Watch the Regents Afternoon Meeting of May 15, 2024

We are catching up with the Regents last general meeting. In earlier posts, we covered the first day and the morning of the second day. In the afternoon of the second day - May 15th - Academic and Student Affairs and Finance and Capital Strategies.

In Academic and Student Affairs, tuition increases were approved for various professional programs. A disruption occurred during that meeting and the room was cleared. There was a presentation on the accomplishments of the UC astronomy program. Not surprisingly, however, much of the discussion revolved around the stalled TMT project on Hawaii. 

Regent Pérez noted that decommissioning of obsolete Hawaiian telescopes was lagging behind promised times. He wanted more progress on that effort. At an earlier meeting when the Canary Island alternative location for TMT was discussed, a witness said that while the Hawaii location was preferable, the alternative would be 90% as good. To someone with a political background such as Pérez, a compromise where you get 90% of what you want sounds pretty good. It's not exactly clear what 90% means in terms of a telescope. But the 90% remark will clearly haunt proponents of the Hawaiian TMT. 

At Finance and Capital Strategies, various capital projects were approved. UCOP's budget was also approved. The state budget was discussed with a more optimistic spin than yours truly thinks is warranted, although some Regents were skeptical. As we have noted, when you add up cuts relative to January's budget proposal and supposed restorations in 2025-26 (very uncertain this far in advance), the base budget is down by more than what appeared in the summary document released by the governor and the Dept. of Finance. 

As always, we preserve recordings of Regents meetings since the Regents have no policy on duration of retention.

You can see both committee meetings at:

https://archive.org/details/regents-5-15-24-pm-academic-and-student-affairs-committee.