying on adjuncts to teach required courses. The Ninth Circuit upheld UC’s position on the narrow grounds that “[i]t is far from clearly established …that university professors have a First Amendment right to comment on faculty administrative matters without retaliation.” Thus, in the new 015 UC seems to back down on its claimed right to retaliate against faculty who criticize it. The next proposed change, to APM-015, adds the new “freedom” a second time, in exactly the same language, to the list of Professional Rights in the Code of Conduct (“the right to present controversial material relevant to a course of instruction” and so forth). This “freedom” protects UC professors from being formally disciplined under the Faculty Code of Conduct for mere criticism of UC policy.
It is unclear, however, whether UC still claims the power to retaliate against its critics outside the Code. The proposed revision to APM-016, which deals with The Administration of Discipline, expands exactly such an area external to the Code of Conduct. To a sentence on the kinds of trivial sanctions to which faculty can be subject “like all other members of the University community,” it simply adds the word “policies”: “faculty members are subject to the general rules and regulations and policies of the University; such as these include, but are not limited to, those pertaining to parking, library privileges, health and safety, and use of University facilities. Faculty are subject to appropriate administrative actions for failure to comply with such rules and regulations and policies” (strikeout indicates deleted language; italics indicate new language). This passage of APM-016 involves those kinds of violations for which “faculty members may be subject to certain administrative actions which are outside the scope of faculty discipline” (our italics). These are “administrative actions” that don’t have to abide by the procedures specified by the Faculty Code of Conduct. The campus doesn’t have to meet the standards of the Code of Conduct to issue a parking ticket or a library fine. In this category, UCOP claims that it just wants to cover “failure to comply” with “policies” as well, since we’ve now acquired a new freedom to express disagreements with these “policies.”
But things are much more complicated. We must understand that the University already has two channels of disciplinary action available: the Faculty Code of Conduct, which under APM-015 requires “significant faculty involvement,” and “other forms of reproval or administrative actions” (APM-015, Part II) “in addition” (016), which do not require significant faculty involvement. The passage of the current 016 we cited above reads in full:
With respect to the imposition of disciplinary sanctions, the Faculty Code of Conduct deals only with the professional responsibilities, ethical principles, and standards of conduct that pertain to the professional obligations of faculty members. No disciplinary sanctions described in this policy may be imposed on faculty members other than through the procedures pursuant to this policy and the Faculty Code of Conduct. In addition, faculty members may be subject to certain administrative actions which are outside the scope of faculty discipline.
The sentence about library fines and parking tickets follows. Placing failure to comply with “policies” here in APM-016, instead of among the types of acts subject to Code of Conduct procedures, then, is to place them outside the area of “significant faculty involvement”and the Code of Conduct’s formal consistency (including full recourse to the Academic Senate’s Committee on Privilege and Tenure).
Now, it is not clear how a “policy” differs from a rule or regulation. “Policies” could, potentially, be narrowly defined so as not to intrude on faculty rights or go beyond existing rules. But the current language does not do so, and faculty requests for clarification to the chairs of the Academic Senates at UCI and UCLA have received no response to the question of what “policies” means since April 6. The Irvine Faculty Association has been told that its Committee on Faculty Welfare, charged with considering the changes, has received no enlightenment and can give none on how a policy differs from a rule.
As a matter of jurisprudence, “policy” is often used to designate a general goal that is implemented by “rules.” So, UC may have policies such as privatization or increasing out-of-state enrollment or borrowing against tuition funds to construct buildings. UC can adopt and write up these policies at a high level—they are best understood as reflecting the administration’s priorities, and are frequently implemented by means of the budget. Implementing these policies by means of rules with which individual faculty members are expected to “comply” would require much more intensive Academic Senate review and could raise issues of conflict with principle, such as that of academic freedom.
The current changes imply, however, that “policies” in this broad sense can be treated as rules at UC’s discretion, without any of the normal safeguards that would accompany implementing policies by means of rules. A further source of ambiguity is that, while failure to comply with a rule means violating it, non-compliance with a policy frequently takes the form of resisting or undermining it. Such resistance can remain within the rules, but not if faculty can be sanctioned for “failure to comply” with an underlying policy whether or not it takes the form of a rule.
With respect to sanctions that, unlike library fines, must follow the Code’s procedures, the current APM-015 sets forth “a clear distinction” between “(1) ethical principles and (2) types of unacceptable behavior.” The APM’s positive ethical principles draw on other professional documents that go back a long way. “They are aspirational in character, and represent objectives toward which faculty members should strive”:
University discipline under this Code may be imposed on a faculty member only for conduct which is not justified by the ethical principles and which significantly impairs the University’s central functions as set forth in the Preamble. To the extent that violations of University policies mentioned in the examples below are not also inconsistent with the ethical principles, these policy violations may not be independent grounds for imposing discipline as defined herein. (APM-015, Part II)
APM-015 also notes that “professors observe the stated regulations of the institution, provided the regulations do not contravene academic freedom” (our italics; Part II, C). APM-016, in contrast, superficially seems to treat events that have no political significance. Are “policies,” however, especially policies with which one might want to exercise one’s freedom to disagree publicly as APM 015 now allows, ever without such significance? Assuming, according to the APM’s proposed new invitation to disagree verbally in 015, that we are talking about such policies throughout the proposed changes, UCOP wants the ability to disregard the ethical significance of resisting such policies by placing them under 016 instead of 015. According to 015, it’s impossible to penalize through the given process conduct that is justified by the Code’s own Ethical Principles. But in the new 016, even these would be susceptible to “other forms of reproval or administrative actions.” As though taking a cue from the Department of Homeland Security, the “policies” that fall into the no-man’s land of administrative exception from the Code are completely unlimited in the proposed language. Taken together, the positive and punitive proposals are saying: disagree verbally with the policies if you like, but comply with (don’t resist) them or else. In other words: talk all you like, because that’s not going to matter.
Now, the Faculty Code of Conduct is already quite restrictive with regard to protest at the University. The faculty who have recently received criminal charges may already be sanctionable under the Code through its provisions ruling out the “disruption” of University business (APM-015, Part II C). On the other hand, the APM is peskily ambiguous in its acknowledgment of areas where the principles it sets forth may collide—most of all in the phrase we quoted above, which recognizes the existence of regulations that do contravene academic freedom. The proposed changes would extend beyond disciplining disruption and would no longer recognize a place for either active or passive nonverbal resistance to policies. Despite the new language’s proximity to trivial and distracting examples of parking tickets and the like, there is every reason not to enlarge in an unlimited manner the zone in which faculty are exposed to “administrative actions” without the oversight of their peers; without what due process is provided by the Code; and even if their resistance takes the form of mobilizing against policies that “contravene academic freedom.”
The proposed amendment to APM 016 should not be modified, but scrapped. We urge UC faculty to contact the chairs of their Academic Senates before the comment period ends on June 12.
On behalf of the Irvine Faculty Association, the UCI chapter of the Council of UC Faculty Associations (http://ucifa.org// http://cucfa.org/), the IFA Executive Board requests clarification of the proposed amendments to APM 016. It is our understanding that there is faculty concern about the ambiguous wording of the proposed changes. Specifically, it is not clear what is intended to be added in the appending of the term “policies” to language about campus regulations”:http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/underreview/ . We request the proper interpretation of this addition to enable faculty consideration. Previous faculty requests for clarification both at UCI and at UCLA have gone unanswered; as you know, the window for comment is limited, so we appreciate your assistance.
Executive Board, Irvine Faculty Association:
Prof. Mark LeVine – Chair
Prof. Dina al-Kassim
Prof. Eyal Amiran
Prof. Antoinette LaFarge
Prof. Irene Tucker
“In support of the Berkeley Faculty Association, the Irvine Faculty Association calls upon UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to request specifically that the Alameda County District Attorney’s office drop charges it has filed against at least 8 people (students, faculty, and a coordinator for BAMN) involved in a campus protest last November 9. As is well known, UCPD beat nonviolent protesters at that gathering. Chancellor Birgeneau’s recent statement (http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/03/14/campus-administration-sends-message-to-da-about-november-protest-charges/) forwards the BFA’s petition in support of protesters and reminds the District Attorney, vaguely, to be mindful of the campus context, instead of stating his own view. It calls for consideration of the petition, rather than endorsing the petition. UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi took a stronger stand following the pepper-spraying of protesters on her campus, having “asked Acting UC Davis Police Chief Matt Carmichael to work with the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office to drop all criminal charges against the several individuals — at least nine of them students — who were arrested that day” (http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10087&hp=1). Clearly, it is open to Chancellor Birgeneau to do the same. His failure to do so is inconsistent with the statement he issued thirteen days after the beatings, in which he “sincerely apologize[s] for the events of November 9? and “take[s] full responsibility for these events.” Birgeneau’s decision to grant amnesty under the Student Code of Conduct to November 9 student protesters is not meaningful if at the same time he fails to request that their criminal charges be dropped. In concern for the University’s failure to support freedom of speech and political dissent, and in support of the BFA’s efforts to secure these rights for the UC community, we call on Chancellor Birgeneau to rectify this situation.”
Irvine Faculty Association Executive Board
Mark LeVine, Chair
Dina al-Kassim
Eyal Amiran
Antoinette LaFarge
Irene Tucker
For additional background information:
Read: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2012/03/08/criminal-charges-filed-against-4-occupy-cal-protestors/
Read: http://www.baycitizen.org/occupy-movement/story/uc-berkeley-pledges-investigate-police/
