Listen to Regents Afternoon Session of 9-12-12 Retreat

In the afternoon, the Regents retreat got into the topic of differential tuition between campuses mainly, but some mention of majors as well. There didn't seem to be much sentiment in favor of that approach.  Note that at the professional school level, there is some differentiation already but that matter was not brought up.

Oddly, after all the talk of uniformity of tuition, there seemed to be a more favorable attitude toward differential offerings by campus, i.e., every program didn't have to be offered on every campus.  This theme was really a follow-on to what was said about med schools in the morning session (also posted on this blog).

There was discussion of what was termed the Academic Delivery Model.  Some of this discussion involved online offerings.  But there was talk about teaching vs. ladder (research) faculty and whether tenure was a good thing.  There was also talk about how many hours do faculty spend on teaching and some reference to redoing a long-ago study in which faculty were asked about weekly hours of teaching, research, etc.  (I have a dim recollection of that study - it was long ago - which produced something like a 60+ hours/week norm.)  The idea was to give the Regents something to reply when legislators complained about not enough teaching time.

Some discussion occurred around the topic of what free tuition meant at UC.  UC has various programs in which lower income students receive free tuition.  However, it was noted that a typical student with free tuition does not get a full ride.  That is, expenses such as room and board are not usually involved and students may well end up with debt. Also, free tuition to the student doesn't mean UC gets no revenue because lower income students may receive Pell Grants and Cal Grants.

The final segments of the retreat were focused on the budget problems of UC, especially if the governor's tax initiative fails.  What was clear was that if Proposition 30 does not pass, UCOP will propose raising tuition midyear at the November Regents meeting.  As this intention became obvious, Lt. Gov. Newsom kept wanting to have other options in November in the event of a Prop 30 defeat.  He kept being told there were no non-tuition options given the magnitude of the budget impact.  Some other Regents chimed in about non-tuition options, but they seemed more to want UCOP to bring in ridiculous options such as closing UCLA.  The idea was that it would be understood - presumably by the public - that the alternative to not raising tuition would be so draconian that they had no choice.  A not-so-nice interpretation of what went on in this segment was venting and posturing.

You can hear the afternoon session at:


Note: PowerPoints for the retreat are at:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/sept12/retreatppt.pdf

Update: The LA Times story about the retreat discussion is at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0913-uc-regents-20120913,0,53917.story