More I-405 problems for commuters to and from UCLA:
Gridlock-causing closures to ramps connecting the 405 freeway to Sunset and Wilshire boulevards — crucial pipelines for UCLA commuters and visitors — will take place in waves that start as early as this Friday.
A multi-week Sunset area closure scheduled from Oct. 15-29 and months-long Wilshire ramp closures beginning in November will likely cause the most traffic problems for Bruins.
The Sunset work will particularly throttle traffic for UCLA commuters from the San Fernando Valley. The construction will allow utility work and bridge-widening at Sunset and ramp realignments at Wilshire as part of a $1 billion 405-widening project by Metro, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority...
Many faculty have websites with access to recent papers they have written available for free – some published; some in working paper stage.The impression of yours truly is that journals seldom object, even if they hold copyrights and normally charge for access.Book publishers can be more resistant to free access, however, when it comes to chapters in books.In any case, as per below, there is a move in academe toward wider, free access.
Princeton U. Adopts Open-Access Policy (except)
September 29, 2011, Chronicle of Higher Ed (Wired Campus blog), Jennifer Howard
The movement to make research freely available got a high-profile boost this week with the news that Princeton University’s faculty has unanimously adopted an open-access policy. “The principle of open access is consistent with the fundamental purposes of scholarship,” said the faculty advisory committee that proposed the resolution.The decision puts the university in line with Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a growing number of other institutions with policies that encourage or require researchers to post open copies of their articles, usually in an institutional repository. Unpublished drafts, books, lecture notes, etc., are not included in the Princeton policy, which gives the university a “nonexclusive right” to make copies of its faculty’s scholarly journal articles publicly available.
…The new mandate permits professors to post copies of articles online in “not-for-a-fee venues,” including personal and university Web sites. The faculty advisory committee that recommended the policy said that it will keep faculty members “from giving away all their rights when they publish in a journal.”
…Career pressure on junior scholars as well as differences in publishing practices among disciplines”mean that some faculty are not in fact going to be in a position to comply with the new policy without asking for a waiver,” Ms. Trainer said. “And we know that.” She added that even faculty members likely to ask for waivers “understood that it was in the overall university’s best interests to have such a policy in place…
The more technological among our readers may have an interest in the program announcement below:
Building an Entrepreneurial University
Monday, October 3, 2011
3:00-6:00 pm
CNSI Auditorium
Please join us for a presentation by Professor William Ouchi to discuss new opportunities now being created at UCLA to support university inventors, followed by a conversation with the audience about the value of synergy between the academic and industrial communities, and highlighting ways they can work together to create a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem.
A news report suggests alumni reluctance. Excerpt below:
As the University of California's regents look for new sources of money to make up for state budget cuts, they are finding that university alumni are not as willing to donate as they may have hoped.In interviews, a dozen alumni who paid more modest sums for tuition several years ago say they are less apt to give if it means maintaining existing programs or staff salaries, rather than say, expanding university offerings.
“What we have found is that a lot of the alumni think back to when they went to school and they think, I did it, why can’t they do it?” said Nathan Bostrom, executive vice president for business operations for the University of California. “But the state makes up just 11 percent of our budget now. So it will have to come from other funding sources.”…
Yesterday, we alerted you that there could be traffic problems going home from UCLA due to presidential travels.The President is still in town this morning and there could again be traffic problems.Problem is, no info on his route is available as of 6 AM today.
We still don’t know what the traffic patterns for President Obama’s departure in the morning will look like. That info is being kept secret for the time being because of security ...
So do your best:
Update from UCLA Facilities Management: Traffic Notice Full Closure
Presidential Visit Departure
Where: Sunset Bl. From Doheny to Barrington Impacts: Sunset will be temporarily closed Mitigation: Traffic Officers will hold traffic at Sunset adjacent intersections. Please use alternate routes during this timeframe.
Start Date/Time: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 9:30 AM
End Date/Time: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 10:00 AM
A student at UCLA had a summer vacation he'll never forget.
(Excerpt from CBS News below - See also earlier post on this blog.):
Chris Jeon traveled thousands of miles to live with the rebels battling Muammar Qaddafi in Libya.As CBS News contributor Priya David Clemens reported on "The Early Show" Monday, Jeon got a first-hand look at what he calls "one of the only real revolutions" in the world.Jeon, a math major who's from Mission Viejo, Calif., was side-by-side with the rebels during the liberation of the town of Nofaliya.Even though he spoke no Arabic, Jeon bonded with them, bunking in their barracks and learning to fire an AK-47.He came home with some stunning videos and extraordinary stories of bravery and sacrifice - and a renewed respect for the real cost of freedom…
The Sacramento Bee ran an editorial entitled “State can't afford UC on the cheap” dated 9/25/11.Excerpt below.Like the NY Times – see earlier blog post – the Bee seems not to have caught up with the fact that the Regents didn’t go along with the multi-year tuition increase schedule at their last meeting.Nonetheless..
The University of California "shall constitute a public trust," states the California Constitution.That trust has eroded as state financial support has declined. The overriding question today is how much of a UC education should be considered a public benefit for which the state should pay – and how much should be considered a private benefit for which the student should pay.In the past, that wasn't an issue. A UC education was considered primarily a public benefit. In 1990, for example, the state contributed 70 percent of the total cost of a UC student's education; the student paid 13 percent.
Those days are long gone. This fall, the state is contributing 39 percent of the total cost of a student's UC education; the student is paying 49 percent.Is that the right mix? That is the discussion we should be having as a state…
You might want to leave early, particularly if you travel on Sunset Blvd.
From LAObserved:
It's sounding like President Obama will arrive at LAX on Monday afternoon about 4:40 p.m., then fly above afternoon traffic by helicopter to the Veterans Administration campus near Brentwood. From there, judging by a notice to the media from Councilman Bill Rosendahl's office, Obama will be driven up Barrington Avenue to Sunset Boulevard, then east to the House of Blues on Sunset Strip for his first fundraiser of the evening. This keeps Obama off Wilshire and Santa Monica, the boulevards that have gotten smacked hard the last couple of times he has visited…
The New York Times may have all the news that’s fit to print.But it carries an article today - dated Sept. 24 - on tuition increases at UC that seems to be over a week out of date.(The article quoted below appears on the NY Times’ website with a note that it also appeared in the national print edition.)In the text we find:
"Faced with drastic cutbacks in state financing, U.C. tuition increased 18 percent this school year, and the university’s Board of Regents is expected to vote on a plan to raise tuition 8 percent to 16 percent a year through 2015-16. With the cost of rent, food and books also soaring, more students… are scrambling to be able to afford their education."
As readers of this blog will know, the Regents – at their meetings that ended Sept. 15 - did not adopt the proposal for a multi-year schedule of tuition hikes when it was presented by President Yudof - although he undoubtedly “expected” that they would. They instead fell to debating the sorry condition of UC funding and reached no agreement on what should be done.
Thomas Edison visits the campus of the State Normal School in 1915. The Normal School campus on Vermont Avenue later became the first location of UCLA before the move in the late 1920s to Westwood. The Vermont Avenue campus is now the location of LA City College.
Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 24, 2011
A Facebook post announcing plans by a UC Berkeley Republican group to sell baked goods priced according to race, gender and ethnicity - "White/Caucasian" pastries for $2 and "Black/African American" pastries for 75 cents, for example - has drawn outrage on campus… The campus Republicans, who expect to go forward with their "Increase Diversity Bake Sale" on Tuesday, say the event is meant to mock an effort by the student government to drum up support for SB185, a bill to let the University of California and the California State University consider ethnicity in student admissions. It's awaiting approval or veto by Gov. Jerry Brown. "Our bake sale will be at the same time and location of a phone bank which will be making calls to urge Gov. Brown to sign the bill," posted six students who created the Facebook page. The purpose "is to offer another view to this policy of considering race in university admissions. The pricing structure of the baked goods is meant to be satirical."…
The article above does not go into the background of the bill – SB185 – which seems to have sparked this episode. Voters passed Prop 209 in 1996 which bans affirmative action in public university admissions. On the face of it, SB185 seems in potential conflict with Prop 209. News accounts indicate that Ward Connerly, the former UC regent who sponsored Prop 209, threatened to sue if SB185 was enacted and implemented. (Any legal types who read this blog are welcome to comment on that issue.)
I have found an Academic Senate document dated March 15, 2011 which recommends that UC remain neutral about SB185:
The document makes brief mention of Prop 209 but points to other steps UC has adopted since Prop 209 was approved by voters. It suggests that UC might work with the author of SB185 to improve the bill in some way. Whether there were such interactions and whether the bill was modified since that time as a result, I do not know.
Below is the official summary of the bill. Note that the legislative history provided indicates amendments were made along the way, although these may not have been as a result of any UC consultations. The full text of the bill is at
PASSED THE SENATE SEPTEMBER 1, 2011; PASSED THE ASSEMBLY AUGUST 29, 2011; AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JULY 7, 2011; AMENDED IN SENATE MAY 3, 2011; AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 4, 2011
INTRODUCED BY Senator Hernandez (Coauthor: Assembly Member Lara) FEBRUARY 7, 2011
An act to amend Section 66205 of the Education Code, relating to public postsecondary education.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST SB 185, Hernandez. Public postsecondary education. Existing law, the Donahoe Higher Education Act, sets forth, among other things, the missions and functions of California's public and independent segments of higher education, and their respective institutions of higher education. Existing law establishes the University of California, under the administration of the Regents of the University of California, and the California State University, under the administration of the Trustees of the California State University, as 2 of the public segments of postsecondary education.
Provisions of the Donahoe Higher Education Act apply to the University of California only to the extent that the regents act, by resolution, to make these provisions applicable. A provision of the act expresses legislative intent with respect to the determination of standards and criteria for admission to the University of California and the California State University.
This bill would authorize the University of California and the California State University to consider race, gender, ethnicity, and national origin, along with other relevant factors, in undergraduate and graduate admissions, to the maximum extent permitted by the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 31 of Article I of the California Constitution, and relevant case law.
The bill would require the trustees, and request the regents, to report in writing to the Legislature and the Governor by November 1, 2013, on the implementation of the bill. The bill would require these reports to include information relative to the number of students admitted, disaggregated by race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, geographic origin, and household income, and compared to the prior 2 years of admissions. == It is not known whether Gov. Brown will sign the bill. He has been critical of the legislature passing too many bills in recent days. == For those interested in the earlier history: Prop 209 was preceded by passage by the Regents of a ban on affirmative action. Once the Regents had passed the new rule, there was a campaign for the statewide Prop 209 which encompassed more than just UC and more than just student admissions. A news report on the original regents’ action can be found below:
When Tolman Hall at UC-Berkeley was dedicated in 1963 (see picture at right), things were quite peaceful. Not so yesterday when a student anti-tuition demonstration got out of hand:
From the Daily Californian (UC-Berkeley student newspaper) today:
Tensions between police officers and demonstrators fluctuated throughout the course of a campus protest Thursday, culminating in a violent scuffle when one man was carried from Tolman Hall by his arms and legs.At about 9 p.m., after over seven hours of protest inside the building, protesters were chanting in the lobby of Tolman and police officers began to move towards the doors to prevent a small crowd of demonstrators outside from entering the building.Protesters then began running toward the west doors and an altercation with officers ensued. One man was carried away and arrested after being forced to the ground by police officers.During the altercation, protesters became riled and threw objects at police, resulting in a cracked window…
Campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore said the campus agreed withtui the motivations behind the demonstration.“We share the students’ frustrations over the state’s disinvestment in higher education, and we support their right to protest,” she said…
Note: Warren Olney's "Which Way LA?" program on KCRW had a feature on UC tuition with UCLA student interviews. Go to minute 19 for that segment of the program:
San Francisco businessman David Crane’s brief term as a UC regent seems likely to be over in December because Democrats in the state Senate have not moved to confirm his appointment nine months ago by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.Under state rules, an appointee to the university board can serve up to a year without legislative confirmation. The state Senate is now in recess and no special session is scheduled for the rest of the year.Crane, a Democrat who was an economic advisor to Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is opposed by labor unions and student organizations who contend that Crane does not represent the values the board needs and that he has taken anti-union positions. Crane has said that he is not anti-labor and said that union activists have distorted his concerns about the power of public employee unions over pension benefits and reform…
You may have noticed in yesterday’s LA Times or other papers that CSU Chancellor Reed said he will NOT ask for a multi-year plan involving scheduled tuition increases:
California State University will not seek a second tuition increase this academic year even if it suffers a further $100-million cut in state funding, the system's chief executive said Wednesday. Chancellor Charles B. Reed, addressing trustees who were meeting in Long Beach, also rejected adopting a multi-year budget that would incorporate annual tuition increases.Some higher education leaders argue that such a move, though controversial, would provide stability and help campus leaders, students and parents better manage education costs…
Reed downplayed the prudence of the multi-year approach, arguing that the current budget volatility made it "too difficult to plan in this environment."
The article also contrasted the Reed approach with the Yudof approach.As readers of this blog will know, UC President Yudof presented a multi-year tuition increase plan at the September Regents meetings – apparently assuming that the Regents would adopt it.They didn’t.(Preliminary audio of some of the September Regents meeting is on this blog; we will post the entire meeting when we get the recordings from the Regents.)
There is an old political adage about not calling the question unless you have counted the votes.Up to now, President Yudof’s recommendations on budgets, tuition, etc., have been pretty much rubber stamped by the Regents, although some dissents have been heard from a minority. CSU’s Reed seems to have learned something from the UC-Yudof-Regents episode.There may be consequences down the road if there is now a gap between the UC President and the Regents.
Sometimes, going out too far and too fast leads to unforeseen results:
Courtesy of Jim Chalfant - who recorded the session from the live-stream - here is the second part of the Regents meeting of 9-15-11. You can find part 1 of the advance audio by scrolling down on this blog.
There is discussion on this recording of the economic impact of UC on California - a report that was prepared on the subject and described to the Regents. (See an earlier post on this blog concerning that report.) Then there is discussion of the UC budget situation.
Below is the agenda for that session: 8:30 am Committee of the Whole (public comment) 8:50 am Committee on Compensation (open session) 9:00 am Committee on Educational Policy (open session) 10:45 am Committee on Finance (open session) 1:15 pm Board (open session)
We will post the full audio when it is received from the Regents.
From the Merced Sun-Star comes a reminder of Willie Sutton who said he robbed banks because "that's where the money is."
University of California at Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland came to learn, not lecture, this week on Capitol Hill.It's crucial terrain, after all, that could prove critical to her success with the 6-year-old university."This is not a visit in which I've come with a specific request," Leland said Wednesday, amid the hubbub of the Longworth House Office Building cafeteria. "It's important for me to form relationships."
…The first UC Merced chancellor, the late Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, regularly traveled to Washington, placing considerable focus on issues such as securing wetlands development permits from the Army Corps of Engineers. Leland, too, has growth on her mind."We're going to have to break some logjams, if we want to develop in the future," Leland said.
Instead of wetlands permits, though, Leland suggested that she might be looking for federal tax provisions or other assistance. She cited, for instance a "new markets tax credit" bill backed by Costa, Cardoza and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater, which could aid the university as it expands.
Leland will be adding her voice, and her uniquely tailored Merced message, to the robust D.C. lobbying presence maintained by the University of California. The university reported spending $700,000 on federal lobbying last year, records show.
Yours truly made the chart above from data contained in a report by the National Center for Educational Statistics. (I was pointed to the report by Inside Higher Ed.) The chart comes from Table 15 of the report. For California, it suggests that the pool of [public school] high school grads in California will shrink in the coming years. I found some anomalies in the data projections elsewhere in the report for California and am not an expert in this area. Of course, for UC, the pool of potential undergrad admits is not limited to California or to public schools.
Nonetheless, if there are any experts in this area that can interpret the data, they are encouraged to comment.
Yesterday, we posted a reminder that we are all waiting for the revised UCLA hotel plan. From a Fox TV News press release comes word that if UCLA goes ahead with a grand hotel/conference center plan that then flops, there will still be hope. Help will be on the way:
After over a decade of running restaurants in some of the top hotels around the world, traveling the globe and running an award-winning boutique hotel in London, (Gerald) Ramsay knows firsthand the crucial importance of surpassing guests’ highest expectations. In the series, Ramsay and a team of hospitality experts will travel across the country to fix struggling hotels, mediocre motels and just plain bad bed & breakfasts.FOX and Chef Gordon Ramsay have checked into HOTEL HELL (working title), a new unscripted series from Ramsay’s One Potato Two Potato Inc.From dirty bedrooms and mold-ridden bathrooms to incompetent staff or customer service that’s not up to par, Ramsay and his team will work with the hotel employees to turn these hapless establishments around.As he tries to turn these “No”-tels into successful hotels, Ramsay – in his own inimitable style – will go head-to-head with the owners and staff, raising the tension to maximum capacity. With reputations on the line, one thing is certain: if they can’t meet Ramsay’s high standards, they will never check out of HOTEL HELL…
So not to worry. We can now rely on reality TV from Fox in case of problems with our hotel. Yours truly was afraid the only reality TV we might have to rely on was NBC's "Biggest Loser." Or maybe there is still some other TV alternative, if you get my message:
UC Davis unveils major initiative to increase size of student body
Sep. 21, 2011, Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee
Calling it a response to the dramatic drop in state funding, UC Davis' chancellor today announced a plan to increase the campus' undergraduate population by one fifth, one of the biggest leaps in years.The vision outlined by Chancellor Linda Katehi would swell the school's undergraduate population to around 29,000 within five years. The total student population would rise to 37,000, surpassing Berkeley and making Davis the second most populous University of California campus, behind UCLA.Speaking at the annual convocation to mark the start of the school year, Katehi portrayed the increase as a move toward greater financial stability in an era of declining state financial support. Reviewing the recent dismal history of budget cuts, tuition hikes and layoffs and furloughs, she said "we will take control of our destiny…
The school said it's in the early stages of studying whether it can add the students and faculty…
The fall quarter is getting under way and (soon???) there should be a re-studied plan from the UCLA administration on the Grand Hotel project that was proposed - but halted after protests from the Academic Senate - to replace the Faculty Center. We are waiting patiently for the (revised???) plan.
But in the meantime - a modest??? musical contribution - to salute the UCLA construction empire:
As shown above, there is bipartisan disapproval in the latest Field Poll of the budget cut trigger that was enacted as part of the 2011-12 California state budget. Of course, what the legislature enacts, it can amend or un-enact.
Readers of this blog will know that the trigger includes more cuts for UC. Given voter sentiment, perhaps - if UCOP and the Regents - work on it, what happens if the trigger is pulled is not inevitable.
There was much bemoaning by the Regents at their recently-concluded meeting about what to do and whether to accept a UCOP plan for dealing with the UC funding problem. Is there an opportunity here at the legislature and with the governor? Just asking.
Some excerpts from the LA Times story on today’s UCLA Anderson Forecast:
The national economy is in "far worse" shape than it was just three months ago, but neither the U.S. nor California is expected to slip back into recession, according to UCLA researchers.The U.S. economy has "stalled," the job market is "horrible," and even a "modest shock" could trigger a full-blown recession, according to a quarterly economic forecast released Tuesday by UCLA's Anderson School of Management.But in a nuance that only an economist could appreciate, a recession is unlikely because the forces that normally spur downturns, such as a falloff in home construction, are already so weak that further deterioration won't do that much additional damage…
Closer to home, the outlook for California's economy is similar to that of the nation. The most notable development in the state is the widening gap between the fortunes of relatively prosperous coastal areas and those of far more challenged inland regions, economists said…For all of California, UCLA predicts virtually no growth this year, followed by anemic rates of 0.7% next year and 2.1% in 2013.The state's 12.1% unemployment rate will remain around 12% through next year and will average 11% in 2013. It won't drop to the single digits until 2014, according to the report.
At the recent Regents meeting, there was a report on the economic impact of UC on the California economy. Yours truly has some reservations about the regional multiplier approach which is emphasized in the report. The short-term real multiplier to be emphasized, which I thought was not adequately highlighted in the report, is that the state puts about $2.5 billion into UC and gets an enterprise with a budget of around $20 billion. A lot of that budget comes from outside the state, i.e., federal research and other funds. And in the long term, the impact on California's growth can be emphasized.
There are lots of ways of calculating regional multipliers of jobs and spending. But, especially at the sub-national level, there are some cautionary notes that are usually omitted or under-emphasized in such exercises. Typically, regardless of methodology, the multiplier at the sub-national level comes out to something like 2 or 3, i.e., for every job created in sector X directly, there is a total of 2 to 3 jobs created because of indirect multiplier effects. Now let X = UC.
As I have pointed out in a class I teach, if you added all sectors of the California economy together and compute and add up each one's direct+indirect effects, there must be 2 to 3 times as many people who work in California as work in California. If that sentence leaves you puzzled, you can begin to see the problem of pushing the multiplier approach.
So it isn't the report that yours truly would have written. Nonetheless, I am duty-bound to give you a link to the report which you can find at:
We previously posted the audio for the July 2011 Regents meeting.Normally, we have to wait until we can get the recordings from the Regents to post the audio.However, Prof. Jim Chalfant of UC-Davis recorded part of the Sept. 15 meeting including discussion of graduate student tuition and support.
Eventually, we will post the full Sept. 13-15 meeting - once we get the recordings.In the meantime, below is the Regents agenda for Sept. 15 and below that is a link to the Chalfant recording.
The Regents met for the third day of their July 2011 meetings on July 14.Below is the agenda for that day's session.The audio is divided into two parts.Previous blog posts have provided the audio for the first two days.Links are below the third day agenda. Below the agenda are links to the audio.
Santa Monica Hospital was originally built in 1926 - as shown above. It was acquired by UCLA and recently renovated. The hospital is holding an open house today. Details at:
Yesterday, we posted the audios of the first day of the July 12-14, 2011 Regents meetings.(The first day was actually meetings of two committees.) Today we post the second day audio in two parts.Below is the agenda with links to agenda documents.We again note that the Regents live-stream the audio of their meetings and record them.But they do not archive the recordings for public access.Why not?We have to request the recordings and do the posting, an unnecessary step which – as is evident from the posting at this late date – involves a delay.
More I-405 problems for commuters to and from UCLA:
