Online Education in the Media – January 2013

Posted on February 20, 2013 by admin

January 2013 – There has been an explosion in the mainstream press already this year concerning online education.  Here is a s synopsis of relevant  links that represent just a few of the articles that have been published.

Whose Online? What Online?

Sebastian Thrun founder of Udacity… insisted, online courses will not offer educational advantages if they simply try to transfer the classroom experience into a digital form.  Putting faculty in front of cameras and simply recording their lectures will only dehumanize the process of learning and serve to debase the practice of teaching.  Online will be an advantage only when it can be put together to do exercises that cannot easily be done in a classroom (and not simply in the sense that you can get more people to see a lecture) and when those exercises can be combined with a renewed attention to person to person pedagogical contact… I wish that there was evidence that the Regents understood this point.  But judging by the close there was none.  Regent Pattiz continues to think of online as if higher ed is the music business where you purchase a download of a discrete chunk of content rather than–as Thrun and others tried to convey–an ongoing process of directed learning.  Regent Reiss, not showing the sort of attentive learning one might wish, trotted out the tired cliche about the end of the “sage on a stage” not realizing that the implications of the presentations by EDx, Coursera, and Udacity was that the teacher as director (and not as “guide on the side”) becomes even more important in these models.

Read full article [here]. by Michael Meranze, Remaking the University.

 

UC may increase online courses

With insistent urging by the governor and in light of a failing online program, the University of California Board of Regents discussed ideas on Wednesday to increase the number of online courses at the UC – but have yet to lay out further concrete plans. “It’s no secret that (the) UC has hit a wall with regard to traditional instruction methods,” said UC President and ex-officio Regent Mark Yudof at the opening of the meeting. “The finances simply no longer exist to support the old model of instruction in the same ways.”

Read full article [here]. by Kristen Taketa, The Daily Bruin.

 

Editorial: UC push for online education is too strong

The University of California is using hyperbolic language to push forward an expansion of the system’s online education program, an unproven and expensive tactic for improving the University’s course offerings. At Wednesday’s meeting of the UC Board of Regents, UC President Mark Yudof said “It’s not secret that the UC has hit a wall with respect to traditional educational methods.” Yudof added that it is not financially feasible to continue focusing on improving “brick and mortar,” or traditional education. In addition to the $750,000 grant and the $6.9 million line of credit dedicated to the program, of which a significant amount has been spent, Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent budget proposal suggests both the UC and the CSU receive $10 million to continue developing their online education programs. The suggestion that online education is a more valuable avenue to develop than in-classroom education is flawed… Before emphasizing the importance of funneling millions of taxpayer dollars into a largely undefined expansion of the program, working with a small-scale program, put together carefully with student input, would be far more beneficial to the students. In the meantime, much of the financial and working effort the UC is putting into UC Online could be put into improving on-campus educational resources that students definitely need.

Read full article [here]. by The Editorial Board, The Daily Bruin.

 

As California Goes?

California is the Fertile Crescent for massive open online course providers, at least the for-profit ones. The state is also shaping up as a testing ground for phase two of the MOOC experiment, which includes fees and a path to college credit, and where public colleges try to use material from MOOCs to help meet student demand in gateway courses… Gov. Jerry Brown wants California’s public institutions to take a hard look at MOOCs. Along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he is encouraging experimentation with MOOC platforms for introductory and remedial courses.

Read full article [here]. by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Education.

 

UC online courses seen as inevitable

Within five years, students at the University of California will likely take 10 to 15 percent of their courses over the Internet, UC President Mark Yudof said Wednesday in San Francisco at a marathon discussion of online education with the regents, Gov. Jerry Brown and three rising stars in the world of classroom-free courses. Yudof said he’ll provide incentives for faculty to develop online courses to ease overcrowding in the most popular freshman and sophomore courses. And he said UC is working to overcome technical difficulties preventing students from taking online courses developed on campuses other than their own. Student Regent Jonathan Stein warned that students are concerned that trading the benefits of campus and classroom for computerized education would be a “degradation of the UC experience.” Yudof said that no student will be forced to take classes online, but that the migration is inevitable.

Read full article [here]. by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

 

UC regents pledge to expand online education in next few years

University of California leaders pledged Wednesday to sharply expand online education over the next few years, possibly aiming to have UC students take about 10% of all their classes online — averaging four courses toward their degree… Yudof promised that the new classes would be of high academic quality and would not cause layoffs. The regents were under pressure from Gov. Jerry Brown to take such steps, and last week Brown’s budget proposed giving UC $10 million next year to help finance new online courses, primarily entry-level general education courses that are now overcrowded… Just a day earlier, Brown announced the start of a pilot partnership between San Jose State and Udacity, a Silicon Valley online education group, to create low-cost online classes in entry-level subjects. Brown also plans to attend next week’s meeting of the Cal State University trustees.

Read full article [here]. by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.

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“UC Irvine Professor quits midway through online Coursera class”

Posted on February 19, 2013 by admin

A UC Irvine professor has stopped teaching midway through a massive online course in microeconomics offered through the Coursera organization, saying that he had disagreements on how to conduct the free class for thousands of students around the world.

The action by Richard A. McKenzie, an emeritus professor in the UC Irvine business school, highlights the uncertainties faculty face in adapting traditional face-to-face classes to the emerging universe of massive open online courses known as MOOCs.

In his statements posted to the class website over the weekend, McKenzie appeared to be frustrated over his attempts to get the students to obtain and read as much of the textbook as possible.

“I will not cave on my standards. If I did, any statement of accomplishment will not be worth the digits they are printed on,” he wrote.

The course, which is now midway through its 10-week schedule, will continue since its lectures are already videotaped; an administrator from the UC Irvine Distance Learning Center will coordinate it, officials said.

But in chat room postings, students said they were confused over whether to keep on with the non-credit “Microeconomics for Managers” course, which is one of six that the UC Irvine online extension has in operation this term through the Coursera group.

McKenzie declined Monday to discuss his action in detail other than saying in an email that the matter has been “a drain” on him and involves serious issues. In his message to the class, he wrote: “Because of disagreements over how best to conduct this course, I’ve agreed to disengage from it, with regret.”

Gary Matkin, UC Irvine’s dean of Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session, said in a statement that McKenzie is “not accustomed [as few are] in teaching university-level material to an open, large and quite diverse audience, including those who were not seriously committed to achieving the learning objectives of the course or who decided not to or could not gain access to supplemental learning materials.”

Future lessons and assignments, as developed by McKenzie, will continue to be presented to students, according to Matkin.

“We will make sure that the students have the guidance and feedback they have experienced so far in the course, which they uniformly so far have praised,” he said.

McKenzie, who retired from his regular faculty position at UC Irvine in 2011, said the Coursera students “will not be left hanging” and that all course assignments and discussion problems are ready to be posted as scheduled. “However, I will not be involved,” he wrote to students.

Under the Coursera model, much of the grading is automatic or performed by fellow students. Professors videotape most of their lectures in advance and often comment in general on message boards without answering questions from individual students.

This has been a mixed month for the Mountain View-based Coursera. Earlier, a Georgia Tech course on “Fundamentals of Online Education” was canceled after technical glitches. But the organization won a significant victory when the American Council on Education said four Coursera courses, including a math one at UC Irvine, were worthy of college credit.

Coursera was founded last year by two Stanford University professors as a for-profit organization that posts online courses from prestigious universities. So far, 33 schools are participating, with 222 classes in all.

While enrollment in the classes is free, Coursera charges students $30 to $99 for a completion certificate. The classes are taken under surveillance monitoring that includes typing patterns to prove a student’s identity. Coursera plans to charge extra for students who will take final exams proctored through webcams to earn potential college credit.

ALSO:

Online courses to be reviewed for possible degree credits

UC Berkeley joins online education platform of Harvard and MIT

Conference about online education attracts major players to UCLA

— Larry Gordon
LA Times, February 18, 2013

 

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Funding Higher Education: The Search for Possibilities

Posted on February 7, 2013 by admin

The national Campaign for the Future of Higher Education is about to release their series of papers titled “Funding Higher Education: The Search for Possibilities.”

The Council of UC Faculty Associations contributed one of the papers in the series. CUCFA Vice President Stanton Glantz, as principal author of that paper, will be participating in the news briefing on February 12.

Please help spread the word to your local faculty and local media, or via your social media channels. Details are in the press release (pasted below and also attached as a MS Word document):

——————————————————-
Campaign for the Future of Higher Education
For Release: February 6, 2013
Contact: Lisa Cohen, 310-395-2544 or Alice Sunshine, 510-384-1967

FUNDING HIGHER EDUCATION: THE SEARCH FOR POSSIBILITIES
The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education
calls on America’s college & university faculty to join
in the search for new ways to fund higher education

NATIONAL TELEPHONE NEWS BRIEFING
Tuesday, February 12, 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern
Call (800) 553-0273  / Ask for “Campaign for the Future of Higher Education”

• The three authors of working papers on new ways to fund higher education will explain their proposals and take questions from the news media, including campus reporters and education bloggers.

• The briefing begins a drive by CFHE for faculty to step up our role in the search for new possibilities that will save access to higher education and strengthen our nation’s middle class.

• The briefing takes place on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Lincoln signed the 1862 Morrill Act that initiated America’s public higher education system, starting with Land Grant Colleges. Today that system spans the nation but is on the road to elimination.

FOR RELEASE FEBRUARY 6, 2013 — In the United States, quality public higher education was once accessible to most Americans able to benefit from it.

The way it worked was simple—taxpayers funded public colleges and universities sufficiently so that students who were prepared to work a few hours a week could complete their degrees in a relatively short time with a minimum amount of debt. For those with even greater need, government provided state grants and Pell grants.

This system worked well for decades and opened the door to opportunity for millions of Americans.

Now, we are told we can no longer afford this. We believe that is wrong.

The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education has begun a drive to involve our nation’s college and university faculty in the search for better solutions than funding cuts, privatization, soaring tuition and academic shut-downs.

Our nation has arrived at our current quandary for a variety of reasons. One is surely a failure of imagination, a set of assumptions that profoundly limits our ability to think about possibilities.

Three working papers released by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education aim at stimulating a more thoughtful, fact-based, national conversation about paying for higher education in this country.

THREE IDEAS TO FUND HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA

Two of the CFHE working papers address the common assumption that funding higher education through public means rather than through skyrocketing tuition is simply impossible.

One explores the notion of free higher education and examines what the actual cost to provide such an ideal would be.
Bob Samuels, a University of California faculty member in San Diego, argues we could make big strides towards free public higher education by reallocating current governmental expenditures for higher education and by eliminating regressive tax breaks.

The second paper, using the state of California as a test case, looks at the real magnitude of returning to recent, more adequate levels of state funding for higher education. Stanton Glantz, a professor at UC San Francisco, describes that  “reseting” higher education funding to more adequate past levels would require only very small adjustments in the median income tax return.

The third paper explores a currently unused tax revenue source that could be tapped if there were the political will to provide adequate public funding for higher education. Rudy Fichtenbaum, an economics professor at Wright State University in Ohio and national president of the American Association of University Professors, explains how to achieve vastly improved funding for higher education through a miniscule tax on selected financial transactions.

Members of the news media, including campus/student reporters and bloggers on education issues, are invited to a news briefing on Tuesday, February 12 (10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern) to hear a short discussion by the three authors and to ask them questions about their proposals.

To join the call:
• Call (800) 553-0273  / Ask for “Campaign for the Future of Higher Education”
• You may dial up to 5 minutes before the start time

To see the papers in advance:
• Send an email request to dchernow@calfac.org
• Go to http://biz127.inmotionhosting.com/~future58/workingpapers/

Please note: the CFHE web address will change on Sunday, February 10. After that time, you can see the papers at www.futureofhighered.org/workingpapers.

These working papers are meant to encourage discussion, foster debate, and generate action. We invite faculty members and higher education supporters, particularly those with direct experience in America’s classrooms with students, to add thoughts about these models and ideas about others through the comment section of the CFHE website.

We also invite you to post on the CFHE Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/FutureofHigherEd
and to follow CFHE on Twitter @FutureofHE or using #FutureofHE.

BACKGROUND

We must provide the advanced education needed to sustain our economy and to undergird our democracy. America is not broke, and these creative ideas show that we can afford to keep the doors of opportunity wide open. Indeed, we cannot afford to shut them.

It is unfortunate for our nation that leaders and policy-makers are giving up the dream of affordable public higher education for Americans. The door into the middle class is slamming shut for those who want to rise and the position of middle-class Americans and their children is shaky, at best.

In place of the tested and successful engine of opportunity—state colleges and universities—corporate reformers are calling for privatization, higher tuition, and even shuttering traditional colleges for middle-class and working Americans.

Millions who persist in pursuing college confront enormous debt that will shackle them for the rest of their lives, threatening our national economy on a scale equal to the home loan debacle.

Saddest of all, few who are calling for this brave new world of higher education are considering a lesser education for their own children. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and many flagship public universities will remain in place for elites to enjoy. Rather, this lesser education will be reserved for those who cannot afford an increasingly rationed liberal arts curriculum.

And yes, the need is immediate and urgent. Consider this report published in the February 2012 issue of Postsecondary Education Opportunity, ominously titled “The Race to Zero.” This report takes historical data on state spending and projects future state expenditures for higher education based on that data.

The study finds that if current trends in funding public higher education continue, in 2022 Colorado will be the first state to hit zero funding for higher education. Alaska will follow in 2027. More than a dozen other states will hit zero by 2050. California will reach zero funding for public higher education in 2052. By 2100, state support for higher education will zero out in 24 other states, leaving roughly 10 states with continued support.

The “new normal” myth driving this trend is based on the lie that there is no money to fund public higher education and the misguided notion that students should be responsible for their own education because they benefit the most from it.

While CFHE takes no position on these proposals, we do believe that the current trend of publicly defunding higher education is an educational crisis that needs our attention.

Until we as a nation entertain options other than privatization of public higher education, which has reaped gigantic profits for edu-businesses but massive debt and dashed dreams for millions of Americans, we will not solve the problem.

We do not pretend to have exhausted all possibilities with these papers. We urgently need a national conversation about one, whether we want to head in the direction that “new normal” politics is taking us, and two, what better ideas can help us do the best possible job as we address changes in our society and our nation.

In reality, everyone benefits from an educated population and America has prospered more when excellent public higher education was affordable. These papers, we hope, will start a discussion about alternative models to fund higher education in our nation.

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University of California must disclose more information about its investments

Posted on February 6, 2013 by admin

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.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22526898/judge-university-california-must-disclose-more-information-about

pdelevett@mercurynews.com – mercurynews.com – 2/6/13

Posted in State Politics and Economy, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How much will it cost to restore public higher education in 2012-13 (with updated 2013 state budget data)

Posted on January 27, 2013 by admin

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.

Posted in Future of the University, State Politics and Economy | Leave a comment

UC Management bloat – updated January 2013, by Charles Schwartz

Posted on January 25, 2013 by admin

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.

image001

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.

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Concerns re: open access to publications policy

Posted on January 10, 2013 by admin

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

 

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IFA Successful in its opposition to the proposed changes in APM 016

Posted on November 15, 2012 by admin

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

Posted in Proposed changes to APM 016, Student and Faculty responses, University Managment | Leave a comment

Many UC faculty support SB 259, which would allow GSR’s to unionize

Posted on September 9, 2012 by admin

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

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Brown and Yudof Bail on the Master Plan

Posted on July 2, 2012 by admin

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:

  • 2010-11 (Schwarzenegger’s last year): “The Legislature expects the University of California to enroll a total of 209,977 state-supported FTES during the 2010–11 academic year. This enrollment target does not include nonresident students and students enrolled in non-state-supported summer programs. The University of California shall report to the Legislature by March 15, 2011, on whether it has met the 2010–11 academic year enrollment goal. For purposes of this provision, enrollment totals shall only include state-supported students. If the University of California does not meet its total state supported enrollment goal by at least 512 FTES, the Director of Finance shall revert to the General Fund by April 1, 2011, the total amount of enrollment funding associated with the total share of the enrollment goal that was not met.” (page 604-605 of http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/osp/GovernorsBudget/pdf/fbudsum_1011.pdf)
  • 2012-13 (language inserted by the Legislature and vetoed by Governor  Brown): “”The Legislature [emphasis added] expects the University of California to enroll a total of 209,977 state-support-ed full time equivalent students during the 2012–13 academic year. This enrollment target does not include nonresident students and students enrolled in nonstate supported summer programs. The University of California shall report to the Legislature [emphasis added] by May 1, 2013, on whether it has met the 2012–13 academic year enrollment goal.”
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