We begin our catching up with the Regents by looking at the sessions of Sept. 18th. The meeting began with public comments. Some addressed antisemitism including a department statement that seemed out of compliance with recent Regental rules. There were calls for divestment of military equipment makers, concerns about nonunion UC salaries, students with disabilities, grading of incompletes, and a pending bill that involved UC hiring of undocumented students. CALPIRG's campaign to encourage student voting was also referenced.
While Regents Chair Reilly provided relatively sunny remarks about the new academic year, President Drake referred to the planning for campus safety over the summer in light of the protests of the spring. Reilly did note that the Regents had abandoned the use of concurrent sessions for this meeting. It was unclear whether this was a permanent change. (At one time, the Regents did not have concurrent sessions, but went to that model because of time constraints.) Faculty representative Steven Cheung noted the long-term trend to a rising student/faculty ratio as a source of quality erosion. As we noted in a previous posting, he made a comment in passing disclosing planning for a systemwide conversion to the semester system.*
Three grad student winners of the "Grad Slam" competition presented brief summaries of their research projects.
At Academic and Student Affairs, there was discussion of online education, especially for full undergraduate degree programs as opposed to just individual courses. The Regents have been pushing in that direction. A task force was set up to study the issue. It promoted a vision of a single degree as opposed to one degree for in-person and another for online. The idea was that the single degree would have the same admissions standards and quality standards regardless of whether a students was in-person or online. The same faculty would teach in both. Somehow, online students would have the benefits of campus amenities, e.g., access to the library. And students who were admitted online could shift into the in-person program. A new task force is to be set up to continue planning.
There are lots of loose ends in this vision. Regent Makarechian asked about costs and was told that was something the new task force would consider; the old one had not looked into costs.
There was a report concerning UC moves regarding entrepreneurship and innovation, essentially commercializing UC research. As blog readers will know, part of this effort involves some kind of new system systemwide for tracking patent rights, something that campuses had been doing. All campuses except UCLA have agreed to the new system. UCLA has been holding out. UCLA interim chancellor Hunt was at the meeting and said he thought UCLA would eventually go along with the systemwide approach. Yours truly, however, shudders when thinking about some past episodes such as UCPath when new centralized computer systems are imposed.
Finally, there was discussion of a "Proof of Concept" fund to assist in commercialization of research.
Finance and Capital Strategies approved various capital projects except for a Berkeley softball field which was deferred. Apparently, objections had been raised in closed session. What those objections were was not revealed but there was some mumbling about it having to do with women's sports. The topic then turned to the state budget. Nathan Brostrom gave a rather upbeat view of what ultimately emerged in the state budget where some budget increases for UC under the compact were deferred in 2025-26 and 2026-27, but not the current year. (Note that plans for future years don't mean much; the legislature makes decisions annually.) While it is true that the current year's compact adjustment was ultimately not deferred, when you look at the total budget from the state (including "one time" funds and various amounts from sources other than the general fund, UC has gotten a relatively flat $5 billion in nominal terms (which means a real decline once inflation is considered).
There was a rumor discussed that UC might be ending its student internship program at the state legislature. Several Regents thought it was a bad idea. When pushed, the provost said the rumor wasn't true but then said there was planning for the program only through winter quarter. The Regents pushed for the current program to run through spring while any changes were considered. The provost agreed (sort of). Regent Makarechian noted the news reports over the summer that Santa Cruz was in financial difficulties and asked why that campus should be having special problems. He didn't really get an answer. Brostrom said Santa Cruz would implement a hiring freeze and solve its problems through attrition over several years.
As always, we preserve Regents meetings since the Regents have no fixed policy on preserving their recordings. You can see the September 18th meeting at the links below:
Board and Academic and Student Affairs:
Finance and Capital Strategies:
=====
*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/09/whoa-did-he-just-say-what-i-thought-he.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment