Cash for Quarter 1 of the Fiscal Year

The state controller reports cash receipts ran over the estimate made back when the budget was being cooked to the tune of $4.1 billion or almost 11% above the projection. Much came from corporate and personal income tax receipts. And the state is sitting on unused borrowable resouces of $97 billion which is a lot of cash. 

That's the good news. The bad news, if it is that, is that the state seems to be giving less cash to UC than anticipated. The anticipated payment to UC for the first quarter of the fiscal year was projected to be about $1.2 billion. The state has in fact distributed $702 million UC. Maybe some of the gap is the $25 million withheld by the legislature pending a plan by UC to deal with protests. Presumably, however, that withholding would have been incorporated into the projection and, in any case, it doesn't come close to explaining the gap. Given the amount of cash the state has, it seems unlikely to be the result of illiquidity.

That's all I know.

The full cash report is at https://sco.ca.gov/Files-ARD/CASH/September2024StatementofGeneralFundCashReceiptsandDisbursements.pdf.

We keep on asking the obvious question...

The latest fraud

I've seen phony text messages purporting to be from the IRS, the Postal Service, various banks, UPS, and others. The one above is new. The email address shown does not exist but if you click on it, it will take you to where you don't want to be. If you get such messages and you think it might be legit, don't respond to whatever email address or phone number is given. Instead, look up the real email or phone and use that contact. 

♫Take Us Out of the Ball Game♫ - Part 4

If you're wondering what has happened to UCLA baseball while the law grinds forward, here is the answer: From the LA Times: With Jackie Robinson Stadium, its home baseball field, locked up under order of a federal judge because of a legal dispute over land for veterans housing, UCLA coach John Savage has his team on a traveling caravan. On Thursday and Friday, they will be practicing at Birmingham High School. On Sunday, it will be Harvard-Westlake’s O’Malley Field. Next week, it could be L.A. Valley College or Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High School.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a UCLA grad, isn’t allowing access to the baseball stadium until the school produces a plan that meets his satisfaction to ensure that service to veterans is the predominant focus of the 10-acre facility leased from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/story/2024-10-10/ucla-baseball-team-stadium-locked-out-practicing.

What a Deal!

From UCLA Transportation: Undergrads have fare-free access to select transit agencies throughout LA County including those serving UCLA through the new Bruin U-Pass program. Students can enjoy unlimited rides on the local lines serving UCLA: Los Angeles Metro bus and rail lines plus the Metro Micro on-demand rideshare service, Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, and Culver CityBus; the four commuter lines with direct access to campus: Antelope Valley Transit, Santa Clarita Transit, Long Beach Transit, and LADOT Commuter Express; and more!

Full info at https://transportation.ucla.edu/getting-to-ucla/public-transit/bruin-u-pass.

From the Bruin: Metrolink’s Student Adventure Pass allows students from kindergarten through college with a valid student identification to use the Metrolink system for free. The Student Adventure Pass launched in October 2023 and was renewed in June 2024. Over 2,000 Student Adventure Passes were registered by Sept. 20 using an email associated with the UCLA email domain, and over 1,200 UCLA students have been using the pass since the launch of the program, said Amber Moyers, project manager for the Student Adventure Pass at Metrolink.

Metrolink has service lines in five counties in Southern California – Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura – for a total of 545 miles of rails, said Erika Cortez, a communications intern at Metrolink...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2024/10/10/metrolink-renews-free-student-adventure-pass-for-k-12-college-students.

Timing is Everything at the Campus Police

As blog readers will know, at the start of the turmoil last spring, the then UCLA police chief recommended the kinds of policies that are now in effect in the fall. But the chancellor, at the time, rejected those recommendations. In the end, as the situation deteriorated, he brought in Rick Braziel who essentially put the rejected policies into effect. 

The fallout from all of that seems to be contining "fluidity" at the top of the campus police. From the Bruin:

The UCLA Police Department appointed a new acting chief for the second time this year. In what appears to be his first public appearance as acting police chief, UCPD posted a video of Scott Scheffler on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday with the caption, “A message from Acting Chief Scheffler.” Scheffler replaced the previous acting chief Gawin Gibson, who was placed on administrative leave Sept. 27, according to a statement from UCLA Media Relations.

Scheffler previously worked as administrative bureau captain, department spokesperson and served on the Campus Safety Oversight Committee. He has been with UCPD – previously working as a dispatcher and detective – since 2003 and received an undergraduate degree from UCLA in mathematics/applied science. 

Gibson – who has been with UCPD for 28 years – served in the role for less than five months, after then-chief John Thomas was announced as “temporarily reassigned” in May. Thomas’ reassignment came after UCLA formed the Office of Campus Safety in May, headed by Rick Braziel, administrative vice chancellor for campus safety. In an earlier post to X, Braziel was pictured briefing UCPD officers for Oct. 7 protests on campus...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2024/10/08/ucpd-appoints-scott-scheffler-as-new-acting-chief-of-police.

Apparently, being ahead of your time at the police department is not a good career strategy.

Tough to Get In

From the San Francisco Chronicle: These days, it’s so difficult to get into many top colleges in the U.S. that college counselors are referring to the most selective schools not just as “reaches” but as “super reaches.”

“I try to be very clear around the terminology,” said Irena Smith, former independent college counselor and author of “The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays.” “Even for highly competitive applicants, once-target schools like Michigan, USC and NYU have gotten tougher. Schools like Stanford, Harvard, CMU, University of Chicago, Caltech and MIT are extreme crapshoots even for students at the very top of their class. Hence, ‘super reach.’ ” Most of these “super reach” schools have admissions rates in the single digits, with Caltech and Harvard reporting a strikingly low 3% for fall 2023 admittance. California’s next most selective colleges are Stanford at 4% and Pomona at 7%...

UCLA’s acceptance rate

UCLA’s acceptance rate makes it a “super reach,” with the campus having received the most first-year applications of any university in the country for many years now. It has the lowest admissions rate among UCs at 9% (for in-state applicants, it’s 10%). College counselors we talked to while building our California College Admissions guide said that, even for in-state applicants who are at the top of their high school class, you simply can’t control whether you will get into UCLA — even if you maximize your GPA and have exceptional extracurriculars.

It wasn’t always this way: Historical data shows that UCLA’s admissions rate plummeted in the last three decades. Between 2011 to 2023, it dropped from 23% to 10% for California residents, the biggest change among top California universities over that time.  UCLA has seen a faster drop than UC Berkeley, once the most selective UC, which had a more modest decrease, from 18% to 15%.

UCLA’s plunging admissions rate is an acute example of a broader trend: In past years, the number of undergraduate applicants has risen sharply, and the number of applications each applicant submits has also gone up. And it will only get harder in the years ahead: The number of prime college-age applicants in the U.S. is about to reach a generational peak.

Why is UCLA so popular now?

But why has UCLA become so much harder to get into than all the other UCs, including even Berkeley?

[Irena Smith, former independent college counselor] is a UCLA alumnus and says the school’s surging popularity “flummoxes” her. When she applied, the admit rate was 70%.

“I think it’s a combination of factors: a desirable location in a big city, nonstop appearances in movies, commercials and TV shows… skillful marketing, and the vicious cycle of perceived scarcity. When a school’s admit rate starts going down, it’s automatically perceived as more desirable because it’s harder to get in, which results in more applications, which results in an even lower admit rate.” ...

Full story is at https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/ucla-student-acceptance-rate-19804682.php.