Watch the Regents Meeting of July 17, 2025

We are again playing catch-up with the Regents, although we have previously covered July 15 and 16. On the third day of the meetings - July 17 - the agenda began with public comments. Topics covered were tuition, substandard construction on a project at UC-Santa Cruz, layoffs in a student retention program, layoffs at Santa Barbara, layoffs of instructors, loss of federal funding for climate change research and another topics, loss of funding from NSF, opposition to the ban on non-transparent masks at Regents meetings, problems of disabled students, anti-Israel, financial aid, unfair work standards in a Teamsters unit, understaffing in health care, federal science cuts, layoffs at San Diego, leaves of absence for undergraduate students with medical issues, and problems of student-parents.

After public comments, the undergraduate student rep complained about the ban on boycotts by student governments. The graduate student rep complained about rent and dorm conditions at Santa Cruz and a police action. There was then a program about the UC Grand Slam for graduate students. In that program, grad students make a 3-minute presentation on their research projects suitable for a lay audience. Four students from different research areas made presentations in the bio/medical/health care area.

The Regents went into closed session and when the open session resumed, the new chancellor of UC-Santa Barbara - Dennis Assanis - was appointed. The various committees that had met during the prior two days reported and their reports and recommendations were adopted. It was noted that 2025 was the 50th anniversary of CUCSA (for non-union staff) and also the 50th anniversary of the appointment of a student Regents.

There was then a discussion item on replacing the Regents' existing "cohort" tuition plan when it expires with a new program that would begin in 2027-28. Note that although the Regents could just extend the existing plan, a modification was presented which would raise the annual cap on increases, reduce the formula percentage of recycled tuition revenue going to financial aid, and bump up the inflation adjustment by a fixed amount. These changes would raise revenue from tuition and divert some of the increase to things like seismic upgrades.

As might be expected, there was push-back against the proposal, but since at this point the matter was just a discussion item, the push-back was general and alternatives were not presented. Yours truly found the discussion to be disjointed. What was needed, but not presented, was a range of concrete examples of what a student with a particular income, etc., would pay under the old plan and under the new plan under varying assumptions about inflation and various adjustments of the basic formula. 

Regent chair Reilly said the tuition issue would be taken up as an action item at a later meeting, probably in November. Several Regents noted that the political and funding situation in Washington, DC was volatile. Whether there will be more clarity on that front in November is uncertain.

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As blog readers will know, we retain recordings of Regents meetings indefinitely since the Regents have no policy on duration of retention for their (unlisted) YouTube recordings.

The opening session of the July 17 meeting is at: https://ia601901.us.archive.org/8/items/7-board-8-30-am/7-Board%208_30%20AM.mp4.

The second session of the meeting is at: https://ia801901.us.archive.org/8/items/7-board-8-30-am/8-Board%2011_30%20AM.mp4.

The general website for the recordings is: https://archive.org/details/7-board-8-30-am.