New provost Katherine Newman was introduced. Regents chair Richard Leib announced that there would be a new limited liability corporation to build UC housing with $1 billion funding from the chief investment officer. As we noted in our coverage of the Investments Committee meeting that took place Tuesday, the proposal for an LLC and the $1 billion seemingly emerged out of the discussion of the Blackstone controversy.* We also noted that the discussion of the committee sounded scripted. The billion-dollar LLC seemed to be something that back in November couldn't be done for legal reasons. Leib said in this meeting that the idea had been worked on for many years by Regent Sherman and the chief investment officer. The proposal, he said, would be unveiled at the March meetings.
UC president Drake went through the usual we-are-grateful-to-the-governor-for-the-budget speech, but said UC would be asking for more funds from the legislature for infrastructure. Faculty representative Cochran referred to the now-concluded student-worker strike and its impact on PhD financing. The added costs would create "shortfalls" in grant-funded PhD candidate positions. She noted that many PhDs in the so-called STEM fields have their careers in business rather than academia and contribute to the state's economy. The Regents have been focusing on undergraduate enrollment and need now to focus on PhD education.
At a joint meeting of Finance and Capital Strategies and Academic and Student Affairs, there was much discussion of the multiyear compact with the governor with everyone generally singing its praises and no one commenting on the fact that UC under the governor's proposal would get less funding in the coming fiscal year than in this year. Regent Pérez thought that the compact with Newsom was an improvement over the past, possibly an indirect slam at former Governor Brown. He noted that the compact with the governor by itself would be meaningless if the legislature didn't go along with it.
Concern was also expressed over the concept in the compact that UC should admit one community college transfer student for every two freshmen admitted. In fact, enrollment in community colleges has fallen dramatically. If that formulas is applied and few transfer students end up applying to UC campuses, the formula would pull down the number of freshmen admitted. Something will have to be done, although exactly what that would be was unclear.
Originally, there was supposed to be a review of UC-San Diego, but UC-Santa Barbara replaced it on the agenda. Munger Hall - "Dormzilla" - came up as a topic. The Regents seem to feel the Munger Hall plan needs to move forward and that the process of consultation with students and others is taking too long. No one had any reservations about the plan.
There was a review of UC sexual harassment policy. Training was discussed. It might be noted that the New York Times recently carried an article which cast significant doubt on the value of such training in terms of actually changing behavior.** To the extent any doubt was expressed in the meeting by Regents, the response of administrators seemed to be that training could be customized for individual departments.
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/01/watch-regents-investment-committees.html.
**https://www.nytimes.com/2023/
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Our video of the meeting is at:
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https://ia904704.us.archive.org/3/items/new-year-outlook/regents%20am%20wednesday.mp3
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