Harvard's Budget Leak

Since we have been blogging about UCLA budget matters on and off (including yesterday), it might be of interest to look at another university's budget. 

Harvard operates on a more decentralized basis than UCLA. And it doesn't have its own hospital (although it has a med school). Apparently, for years, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has released aggregate budgets: Income statements (Revenues, Expenditures) and balance sheet (assets and liabilities). But after FY 2025 had passed, it didn't make a public release of its financial report. Nonetheless, it provided the FY 2025 report to selected individuals, one or more of which leaked it to the Harvard Crimson. The Harvard Crimson then published the report.* You can find the report at:

https://ia903207.us.archive.org/35/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/Harvard%20Faculty%20of%20Arts%20and%20Sciences%20financial%20report%20FY2025.pdf

The income statement in the report shows a deficit for FY 2025 of $7.7 million. How bad is that? Expenditures were about $1.8 billion so the deficit was 0.4% of spending. How much did FAS have in the bank (liquid assets) to cover the deficit? The balance sheet in the report says there are "deposits with the university" of around $2 billion. So presumably, nobody is panicking. Why there was an attempt to keep the report semi-secret is an interesting question.

UCLA needs at a minimum to turn out reports such as Harvard's on a reasonably timely basis. Yes, it is more complicated at UCLA because of the health enterprise, as we noted yesterday. But it isn't impossible.

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*https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/13/fas-unpublished-annual-report/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 319

From the Yale Daily News: The English department has nearly halved the number of sections of an introductory writing course, from 32 last fall to 17 this fall, as budget cuts constrain academic offerings at Yale. In addition to that decrease in the fall sections of English 1014, “Writing Seminars,” the number for English 1020, “Reading and Writing the Modern Essay,” has dropped from 17 to 14. The reductions are among the latest impacts on undergraduate academics of budget pressure in anticipation of an upcoming endowment tax hike. They come on top of decisions not to renew the contracts of several instructional faculty members, which the Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean described as being affected by budget “trade-offs.”

“These reductions were imposed upon us by the FAS Teaching Resource Advisory Committee, which has also imposed an increase in class size,” Feisal Mohamed, the English department’s director of undergraduate studies, wrote in an email to the News. “As a department, we are deeply concerned that the incoming class will not be able to find seats in introductory writing courses, and that those who do will receive less individualized attention.” ...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/fewer-english-writing-sections-are-being-offered-due-to-budget-cuts.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 146

From the Harvard Crimson: The Harvard College Dean of Students Office is investigating a formal complaint against the Harvard Republican Club over potential violations of the College’s harassment and photography policies. College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo confirmed in a Tuesday statement that the complaint had been referred to the DSO’s Student Engagement team, which handles cases of alleged misconduct by registered student organizations.

The complaint stems from a controversial April 4 post to the club’s official X account criticizing the Harvard Islamic Society’s Eid al-Fitr celebration in the courtyard of Quincy House. The post, which remains pinned at the top of the HRC’s page, included photographs and video taken at the event. It alleged that “Harvard’s historic Quincy Courtyard had been turned into a bazaar selling Hijabs, Burqas and Qurans,” that “large prayer mats covered the grass,” and that the event attracted “dozens of unvetted strangers who roamed outside student dorms.” It also claimed that speakers “blasted Islamic music.”

“Harvard has been captured,” it stated...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/15/hrc-complaint-investigation/.

The Incompleteness Theorem

Chart from former CFO Agostini's Budget Book     
==                

No, we're not referring to the mathematical incompleteness theorem. Our budgetary theorem says that if you don't consider the health enterprise, your picture of UCLA's financial situation will be incomplete. 

Former UCLA CFO Agostini, before he said Very Bad Words and got fired, left us with a budget book which we have been reviewing on and off in this blog.* Some of his Very Bad Words denigrated previous UCLA financial reports which - as blog readers will know - we have preserved so they won't disappear.** The most recent one, for fiscal year 2022-23, tells us that back then UCLA had revenues of $11.2 billion of which $3.7 billion came from the Medical Center.*** That was about a third of total university revenue, so it's hard to understand UCLA's fiscal situation if the Med Center is omitted. Moreover, there is a category called "educational activities" that appears to refer mainly to revenues from practice by Med School faculty. The combination of Med Center with these activities brings the total to around 60% of revenues. It's really hard to understand what is happening in any organization with six out of ten dollars omitted.

The budget book - from which the chart above came - updated the previous (denigrated) series by showing fiscal year 2023-24. It tells us that revenues were then $12.8 billion of which $4.2 billion came from the Med Center, i.e., an unchanged ratio of about a third.**** It refers explicitly to faculty practice revenues which again brings the total to around 60% of total revenues. So there is a consistency.

As blog readers will know, the Agostini budget book - after presenting the macro data - then divides the university into micro "units" (which we have reviewed in prior posts) for 2023-24, 2024-25, and a projection - as of Sept. 2025 - for the current year, 2025-26. But the units listed omit the Med Center and faculty practice, a big omission.

One interesting point: Agostini seems to have direct access to the unit data he presented that omits the 60%. But when he presents the full picture, i.e., the chart above, he footnotes the source as UCOP. It's almost as if he didn't have direct access to data on the missing 60%. It's almost as if that 60% is being reported directly up to UCOP by UCLA Health, and that UCOP then uses the figures for its systemwide reports. I'm not saying that is what happened in the past or is happening now. I am saying it looks that way. In any case, someone might want to ask UCLA's interim CFO whether she gets direct data from UCLA Health.

With all the excitement of university CFOs coming and going, there may be another direct source of budgetary information about the omitted 60% piece. Did you know that there is a UCLA Health CFO? In all the reports about the turmoil in Murphy Hall about CFOs, no one mentioned the UCLA Health CFO. In case you didn't know that there was one - and just in case the Academic Senate committee looking into budgetary affairs doesn't know - here is a (paid) profile from the LA Business Journal:*****

Tammy Wallace, CPA serves as chief financial officer of the UCLA Health System. In this role, she provides enterprise‑wide strategic and financial leadership for a $8 billion health system encompassing hospitals, clinics, physician enterprises, managed care, and joint ventures. Her scope of responsibility includes oversight of the revenue cycle, accounting and audit, financial planning and decision support, supply chain, mergers and acquisitions, and contracting. She plays a central role in evaluating internal and external market opportunities, driving enterprise cost-savings initiatives, supporting strategic growth, and advancing the adoption of innovative financial and operational technologies.

Under Wallace’s leadership, UCLA Health has strengthened its financial performance while continuing to invest aggressively in growth, access, and clinical excellence. She has led long range financial planning that aligns capital deployment and margin targets with enterprise growth and market positioning— which will enable more than $10 billion in capital investment over the next 10 years.

If I were on the Senate committee that is trying to understand UCLA's budgetary numbers, I'd definitely want to have a chat with CFO Wallace about the $8 billion for the sake of completeness. I'd want to know what goes to UCOP and what goes to Murphy Hall. That $8 billion, you might notice, seems to be about what Med Center + Faculty Practice would total.

She's in the UCLA directory. I checked. Just a suggestion...

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*Our most recent prior budget-related post is at https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/agostinis-every-ship-on-its-own-bottom_0145196952.html.

**https://archive.org/details/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026.

***https://archive.org/download/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Annual%20Report%202022-2023.pdf.

****https://ia903207.us.archive.org/35/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Budget%20Book%20v%20FINAL%20Feb%202026.pdf. 

*****https://labusinessjournal.com/custom-content/women-of-influence-health-care-2026-tammy-wallace/. The profile is part of "custom content" (i.e., paid for by UCLA).   

Straws in the Wind - Part 318

From the Yale Daily News: Sen. Rick Scott called... for the federal government to cut off funding from Yale over the Yale Political Union’s decision to host the left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who previously suggested that Scott should be killed. Scott — a Florida Republican who spoke at the political union last semester in favor of the resolution “Buy American” — posted on X that the government should “IMMEDIATELY revoke” Yale’s federal funding. 

While Republicans were developing President Donald Trump’s 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Piker said during a livestream — responding to comments by House Speaker Mike Johnson that Republicans were focusing on Medicaid fraud — that “if you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott.” Scott was the chief executive of a hospital company that later paid $1.7 billion in settlements to the government relating to fraud...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/senator-calls-for-government-to-revoke-yale-funds-over-ypu-speaker.

Another Closed-Door Regents Meeting Today

The Regents are having another closed-door meeting today to talk about the UC/UCLA problem with the feds. This one is scheduled for a whole hour rather than the usual 30 minutes. Does that mean something? Who knows?

TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 

Because the membership of the Advisory Group on Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues (“Advisory Group”) includes five members of the Regents’ Governance Committee, there exists the potential for having present a quorum of a Regents’ Committee when the advisory committee meets. This notice of meeting is served in order to comply fully with pertinent open meeting laws. 

On Tuesday, April 21, 2026, there will be a Closed Session, Special Meeting of the Regents’ Governance Committee concurrent with the Advisory Group to discuss Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues (Closed Session Statute Citation: Litigation [Education Code section 92032(b)(5)].) The meeting will convene at 4:00 p.m. at 1111 Franklin Street, Oakland and adjourn at approximately 5:00 p.m. 

(Advisory Group members: Regents Anguiano, Cohen, Hernandez, Matosantos, Milliken, Reilly, Robinson, Sarris, and Sures)

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/april26/meeting-notice_federal-april-21-2026.pdf.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 145

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard is quietly asking donors for $10 million gifts to establish new endowed professorships in a sweeping bid to reshape its faculty under the banner of “viewpoint diversity,” according to two people familiar with the initiative. The campaign, driven by Harvard’s top brass, aims to raise several hundred million dollars to support a new cohort of professors. If successful, the funding could bring dozens of faculty members to campus and drastically shift Harvard’s academic makeup. University officials have pitched the effort to major donors — conservative and liberal alike — as a way to broaden ideological representation across Harvard, two people said. But the fundraising target has repeatedly shifted after pushback from donors who viewed the scale as too ambitious, one person said.

Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 — the University’s second-highest administrator and a prominent conservative legal scholar — has led the effort, according to two people. Still, Harvard has carefully framed the project as a general push for “viewpoint diversity,” rather than a politically aligned initiative. Under a model being proposed, new hires would not be housed in a standalone institute. Instead, they would be appointed at the University level and embedded across schools and departments, per two people...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/15/harvard-donors-viewpoint-diversity/.

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From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 pushed back Friday against a central demand of the University’s graduate student union, warning that a proposal to require third-party arbitration in Title IX cases could violate federal law. In an email to affiliates co-signed by Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90, Manning wrote that the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers proposal would establish “distinct and separate set of non-discrimination, harassment, and anti-bullying processes” for union members — a system he said would conflict with both federal Title IX regulations and University policy requiring consistent procedures. The message, sent four days before the union’s planned strike, reflects Harvard’s firm posture on several major sticking points in negotiations that have stretched more than a year.

...[A] strike would mark a significant ratcheting up of an already tense bargaining cycle, marked by ongoing conflict over union representation. Negotiations began on uncertain terms, as conflict over bargaining observation resulted in the parties proceeding without ground rules. At the bargaining table, Harvard’s negotiators have responded to proposals for distinct non-discrimination and anti-bullying procedures by moving to standardize procedures across the University. The move would centralize control over reported cases and strip some existing protections, including the ability for the union to negotiate over proposed changes to non-discrimination policy. The divide extends to compensation. The University’s offer falls well below the union’s proposal, which calls for a roughly 74 percent increase for teaching fellows and a standardized $55,000 base salary for research assistants across disciplines, followed by annual five percent raises.

If the union moves forward with a strike on Tuesday, Manning and Weenick wrote that Harvard has begun contingency plans to maintain operations. They emphasized that while faculty and students may support the union, they will be expected to meet their academic obligations...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/18/manning-hgsu-strike/.

Celebrating Bond

Bill authorizing $23 billion bond to fund California scientific research clears key Senate committee

UC Office of the President 

Senate Bill 895, legislation authored by Sen. Scott Wiener and sponsored by the University of California to help fund scientific research, passed the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee on a 5-2 vote yesterday. As UC faces one of the most significant disruptions to its research enterprise in its 158-year history, this bipartisan legislation would place a $23 billion bond to fund scientific research across California on the November 2026 ballot.

If passed by voters, the measure would help preserve research central to protecting jobs, sustaining lifesaving medical advancements, supporting the health of California communities and maintaining the state’s global leadership in innovation. Prior to the hearing, researchers and faculty submitted over five dozen letters on behalf of the University, and the UC Advocacy Network sent more than 5,000 emails to lawmakers in support of SB 895 and the critical research funding the bill would provide...

Full news release at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/bill-authorizing-23-billion-bond-fund-california-scientific-research-clears-key-senate.

UCLA History - Warren

Former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court attends celebration of the 25th anniversary of the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations (now Institute for Research on Labor and Employment) in 1970. As governor of California, Warren had signed the legislation creating the Institute in 1945. Seated to the right of Warren (top left and bottom left) is Prof. Benjamin Aaron, director of the Institute.

Straws in the Wind - Part 317

From The Dartmouth: Since its launch in August 2023, the College’s Open Expression Facilitator program has supported more than 150 campus events. The program trains staff members to intervene in the case of “disrupt[ive]” protests, according to civic engagement, expression and learning director Ed McKenna, who manages the program. The program fits into the College’s broader commitment to dialogue and free expression by supporting “all events,” especially debates and events featuring high profile guests, McKenna said. Recent examples include events with former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., former Vice President Mike Pence and former U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg. An OEF serves as a “viewpoint neutral” presence who can address disruptions at such events “if necessary,” according to the Office of Student Life website. Eighteen staff members currently serve as facilitators. 

The OEF program “is a support system to ensure that those events can go forward,” McKenna said. “And obviously, that’s important for dialogue.” The College’s approach to advancing dialogue and its position of institutional neutrality have enkindled mixed reactions on campus. But regarding the OEF program specifically, McKenna said that he “feels confident” that there is community trust in facilitators.

...According to McKenna, in the two years since the program’s inception, there has been one disruption at an event where facilitators were on hand... College spokesperson Jana Barnello wrote in a statement to The Dartmouth following the event. “When attempts to resolve the situation were unsuccessful,” the Hanover Police Department arrested and charged the two protestors with disorderly conduct. In such cases of disruption, an OEF first defers to the event’s host to address the disruption, McKenna said. If the disruption continues, the OEF then addresses the disruptors by “informing” them of Dartmouth’s Freedom of Expression and Dissent policies — which prohibit disruptions that “interfere with those activities or with the ability of audiences to see, hear or otherwise engage with” an event — and “requesting” that they “stop the disruption or leave.” If necessary, the Department of Safety and Security steps in by “telling” disruptors to leave the space. If police are present, they are responsible for physical removal...

Full story at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026/04/sanchez-three-years-in-a-look-into-dartmouths-open-expression-facilitator-program.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 144

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said he was “disappointed” by the widespread ignorance of Harvard students who expressed strong opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict — and their disinterest in learning the facts of the issue. Speaking at an event in Manhattan, Garber said he was struck both by students who held firm views without a grasp of the underlying history and by those who chose to avoid forming views altogether. “If you’re going to have strong views about an issue,” he said, “I would hope that at a University you would have the curiosity to learn the facts.”

The remarks mark a shift in emphasis for Garber, who has spent much of the past year warning about deteriorating conditions for free expression on campus. In a December podcast appearance, he argued that Harvard “went wrong” by allowing faculty to inject their personal views into the classroom, a shift he said discouraged open disagreement.

[Last] Monday, Garber made clear he sees the problem extending beyond faculty. Garber described the attitude among students as “disturbing” and “ignorant,” saying he was especially troubled by a combination of shallow knowledge and reluctance to engage in disagreement...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/15/garber-talk-israel-palestine/.

AI's Indirect Threat to the Wayback Machine

Users of the Wayback Machine, a service of the Internet Archive, will find the item below of interest. The Wayback Machine enables a look at websites in the past. Thus, changes in information or deletions of information can be tracked.

From the San Francisco Examiner:

If you use the Internet Archive to look up recent news stories from some of the biggest media companies, you might have trouble finding them.

In recent months, a growing number of news publications have sought to block the nonprofit online library from crawling their sites and making copies of their stories or other content, or restricted its ability to share their content.

Although the San Francisco-based organization has frequently had a contentious relationship with a variety of copyright holders, the publications’ moves come not so much out of concern about the archive itself, but with artificial-intelligence developers.

To prevent what many publishers see as theft of their copyrighted material by potential competitors, some of them have blocked AI developers from crawling their websites and copying stories from them. But many such publishers have grown concerned in recent months that AI developers are using the archive as a kind of back door to the publishers’ content, and so they’ve also started to block its access to their material or curtailed its ability to distribute that material.

“We are collateral damage,” said Mark Graham, director of the archive’s Wayback Machine, its web-page repository.

For their part, certain publishers see blocking the archive’s access to their material or its ability to share that material as crucial to protecting their businesses at a time when search engines and AI chatbots are increasingly answering users’ news queries directly rather than directing them to news sites...

Full story at https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/technology/internet-archive-collateral-damage-in-ai-news-battle/article_d3a37294-dc35-4861-8f7a-0a8cbfb12a58.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 316

To the Amherst College Alumni Community:

I am writing to share the sad news that Hampshire College has announced that it will begin preparations for closure by the end of the fall 2026 semester. The announcement comes after years of very hard work and dedication by Hampshire’s leadership and faculty in the face of mounting financial and operational challenges, and I am sure that this decision was extraordinarily difficult to make.  

The closure of Hampshire will be a profound loss not only to our region and to the Five Colleges, but to anyone who cares about higher education. I know it will be especially painful news to those of you who studied on Hampshire’s campus and developed friendships with Hampshire students over the last six decades.

Since its founding, Hampshire has pioneered innovations that have been widely adopted by colleges and universities across the country. From its pathbreaking approach to interdisciplinary teaching and research, to giving students the freedom to design their own course of study, to an abiding commitment to environmental sustainability, Hampshire has left a lasting impact on how faculty teach and students learn in every undergraduate institution, including ours.

Amherst’s relationship with Hampshire is particularly deep. A gift from an Amherst College alumnus was critical to Hampshire’s founding in 1965, and the College’s first vice president and second president was Amherst staff member and future trustee Chuck Longsworth ’51. Dozens of Hampshire students study each year in our classrooms, and the College’s faculty and staff collaborate closely with ours. We have been partners in the development of the Five Colleges, Inc., and the vibrancy of the Connecticut River Valley, and many people who work and study at Amherst have spouses and friends who are members of the Hampshire community.

In the coming weeks and months, Amherst will be working to assist our colleagues at Hampshire as they begin the difficult process of winding down operations. This is a challenging and uncertain time, and Amherst will offer support to the faculty, staff, and students where we can. And I hope that the entire Amherst community will reflect with gratitude on our six decades of partnership and the extraordinary contributions Hampshire has made to higher education.

Michael A. Elliott ’92, President, Amherst College

Source: Email sent by Amherst and forwarded to yours truly by a blog reader.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 143

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard sharply rebuffed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit seeking its admissions records in a Tuesday court filing, accusing the Trump administration of prematurely escalating negotiations into litigation for political ends. In a 20-page response filed in the U.S District Court in Massachusetts, the University argued that the DOJ mischaracterized months of back-and-forth over document production and failed to follow required procedures under Title VI. The clash stems from the Trump administration’s investigation into whether Harvard has complied with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning the use of race in admissions. In its February complaint, the DOJ alleged Harvard “thwarted” and “slow walked” the inquiry by withholding key admissions data, placing Harvard in violation of Title VI and its obligations as a federal grant recipient.

Harvard disputed that account on Tuesday, writing that it produced more than 2,000 pages of records — including aggregate enrollment data, admissions policies, training materials, and internal guidance documents — and remained open to negotiations before the government filed suit. The Trump administration has sought extensive admissions data from Harvard. As part of its investigation, federal officials sought five years of applicant-level admissions data across Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Medical School, including applicants’ grades, test scores, essays, extracurricular activities, admissions outcomes, and race and ethnicity...

The University’s alleged noncompliance is also under investigation by the Department of Education, which in March gave Harvard 20 days to provide the requested admissions records. A Harvard spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether the University submitted the data before the April 12 deadline. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee, who previously granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Department of Education from canceling teacher-training grants — a decision that the Supreme Court later stayed in a 5-4 decision pending appeal...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/15/harvard-doj-admissions-suit-response/.

What Milliken said about AI, Trump administration, and TPM - Part 2

Back on April 11th, we posted the audio of what UC President Milliken had to say at a PPIC conference two days earlier on AI, Trump, and TPM.* 

There were others at the event that were not included.

PPIC has now gotten around to posting the entire event (all participants) on YouTube.

You can see it at the link below:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDgsPRC0qcM.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/what-milliken-said-about-ai-trump.html.

Getting In - Part 7

From EdSource: ...While several other UC campuses turn away tens of thousands of qualified students annually, Merced faces the opposite challenge and has struggled to find students willing to enroll.  The campus wants to grow enrollment, but despite doubling its physical size this decade with more housing, classroom space, laboratories and other facilities, its enrollment has hovered around 9,000 students for each of the past seven years. Its yield rate — the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll — is the lowest in the UC system at 4%. 

Merced, which opened its doors in 2005, once hoped to reach 15,000 students by 2030, but officials now speak of a more modest goal: reaching 10,000 within the next few years. Achieving that will be important not only for Merced but also for the UC system, which is relying on the campus to enroll more in-state residents and satisfy pressure from lawmakers to get more Californians into UC. Campus officials believe they will see growth beginning this fall. Based on the number of freshmen and transfer students who have indicated intent to enroll, Merced is tracking above where it was at this point in 2025. The campus is continuing to build and expand programs, including a new partnership with UC San Francisco that allows students to work toward a bachelor’s degree at Merced and then an MD at UCSF’s Fresno campus.

UC Merced last year also achieved R1 status, the top research designation awarded by the Carnegie Foundation — and one that officials hope will improve the campus’s reputation with prospective students...

Full story at https://edsource.org/2026/how-uc-merced-is-trying-to-attract-students-after-years-of-slow-growth/755196.

Straws in the Wind - Part 315

From the Yale Daily News: Long days in the nation’s capital are not uncommon for Yale President Maurie McInnis. When McInnis traveled to Washington, D.C., last month, “a primary topic of conversation” was the Financial Accountability in Research, or FAIR, model, she said, for which she was advocating to increase transparency in federal funding of research administrative costs. McInnis’ ongoing lobbying efforts have been a focus of her presidency since President Donald Trump took office. “I was there for 22 hours last week,” McInnis said in an interview on March 31. “Flew down late one night, had meetings all day and then flew back late that same night.”

During her trip, McInnis said she met with “a variety of senators and members of the House of Representatives.” McInnis added that she does not “usually like to say which lawmakers we meet with” and that the recent trip included meetings with lawmakers who were “generally receptive.” 

“The big topic on the table,” McInnis said, “relates to facilities and administrative costs, or the things that are sometimes called indirect costs.”

...Several organizations — including the Association of American Universities, on whose board of directors McInnis sits — came together to form a group to develop a new model in response to the cuts. The Joint Associations Group on Indirect Costs is made up by experts including former government officials and university administrators. The group developed the model and proposed FAIR as a replacement for the current reimbursement system that uses negotiated rates for individual universities.

The FAIR model splits research costs into three categories, separating the costs currently categorized as indirect into two buckets. One of those buckets would include costs specific to each research project, and the other would cover institution-wide operational costs necessary for research, according to an Association of American Universities webpage about the proposed model...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/mcinnis-latest-lobbying-priority-was-a-new-research-funding-model.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 142

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 offered a measured defense of former University President Claudine Gay’s widely criticized House testimony in a Monday interview, suggesting her response reflected a technically correct — if politically maladroit — reading of school policy. In a public interview in Manhattan, Garber pointed to the now-infamous December 2023 colloquy between Gay and Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-NY) in which Gay said that calling for the genocide of Jews could violate University policy “depending on the context.” The remark quickly went viral, drawing sharp backlash from lawmakers, donors, and Harvard affiliates alike, who bashed her for failing to issue an outright condemnation of antisemitic speech.

...Though Gay backtracked, apologized, and clarified in the weeks that followed, the damage was done. She resigned less than a month after the hearing. More than two years later, Harvard is still reliving Gay’s testimony. In an otherwise forward-looking interview, Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief Emma Tucker asked Garber point blank how he would respond if posed Stefanik’s question. He declined to answer directly. Instead, he made an effort to insert the context he said was missing from Gay’s testimony.

...Gay retreated from public appearances following her resignation, only re-emerging briefly in September to criticize Garber of “compliance” with the Trump administration in his ongoing back-and-forth with the White House. She is now slated to teach two courses in the fall term, including a tutorial in the Government department on university governance...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/14/garber-claudine-gay-testimony/.

Regents Behind Closed Doors Today...

...but for a change they are not meeting to talk about you-know-what.

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING

The Regents of the University of California

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS

Date: April 17, 2026

Time: 11:30 a.m.

Locations: UC Center Sacramento, 1115 11th Street, Sacramento

Agenda – Closed Session

Action Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of January 20, 2026

S1(X) Action Recommendations for Election of Officers and Appointments to Standing Committees for 2026-27

Closed Session Statute Citation: Nomination of officers and members [Education Code §92032(e)]

Pursuant to the Charter, Regents who are not members of the Special Committee shall not attend its meetings.

--

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/april26/notice-nominations-april-17-2026.pdf.

Still Pouring In

We have been noting, month by month, that the state has been receiving revenue (mainly tax revenue) running well ahead of estimates made when the current year's budget was adopted. Through March, revenues exceeded forecast values by $16 billion, according to the state controller's latest report.*

When the governor presented his budget proposals in January, he revised up the estimated revenue. Even so, revenues exceeded the revised estimate by $7.6 billion. 

Eyes on the Prize**

Much of the overage in receipts continues to come from personal income taxes which suggests that stock market capital gains are the root cause. The AI boom has likely been an important factor. Estimates of sales tax receipts have proved to be pretty accurate which suggests that the underlying forecast of economic activity has been pretty accurate.

As blog readers will know, the governor did not choose to reflect concerns that the AI boom could go bust when he made his January budget proposals. He said that if some correction was needed, they could always be made at the May revise. AI has busted yet, and now there is also the uncertainty created by the Iran situation. Gasoline prices and other energy-related costs could dampen consumer spending. But the governor - with his eye on the White House in 2028 - probably can gamble that even if Bad Things happen, they will happen on his successor's watch.

Now it's true that when extra revenue comes in, a lot of it is automatically earmarked for K-14 thanks to Prop 98 as amended. But the state has $87.5 billion in unused borrowable resources. So, whatever happens, I would be surprised if the governor comes out with an austere May revise. And even if he did, the legislature would likely not go along with it.

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*https://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-ARD/CASH/March2026StatementofGeneralFundCashReceiptsandDisbursements.pdf.

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**Apparently, they decided not to translate the English title: Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. But at least they didn't call it Sein Kampf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 314

From Inside Higher Ed: After international student enrollment crashed in fall 2025, a report from Shorelight, an international education firm, illuminates one factor that led to that decline: a bump in F-1 visa rejections, especially for students from a handful of countries that typically supply large numbers of international enrollees. Shorelight’s annual report on visa refusals showed that denials reached a decade high of 35 percent worldwide in 2025, exceeding the previous peak in 2020. Those refusals were mainly concentrated in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of all F-1 visa requests from Africans were rejected, up from 43 percent in 2015 and up five percentage points from the previous year. A few countries, including Sierra Leone and Somalia, reached rejection rates over 90 percent. And India, previously the largest provider of international students to the United States, jumped from a refusal rate of 36 percent in 2023 to 61 percent in 2025.

Meanwhile, visa refusal rates for South Americans have actually decreased in the past four years, from a peak of 31 percent in 2022 to 22 percent in 2025—though that rate is still higher than they were a decade ago. The student visa denial rate among European applicants has remained steady over the past 10 years, sitting at 9 percent in 2026...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/international-students-us/2026/04/11/f-1-student-visa-refusals-surged-2025.

Wikipedia Solicitations - Part 3 (flood)

The flow of Wikipedia solicitations - such as the one below - seems to be turning into a flood. Again, if you get one, you can either delete it or report it to Wikipedia at paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org. What you should not assume is that you will get what you are paying for if you engage someone who sends you a solicitation to write or enhance a Wikipedia entry.

Talking Back

From the Daily Bruin: The UC implemented a virtual language education initiative in January, sparking pushback from instructors amid language program cuts. The Global Language Network, which was designed by UC humanities deans, allows faculty from different UC campuses to provide digital foreign language instruction to all University students.* The program was first designed in May 2023 to address a major decline in language class enrollment since 2019, said Alexandra Minna Stern, the dean of UCLA’s division of humanities and the network’s leader.

The network will adapt a subset of UC language courses – focusing on less commonly taught languages – students can enroll in over UC Online, a virtual cross-campus platform, Stern said. However, the program is intended to eventually include all languages taught across the UC, totaling more than 100, according to the GLN website. UC language instructors and department leaders alleged that they were not consulted during GLN’s development, adding that they only found out about it years after its initiation, through word of mouth or by randomly accessing its website. Others said they only discovered its existence when they were asked to fill out a questionnaire on it in 2025, after the network proposal was submitted to UC Provost Katherine Newman...

Michael Cooperson, UCLA’s Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department chair, said a humanities dean told him that language classes with fewer than 15 students enrolled would eventually be cut and some would be moved online. However, these languages will only be taught by one campus each, as a result of GLN. He clarified in an email statement that Reem Hanna-Harwell, a senior associate dean in the division of humanities who is now UCLA’s interim CFO, said this to him at a meeting. Hanna-Harwell, who became UCLA’s interim chief financial officer in February, did not respond to a request for comment on the alleged statement...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/04/02/some-uc-language-programs-are-getting-moved-online-these-professors-arent-happy.

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How effective learning languages online is - particularly for languages not commonly spoken in the US - needs to be studied. It is easy to get carried away by technological possibilities. Consider this statement from 1935:

Radio broadcasting is one of the greatest educational tools which has ever been placed at the disposal of civilized man. It is an instantaneous, universal means of communication. It is not a new art, but is a means of multiplying the efficiency of oral communication just as the printing press multiplied the effectiveness of the written word. In addition to that, it has certain decided advantages over the printed page which it in part supplants and in part supplements.**

So maybe try it out in a limited way before making wholesale changes?

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*https://www.ucop.edu/uc-online/programs-and-initiatives/global-language-network/index.html.

**Tracy F. Tyler, "Radio and Education," The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Feb., 1935), pp. 115-117: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20258384.

Straws in the Wind - Part 313

From The Atlantic: The “demographic cliff” is upon us. The number of teenagers graduating from American high schools peaked last year. It will begin declining this spring and keep falling steadily through at least 2041. The trend is more of a downward slope than an abrupt falloff, but the gradient is steep and represents a crisis to colleges dependent on filling classroom seats and dorm beds. The United States currently has about 4,000 colleges. According to a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, about 60 are closing on average each year; that number could double in any given year if the bottom falls out of enrollment.

If the harm were only to the institutions forced to close because they’re running out of customers, that would be unfortunate but not tragic. But the causality runs in the other direction too, as students who otherwise would have gone to college find themselves with no viable option in the place where they live. American higher education has long consisted of two markets: one where high-achieving, typically affluent students compete for seats at national universities, and one where mostly middle- and lower-income students stay closer to home. Members of the first group will be fine even as college closures accelerate. The second group will suffer. After many decades of democratization, higher education could once again become a luxury good.

Over the past half century, as more teenagers have enrolled in higher education, what was once mostly a local business has become national, especially for top students, whose sense of distance has gradually shifted. Campuses that once felt far away now seem closer, thanks first to interstate highways, then to discount airlines, and then to technology. Parents in the 1980s might have talked to their college kid on a dorm-floor pay phone once every few weeks, if they were lucky. Today’s parents can text and FaceTime their kids multiple times a day. Even so, roughly half of students at four-year colleges still attend one within 50 miles of home... 

Full story at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/college-enrollment-demographic-cliff/686750.

Heaps Again

From the LA Times: A former UCLA gynecologist pleaded guilty Tuesday to sexually abusing five of his patients during examinations, and the once-renowned cancer expert was sentenced to 11 years in state prison. James Heaps, 70, pleaded guilty to 13 felonies, including multiple counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person, and must register as a sex offender for life.

The plea came after a three-justice panel of the California 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned his conviction for sexual abuse of two patients with three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person. The court determined that the trial judge failed to inform his lawyers that some of the jurors raised questions about the English proficiency of one of the panel members and ordered a retrial...

[If there had been] a second trial, Heaps faced the prospect of more charges and a potential conviction with a longer sentence... Tuesday’s plea means Heaps will be eligible for parole in 2028 with time served...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-04-14/ex-ucla-doctor-admits-to-sexually-abusing-five-patients-after-previous-conviction-overturned.

As blog readers will know, UCLA paid out over $700 million to victims in a settlement. We have been separately posting from time to time about the university budget. Exactly where did that funding come from? Insurance? Someplace else? Even with insurance, premiums tend to rise after big payouts. Anybody asking? We'll be looking at the health enterprise budget in a future post.

Getting In - Part 6

 
In our last post in the Getting In series, we noted the issue of college admissions essays being written by AI and the difficulty in practice of detecting them.*  Here is another use of AI in admissions (to UC, among other universities):

From KGO-7-ABC: A Palo Alto father who has filed multiple lawsuits against major university systems over his son's college rejections says artificial intelligence has become the key to pursuing the cases after no law firm agreed to represent them. The legal fight stems from a 2023 ABC7 News story about Stanley Zhong, then an 18-year-old Gunn High School student with a 4.4 GPA and a near-perfect 1590 SAT score who was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to. Despite the rejections, he was later hired as a software engineer at Google. Two and a half years later, his father, Nan Zhong, says the family remains convinced racial discrimination played a role in those decisions... 

Zhong said Stanley, now 21, is happy and doing well in his job at Google. "In 2025, he received an outstanding impact performance rating, which is higher than majority of the Google engineers," he said. Zhong said the family spent a year in discussions with University of California officials after Stanley's rejections, but nothing changed. He said the turning point came when a UC admissions director emailed him, writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.

"When I got that line, I kept scratching my head," Zhong said. "They're saying there cannot be any noncompliance if there's a law banning it, but we're exactly accusing them of breaking the law secretly. So that is the point where I realized there's nothing we can achieve by having a conversation with them." Zhong said conversations with state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom also went nowhere, prompting the family to sue the University of California, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Cornell University.

He said they struggled to find legal representation. "We've been talking to local law firms, national law firms. By my account, we probably talked to dozens of legal organizations and law firms. None of them took it," Zhong said. With statutes of limitation approaching, he said the family decided to represent themselves. "Of course, being somebody with no legal experience at all, we naturally turned to AI," he said. "It turned out to be a boon that we never anticipated to be so effective."

Zhong said they use multiple AI models simultaneously to analyze legal questions, compare answers and prevent errors. "It's like having a team of deep lawyers, top lawyers, all working for you," he said. He pointed to a recent ruling in the University of Washington case, where a judge rejected the university's motion to stay the case. Zhong said the decision underscored a challenge in bringing admissions lawsuits: students often lose legal standing once they reach their junior year of college. "Here, Stanley has a unique advantage. He's not going to college yet. He may go at any time," Zhong said. "So, in some ways, he has evergreen legal standing that allows us to bring the lawsuit." ...

Full story at https://abc7news.com/post/google-engineer-rejected-colleges-uses-ai-sue-ucs-other-universities-racial-discrimination/18849388/.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/getting-in-part-5.html.

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If only he had known about this:

Or this:

Straws in the Wind - Part 312

From Bloomberg: President Donald Trump’s administration has opened a new front in its campaign to reshape US colleges, homing in on racial diversity at some of the top medical schools in the country. The Department of Justice has launched investigations into medical programs at Stanford, the University of California San Diego and Ohio State University, accusing them of giving a leg up to minority applicants. The administration has made similar claims about a swath of universities. But for medical schools, those accusations — and the accompanying risk to their federal funding — are an especially potent weapon.

Medical programs already took a hit last year when the president slashed billions in research grants, which disproportionately affects biomedical fields. The National Institutes of Health alone terminated nearly $2 billion in payments to medical schools as of last June. But even bigger sums could be at stake if the DOJ investigations widen beyond the initial slate of schools.

The NIH awarded over $19 billion to medical programs last year, and students rely on federal aid and loans to afford famously expensive medical degrees. If schools are found to be in violation of anti-discrimination law, they risk getting cut off from all this funding...

Full story at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-08/trump-targets-top-medical-schools-as-next-higher-ed-battleground.

Another One

The Regents are having another closed-door meeting about the conflict with the feds. The last such meeting was only a week ago. Is something up? Some new development?

TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Because the membership of the Advisory Group on Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues (“Advisory Group”) includes five members of the Regents’ Governance Committee, there exists the potential for having present a quorum of a Regents’ Committee when the advisory committee meets.

This notice of meeting is served in order to comply fully with pertinent open meeting laws.

On Tuesday, April 14, 2026, there will be a Closed Session, Special Meeting of the Regents’ Governance Committee concurrent with the Advisory Group to discuss Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues (Closed Session Statute Citation: Litigation [Education Code section 92032(b)(5)].)

The meeting will convene at 4:00 p.m. at 1111 Franklin Street, Oakland and adjourn at approximately 4:30 p.m.

(Advisory Group members: Regents Anguiano, Cohen, Hernandez, Matosantos, Milliken, Reilly, Robinson, Sarris, and Sures)

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/april26/meeting-notice_federal-april-14-2026.pdf.

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NOTE: Although UC maintains a website entitled "Federal Developments," the last posting there that directly dealt with the conflict with the feds was from October 2025. See:

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/federal-updates.

Agostini's Every Ship on Its Own Bottom - Part 2

In an earlier post, we noted - based on former UCLA VC & CFO Agostini's budget book - who were the Bad Guys, i.e., those running a deficit of at least 5% of expenditures for the current fiscal year, as projected in Sept. 2025.* We again emphasize the caveat that revenue at the unit level is often in whole or in part an allocation so a deficit could mean an insufficient allocation as opposed to improper overspending.

Agostini found a projected overall deficit in the units he identified. But some units ran surpluses (revenues > expenditures. So, who were the Good Guys in his calculation? We again use the arbitrary 5% figure and define Good Guys as those with projected surpluses of 5% or greater of expenditures. 

The list of Good Guys is below. It might not surprise you to know that the CFO's office is one of the Good Guys:

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/agostinis-every-ship-on-its-own-bottom.html. At this link you will also find links to past budget postings and sources.

 

Straws in the Wind - Part 311

From Inside Higher Ed: Republicans are fuming over the decision to oust the system president. One Democrat countered that “we need to stop partisan finger-pointing.” Republicans in Wisconsin want answers and are vowing to retaliate after the Universities of Wisconsin system Board of Regents fired President Jay Rothman [last] Tuesday night with no public explanation.

Accusing the regents of blatant partisanship, Republicans in the State Legislature are planning to hold a hearing on the firing and to vote against 10 board appointees who have been nominated and are already serving on the board but haven’t been confirmed. The Senate’s GOP-controlled Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges, which is holding the hearing, can’t stop the nominations on its own, but the mounting threats may set up a showdown over who serves on the board if the full Republican-majority Legislature takes up the fight.

Rothman, who has led the 25-campus system for almost four years, has said he doesn’t know why he was fired and defended his tenure. In a series of letters made public last week, he accused the board of trying to push him out without explanation...

“I think that the notion that he is unaware of the problems and challenges and people’s concerns is bullshit. He absolutely is aware. He absolutely has been informed by the regents in many different conversations,” [a] source said. “And it’s not just the regents who are the ones who have concerns. They are responsible for managing over a dozen campuses, and many of the chancellors on those campuses also had concerns and complaints about his leadership, and he is very much aware of that.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2026/04/08/rothman-firing-divides-wisconsin-lawmakers.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 141

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard’s graduate student union said Friday afternoon that it would begin a strike on April 21 if the University does not meet its demands by then, escalating a labor dispute that has stretched on for more than a year. In an email to members, the Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers accused Harvard’s negotiators of refusing to engage on key issues, including wages, protections for non-citizen workers, and access to third-party arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination.

Union leaders pointed to the results of a strike authorization vote last month — in which nearly 96 percent of participating members voted in favor — as evidence of a broad support for a walkout... Even as they set a deadline, union leaders said they remained open to reaching an agreement. “We hope that between now and our strike deadline, Harvard makes a good faith effort to come to the table, meet with us and bargain over our articles,” said Linsdey Adams, a member of the bargaining committee. Absent an agreement, she added, “on the morning of the 21st [of April], we are on strike until we have a fair contract.” ...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/11/hgsu-set-strike-date/.

Disappeared - Part 3

As blog readers will know, the individual convicted of child sex abuse as an employee in a UCLA child care center was convicted but disappeared while out on bail. Yours truly could find no news stories indicating that Christopher Rodriguez, the convicted former employee, has been found. In contrast, the lawsuit against UCLA has not disappeared. From the Daily Bruin:

Teachers at UCLA’s Early Care and Education centers told administrators in 2017 that they were struggling to meet teacher-student ratios and did not have enough supervision in their classrooms. Seven years later, their colleague of nearly 25 years was arrested for sexually abusing the children under his care. Twenty-five teachers from various ECE locations said they did not have enough staff to supervise their classrooms, according to a 2017 internal task force report obtained by the Daily Bruin. One teacher alleged in the report that their classroom did not have enough caretakers to meet legal supervision requirements at least 50% of the time due to staffing fluctuations...

One parent and UCLA faculty member whose child was in Rodriguez’s class when he worked at the Krieger Center said they pulled their child out of ECE because of what they saw as a lack of classroom management over a year before his arrest. Their child had experienced night terrors and behavioral issues throughout their time at Krieger, they added...

A spokesperson for UCLA ECE said in an emailed statement that they are committed to providing a safe environment for their community, but do not comment on pending legal matters...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/04/04/child-care-teachers-reported-understaffing-years-before-coworkers-arrest-document-shows.

As we have noted before, whatever happens in the litigation, this case seems like another Big Dollar settlement is brewing.

Straws in the Wind - Part 310

From CNN: At this point in her senior year at Yale University, Amanda knows that many of her classmates turn to AI chatbots to write papers and other homework assignments. But she started noticing something bizarre in her smaller seminar classes: Her classmates sit behind laptops with polished talking points and arguments, but the conversations that follow often fall flat across subjects. In one class, “the conversation came to a halt, and I looked to my left, and I saw someone typing ferociously on their laptop, asking (a chatbot) the question my professor just asked about the reading,” Amanda told CNN.

...Amanda said she was taken aback. Until that day, she didn’t realize that her peers were using chatbots in class and sharing what it spits out in the classroom. Now she notices the impact that tendency is having on class discussions. “Everyone now kind of sounds the same,” she said. “I feel like during my freshman year in college, I would sit in seminars where everyone had something different to contribute. Although people would piggyback off each other, they approached from different angles and offered different commentary.”

As AI becomes increasingly integrated with education, educators and researchers are finding that it may be eroding students’ capacity for original thought and expression. A paper published in March in Trends in Cognitive Sciences found that large language models are systematically homogenizing human expression and thought across three dimensions — language, perspective and reasoning — and students and educators say they are seeing the effects of that trend in their classrooms.

And that makes a lot of students sound the same...

Full story at https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/04/health/ai-impact-college-student-thinking-wellness.

More Conversations - Part 2

In a prior post, we provided the audio to UC CFO Jagdeep Bachhar recent "conversations" with several figures from the world of finance.* As we noted, they were all anxious to tell a story of not-to-worry about such developments as the Iran War and the related boost of energy prices. They all urged taking a long view in which these short term events won't matter. Bachhar indicated a similar view, i.e., we're in it for the long term with our pension and endowment. 

So here's an excerpt from a recent op ed in the NY Times:

Over the past few years, one of the signature funds at Blackstone, the private equity giant, has delivered, on average, 10 percent annual returns for its investors. The fund, which specializes in private credit, has lent money to more than 400 borrowers, who in turn have deployed those loans to become more profitable themselves. And yet, in the first quarter of this year, nearly 8 percent of the fund’s investors declared they wanted out. Something similar has happened at funds managed by Apollo (where redemption requests hit 11.2 percent), Ares (11.6 percent) and Blue Owl (21.9 percent).

When asked on CNBC to explain why his investors are asking for their cash back, the Blackstone president, Jonathan Gray, blamed “noise” — a “disjointed environment now between what’s happening on the ground with underlying portfolios and what’s happening in the news cycle.” He may well be right. Another explanation might be that we are witnessing a kind of slow-motion bank run. Investors, spooked by a litany of bad news, are rushing to pull their money out of private credit funds. If they all ask at once, these funds — and potentially the firms that manage them — could falter.

To quote the great Taylor Swift, “I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending.” ...

Full op ed at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/opinion/banking-crisis-private-credit.html.

Just saying...

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/more-conversations.html.