Coming soon to a campus near you?

San Jose State University has rolled out an AI initiative as part of a larger CSU experiment. Pay attention! If you think it can't happen at UC, think again. (Yours truly, who on recall taught his last class in 2022, is amazed at how prescient his timing was!)

It can.

From the NY Times: Last spring, newly admitted students to San Jose State University received an unusual video message from the institution’s president, Cynthia Teniente-Matson. Her caramel curls were tucked behind her shoulders, her hands clasped neatly at her torso. Dressed down in a royal blue hoodie, she appeared composed and approachable. “Congratulations on your admission,” she said. “At S.J.S.U., you’ll have opportunities to dive into the technologies shaping the world today, and redefine what’s possible for tomorrow.” This was not, in fact, Teniente-Matson addressing the new class, but her brand-new custom A.I. avatar. “I’m thrilled to share this special moment with you,” the avatar said. “It’s only fitting, isn’t it? After all, technology is a cornerstone of what makes San Jose State University such an incredible place to learn, innovate and grow.”

...Because the world’s largest tech firms are headquartered in California, the state has generally become a petri dish for A.I. experiments in education. In early August, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed education agreements with Nvidia, Adobe, Google, IBM and Microsoft; each company agreed to provide free A.I. resources to California schools. The goal is to create the “A.I. work force of the future” by training high school, community college and C.S.U. students to use the technology. In this spirit, C.S.U.’s A.I. Initiative has been marketed as simple progress — a way to ensure that the state’s working-class students are buoyed by the A.I. economy rather than left behind. After all, many students in the C.S.U. system are first-generation immigrants or the first in their families to go to college; roughly half identify as Hispanic, and many commute to campus and work alongside their studies. With A.I.’s looming reorganization of the job market, many of these students might graduate into jobs that will no longer exist in five years. Already, recent reports estimate that roughly 40 percent of recent college graduates nationwide are underemployed.

C.S.U. is promising that the A.I. Initiative will prepare its students to be workers of the future. The only issue is that, at this moment of technological acceleration and flux, we don’t yet know what the workplace of the future will look like. A year into this experiment, no one can tell how it will end. Will these graduates be ahead of the curve in the new A.I. economy, or robbed of a chance to hone their critical thinking skills? If adopting A.I. eases their entry into the work force, might it also hinder their intellectual development in unforeseen ways?

...Students...  are caught in the middle as everyone around them struggles to figure out what becoming “the first A.I.-powered university” actually means. “Faculty are feeling anxious,” Nik Janos, a sociology professor at Chico State, told me. “Students don’t know how to behave. What are we doing here?”

...Today, economic pressures have prompted C.S.U. to redefine what it means to train useful workers. In December 2024, [Governor] Newsom’s office encouraged the C.S.U. system to create the A.I. Workforce Acceleration Board, which would “guide the equitable development of a highly skilled, diverse work force that can drive California’s A.I.-powered economy.” In January, C.S.U. signed the contract with OpenAI, and C.S.U.’s chancellor, Mildred García, announced both developments as flagship elements of the A.I. Initiative at a news conference shortly afterward. In April, Newsom released a new Master Plan for Career Education, a revision of [former UC President Clark] Kerr’s [Master Plan] model that responds to “rapidly changing work force needs, particularly with the advent of artificial intelligence.” The statewide push to incorporate A.I. into every level of education is an integral part of this plan...

...Faculty members I spoke with opted for different metaphors to describe the effect of A.I. on higher education, and their varied analogies captured the range of sentiments on campus. John Sullins, a computer ethics professor, likened it to handing every student a machine gun, while Niel Shahrasbi, an information systems professor, compared it to giving them a magic wand. Robert Ovetz, a lecturer in political science at S.J.S.U., told me he views A.I. as “an ‘intelligent’ steam shovel” that students are being trained to use. Jeremy Murray, a historian at Cal State San Bernardino, described the integration of A.I. as a “smash and grab situation” akin to a bank robbery.

...The A.I. Initiative is a potentially lucrative ticket to a job in the tech industry and the class mobility it brings. But many of their peers instead perceived it as a threat not only to their education, but also to the kinds of jobs they had arrived at S.F.S.U. hoping to pursue. Vi Lee, a political science and Asian American studies double major, helped organize a student union protest demanding that the contract with OpenAI not be renewed “until students and faculty have control over A.I. policies and funding on campus.” 

...CSU’s A.I. Initiative has set off an institutional identity crisis: The debate about A.I. on campus is also a debate about exactly what public education in California is for. What does it mean to train the next generation of Californian workers and citizens when neither students nor faculty nor administrators have a solid grasp on what that requires, or what the “A.I. economy” will be in even four years...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/magazine/ai-university-college-california.html.

And then again, there is this:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNaN0iAuan8.

Straws in the Wind - Part 364

From Inside Higher Ed: The National Science Foundation has reversed its recent freeze on new grant funding for Duke, Harvard and Yale Universities, Nature reported. Limitations on new grants for Princeton University, however, remain in effect. The reversal took place on May 28, one day after Nature published a story detailing a funding pause for all four institutions. 

An NSF database showed that on April 9 the accounts of the four universities had been marked with a note that said, “Future Awards to Organization on Hold,” Nature reported. As of Thursday, the note had been removed from every account except Princeton’s. So far this year, the number of new grants received by each institution is down significantly from previous years, but that seems poised to change; “a few grants” have already been released to researchers at both Harvard and Duke since the freeze was lifted, an NSF staff member told Nature...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/06/01/nsf-reverses-funding-freeze-duke-harvard-and-yale.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 168

From Inside Higher Ed: The Harvard Graduate Students Union announced Monday that its 40-day strike has ended “with the close of the academic year,” though the union has still not reached a bargaining agreement with the university. The strike—the longest in the union’s history—spanned the end-of-semester grading period and university commencement, which wrapped on Friday. Over the last several weeks, the university offered to expand benefits to all graduate student workers, provide dental coverage for Ph.D. students and increase its four-year raise proposal by 1 percent, the union said in a news release. These moves were the “first indication of engagement” from the university on the union’s priorities, the release said...

In an email to faculty obtained by Inside Higher Ed, deputy provost Jessica Soban and managing director of labor of employee relations Paul Curran said that student workers with ongoing appointments returned to work [this past] Monday...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/labor-unionization/2026/06/02/labor-watch-harvard-grad-students-end-40-day-strike.

UCPD Policy Review - Public Comment

Currently reported as under review by the systemwide Academic Senate (and others) is policy related to the UCPD. Comments are due in mid-July.*

The proposed policy comes in two segments in Box: a clean copy of the proposal** and a tracked change version.*** Although there are cover letters regarding the review, there really is no overall summary of highlights as to what was changed, what is new, etc. And there is a lot of material.

I am guessing that those concerned will be mainly interested in the following items:

• Arrests
• Use of Force
• Personnel, Duties and Responsibilities
• Crowd and Demonstration Management
• Military Equipment
• Unmanned Aircraft Systems
• Mutual Aid
• Systemwide Response Teams

Note: In some cases, you may get a message that the item is not available and can't be downloaded. But in fact it can be downloaded and then read. Not all items appear in both Box collections. Be persistent.

Additional note: Given the complexity and length of the documentation, it would have been nice if the systemwide Senate had distributed a guide to the significant changes, rather than just make the entire set of files available.

====

*https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview/systemwide-senate-review-ucpd-policies-gold-book.pdf.

**https://ucop.app.box.com/s/qldatg08j5ifk9zar6yvq0vfbymxmakn.

***https://ucop.app.box.com/s/ouweu9b5xn9ciepangdeunk2ljvgxrxq.

Straws in the Wind - Part 363

From Centre Daily Times: As Penn State prepares for seven of its commonwealth campuses to close, the university’s technical service union is demanding protections for employees. After the university announced it would close seven campuses by the end of the spring 2027 semester, the Teamsters Local 8 union that represents more than 2,000 technical workers across the commonwealth began negotiating with the university in July 2025 over job placement protections. A proposal was presented to the union in November, according to local union President Jon Light, but the 59 members at the affected campuses overwhelmingly voted to reject it. The proposal, Light said, would allow the university to lay off union members at any time, replace them with part-time or contract labor and keep the affected campuses open without union workers.

After months of negotiations, Light said the university is backtracking on promises they made at the beginning of their discussions with the union. “I sat in on one of the meetings and heard executives say they wanted to find placements for workers — whether they wanted to continue working or retire,” he said. “They said they planned to keep these campuses open through May 2027, and even longer if they couldn’t sell them. Now, they essentially want the ability to lay workers off at any time, remove job placement protections and offer severance packages that require employees to immediately separate from Penn State with little to no opportunity for rehiring.” ...

Full story at https://amp.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/article315845132.html.

Shifting Gears

As blog readers will know, the higher ed model that developed after World War II is breaking down as the federal government pulls away from supporting research. There are two primary sources of funding for basic and applied research: the feds and the private sector. The likely scenario for research universities is to shift from the former to the latter with maybe some public funding from the state.

From the Daily Bruin: The Henry Samueli School of Engineering’s new $125 million Semiconductor Hub will push technological boundaries, faculty and administrators said at a conference May 21. The hub will accelerate research on semiconductors, which are materials used in computer chips to regulate electrical current, faculty speakers said. The project will advance autonomous vehicles, robotics, environmental engineering and space systems, the School of Engineering said in a statement.

Alissa Park, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of the School of Engineering, announced the hub and its corporate partners – Applied Materials, GlobalFoundries, Meta, Synopsys and Broadcom – at the Mong Auditorium. Engineering faculty, students and more than 250 industry executives attended the half-day event...

The Trump administration withheld $584 million in scientific research funding from UCLA in late July, alleging that the university allowed antisemitism, affirmative action and “men to participate in women’s sports.” While a series of court orders restored the vast majority of the frozen grants, the UC has pushed for alternative funding, including state funding and a bill that would allow California voters to decide on a $12 billion bond for scientific research...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/06/02/ucla-announces-125-million-semiconductor-hub-with-industry-partners.

The Forecast

The UCLA Anderson Forecast met yesterday and, not expectedly, took note of an uncertain environment. From the news release:

The June 2026 UCLA Anderson Forecast for the U.S. and California finds the economy confronting another inflationary shock, this time driven by the war in Iran and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. After tariff-driven inflation appeared to peak and the labor market began to stabilize, rising energy prices have created a new source of pressure on households, businesses and the Federal Reserve.

The national economy remains relatively resilient, but the Iran-related oil shock has replaced tariffs as the major inflation threat. GDP growth is now expected to hold at roughly 2.1% in 2026 rather than accelerate; inflation is forecast to peak at 4.5%; and unemployment is expected to rise only modestly to 4.5%. The key forces offsetting the oil shock and tariffs are investment in artificial intelligence, tax cuts and earlier fiscal support.

In California, the same energy shock creates additional pressures because of the state’s specific low-emissions gasoline requirements and the importance of ports and logistics to the state economy. California continues to outpace the U.S. in output and income growth, but its labor market remains weak, and the employment recession described in prior Forecast reports is expected to continue through the third quarter of 2026...

California Forecast Numbers

Unemployment Rates (Annual Averages)

2026: 5.5%

2027: 5.1%

2028: 4.2%

Total Employment Growth

2026: 0.2%

2027: 0.7%

2028: 2.5% ...

Full release at https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/news-and-events/ucla-anderson-forecast-says-oil-shock-has-replaced-tariffs-leading-risk-us-economy.

The forecasters looked at alternative scenarios concerning when the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened and the impact on oil prices and general inflation. At present, the world is drawing down reserves of oil, i.e., more oil is being consumed than is being newly supplied. If the war situation is not settled in a couple of months, prices will rise from current levels since pricing expectations are based on a relatively quick settlement.

Although no one said so, it struck yours truly that paradoxically we may end up with an inadvertent Trump Green New Deal, even though the idea would be anathema to the current administration. The economists' solution has always been to raise the price of oil substantially through taxes, cap-and-trade programs, and the like. Even if some kind of settlement allows oil to flow again through the Strait and prices come down, the world has learned that reliance on oil from that part of the world is unwise. We live in interesting times.

Apart from the general forecast, the remainder of the Forecast dealt with real estate: residential, commercial, and industrial. A video will eventually be available.