Will a Retreat Solve the Budget Problem?

From time to time on this blog, we have taken note of UCLA's budget travails and the absence of up-to-date budget documentation. We have noted that while UCLA at one time published annual budgets on a regular basis, that practice seemed to stop. A new CFO, under pressure from the Academic Senate, finally published a budget book which we subsequently analyzed. But then he said Very Bad Things about the older budget documents which got him fired. We now have a new interim CFO and a pledge by the administration to be "transparent" about budgetary matters:

https://dn720904.ca.archive.org/0/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/Budget%20Transparency%20Protocol%204-21-2026.pdf.

The pledge includes a schedule of budgetary reveals, starting with a "retreat" that will take place this month. (We already noted this retreat in our Sept. 1 post about the new Athletics Director.)

Sitting in the background is ongoing concern about a deficit in the Athletics Department which is not supposed to be a cost to the university:

https://dn720904.ca.archive.org/0/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Athletics%20Department%20Deficit%206-10-2026.pdf.

In her final report to the Academic Senate and community, outgoing Senate Chair McAvoy included this message about budgetary matters:

Budget: Over the course of the academic year, Administration shared more budgetary information with the Council on Planning and Budget (CPB). This information has included both written documents (overall budget pictures, unit level budgetary information, etc.) and productive conversations with interim VC/CFO Reem Hanna-Harwell and others. Senate Leadership and EVCP Hunt developed a Budget Transparency Protocol that describes expectations for sharing budget information to support Senate consultation. An inaugural annual budget retreat with Senior Administrators and CPB/Senate leadership is scheduled for September that will allow a retrospective of the past year and to plan for a productive year ahead. In these times of fiscal strain, it is imperative that the CPB is engaged in these difficult deliberations to fulfill its advisory role, which we will continue to emphasize.

Full report at https://senate.ucla.edu/news/august-2026-ucla-academic-senate-updates.

While we await the retreat, we note that there is no actual budget information in the statement above or the earlier documents. As blog readers will know, we have been retaining budget information in a page on the Internet Archive so that nothing gets lost or disappears:

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

Yours truly is aware of a longstanding Public Documents request for budgetary information from UCLA that keeps being met with apologies for delay, but no documents. This could be the result of stalling, or it could be that Murphy Hall really can't readily produce the numbers. So there remains the question of just how much information Murphy Hall has about the budget, a large portion of which is in the health enterprise. (The Health Enterprise seems to have its own CFO and more command of its own information.) In this age of computerization and AI, one might think that a simple command would produce estimated income statements and balance sheets, historical, present, and projections of the future. However, there is the possibility that although one might reasonably think that is the case, one might be wrong.

At the retreat, Senate representatives might want to look at the accounting system as well as whatever accounting numbers are presented. If the system can't produce timely estimates on command, being transparent about unavailable information won't be helpful.

Maybe the ultimate question is whether we have a retreat or an advance.

Straws in the Wind - Part 455

From the NY Times: After 17 years of teaching science at West Point, Dr. Adam Kalkstein says he was suddenly ordered last year to cut from his curriculum information about the human causes of climate change, according to a new lawsuit filed against the U.S. Military Academy. The change was immoral and potentially illegal, Dr. Kalkstein says he told Brig. Gen. Shane R. Reeves, who at the time was dean of West Point. Instead of upholding Army values, Dr. Kalkstein said he felt like a liar and a fraud. General Reeves stormed out of the room when Dr. Kalkstein declined a suggestion that he resign, according to the lawsuit. Six months later, the tenured professor was told his contract would not be renewed.

Filed in the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit accuses West Point of breaking the law by violating Dr. Kalkstein’s First Amendment rights by forbidding him from teaching about human-driven climate change, an order that required him “to omit a massive, fundamental, essential component of the court and to defy science,” according to the suit...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/us/politics/west-point-climate-professor-lawsuit.html.

Quantum

Some funding is flowing from the feds. From the Daily Californian:

The U.S. National Science Foundation renewed its support for the UC Berkeley-led NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation, awarding the initiative $37.5 million. For the next five years, the funding will help the institute build quantum technologies, explore their applications and discover new ways quantum computing can be used to better understand nature. The initiative spans across California, encompassing research at UC Berkeley as well as at universities such as Caltech, UCLA and Stanford.

“The idea behind a quantum computer is to build a computer that takes advantage of some of those weirder, strange aspects of quantum mechanics to do computations that are hard or impossible on the computers that we have today,” said UC Berkeley associate professor of physics Shimon Kolkowitz, who is conducting research on atomic clocks for the institute. Kolkowitz expressed his hopes for future applications of quantum computing, including its use in the discovery of new materials and drugs, as well as in the improvement of chemical reactions’ energy efficiency. Kolkowitz described the institute’s research as interdisciplinary, spanning many departments including chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, computer science and material science...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/research-and-ideas/nsf-awards-37m-to-its-uc-berkeley-led-quantum-computing-research/article_0ef2bbde-c234-42ee-bb33-c7f4963f87e6.html.

Tempest in a Teapot?

From L.A. Material: For nearly seven years, UCLA Vice Chancellor Mary Osako has led communications and marketing for the University of California, Los Angeles. She is, in essence, the top person in charge of safeguarding the highly-ranked public university’s reputation. But as of this week, she is also waging a legal battle against her employer to stop them from releasing a report she says would cause her “irreparable reputational harm.” ...Osako’s lawyers asked for an urgent temporary restraining order and an injunction against the Regents of the University of California to prevent the university system from releasing an investigatory report involving Osako. Her lawyers argue that the December 2025 report — which was created by an outside law firm that specializes in workplace investigations — contains “sensitive personal information, anonymous accusations, and unsubstantiated allegations.”

University leadership had notified Osako in late July that they planned to release the report in response to seven requests made under the California Public Records Act, according to the filing... Osako’s lawyers argue that disagreement between the vice chancellor and this group of employees motivated the employees to file public records requests for the investigatory report. The filing also suggests that these employees “may be prospective plaintiffs in anticipated litigation against the university,” arguing that they are seeking the report to secure early access to evidence ahead of their potential lawsuit and generally further their personal disagreements with Osako.  

...UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk lauded Osako in a statement to L.A. Material.

...The court granted Osako’s temporary restraining order... and set a hearing on the preliminary injunction for late September, meaning that UCLA is barred from releasing the report in the interim.

Full story at https://lamaterial.com/p/ucla-mary-osako-lawsuit-regents.

Straws in the Wind - Part 454

From the Columbia Daily Spectator: University President Jennifer Mnookin announced the members of the presidential task force on shared governance..., providing updates on the body charged with evaluating “the duties and powers of the University Senate.” The task force is expected to deliver its “findings and recommendations” about changes to the senate’s powers in a report to Mnookin by spring 2027. Recommended in April by the board of trustees’ senate review committee, the task force is charged with reexamining the structure and power of the senate. The move has drawn criticism from student senators who question its purpose and legitimacy as a presidentially appointed group reviewing the University’s largest democratically elected governing body. The University Senate is made up of 111 elected faculty members, students, and staff who set policy and advise administrators and trustees on University issues.

...The University Senate released its own report, called the “Sundial Report,” in March 2025, alleging Columbia had a “lack of transparency and disregard for democratic processes and shared governance” following campus protests between October 2023 and December 2024...

Full story at https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/08/26/mnookin-appoints-presidential-task-force-to-review-university-senate/.

Admissions

From the California Post: A father in Palo Alto, California, is declaring a victory in court after a federal judge allowed a civil rights lawsuit alleging anti-Asian bias in college admissions to move forward. Nan Zhong and his son, Stanley Zhong, filed federal lawsuits against several elite institutions, including the University of California system, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Cornell University. The complaints allege the universities engaged in “racially discriminatory admissions practices that disadvantage highly qualified Asian-American applicants.”

One of their cases will now proceed in part against the University of Washington after a federal judge granted the university defendants’ motion to dismiss in part and denied it in part...

A 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto, Stanley scored a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT (99th percentile), held a 4.42 weighted GPA, ranked in the top 9% of his graduating class and had launched a free e-signing startup featured by Amazon Web Services. Shortly after the college rejections, Google hired Stanley as a full-time software engineer in a position that his family’s court filing says typically requires a Ph.D. or equivalent practical experience...

Spokespersons for the University of California system have previously denied the allegations, maintaining that its admissions policies strictly comply with state and federal laws prohibiting race-conscious decisions...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/08/30/us-news/california-student-stanley-zhong-gets-legal-win-in-racial-discrimination-against-colleges/.

Note: It is unclear what the status of the UC element in the lawsuit is. But the point of the suit seems to be to open the door to "discovery" of internal documents pertaining to admissions. Such discovery will now go forward with regard to the U of Washington. For UC, it touches on the SAT issue and other admissions matters currently under review.

Numbers

We seem to get budgetary numbers on the fiscal condition of the UCLA Athletics program from external sources, but not from UCLA. CBS News carries a story concerning the recent firing and replacement of the UCLA AD.* It notes that there was donor dissatisfaction building with the old regime, expressed as declining donations:

UCLA's donation rank was towards the bottom of the Big Ten:

It appears the Athletics program was a chronic money loser through June 30, 2025. UCLA provided some offsetting subsidy money, mainly in the last two years available. No data were provided for 2025-26.

It would be nice if these numbers were readily available from UCLA - as opposed to CBS News. And it would be nice to have data for last year. It would be nice to know exactly what the definitions are of revenue and expenses. It would be nice to know exactly where the money to finance the reported deficits came from since the cumulative deficits substantially exceed the "subsidy." Is all this going to be revealed during the upcoming budgetary "retreat"?

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*https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ucla-money-problems-donors-martin-jarmond-firing-athletic-director/.

Digital Humanities

From CalMatters: UCLA is launching the nation’s first digital humanities department and bachelor’s degree this fall. The new discipline combines classical humanities with technical know-how to examine a digitized and increasingly AI-enhanced world. The major fuses technological tools for statistical analysis, coding, 3D mapping and data visualization with traditional humanities subjects like history, literature and global cultures. It’s a multidisciplinary approach to education that capitalizes on employers’ growing desire for recent graduates to think critically while also being able to harness new technology. And the major requires a great deal of teamwork among students, another skill hiring managers seek. 

Students will learn how new technologies shape culture and the human biases that enter into the use of these new tools. Top of mind is the rise of generative artificial intelligence and training students to use it ethically while also understanding how easily it can produce misleading content...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2026/08/ucla-digital-humanities/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 453

From Inside Higher Ed: Twenty-three percent fewer student visas were issued in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to newly released Department of State figures. Some countries, like Iran, Myanmar and Venezuela, saw declines over 70 percent from year to year. India, the second-largest supplier of international students to the U.S. in 2024, also experienced a precipitous 56.6 percent drop. An Inside Higher Ed analysis of the data shows that visa issuances were essentially in line with the previous year for the first several months of 2025 but dropped in May—the same month President Donald Trump paused all student visa interviews to implement new social media screenings for those applicants. The number of student visas issued remained below 2024 levels for the remainder of the year.

The largest decrease was among F-1 visa holders, who are in the U.S. seeking a degree and who are at the center of concerns about how the Trump administration's international student policies will impact enrollments; those visas declined by 33.4 percent, versus 9.9 percent for J-1 and 6.7 percent for M-1 visas. (J-1 visas are for students and scholars in certain exchange programs, including the Fulbright program, while M-1 visas are for students in nondegree or vocational training.) ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/international-students-us/2026/08/26/new-student-visas-dropped-23-2025.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 195

From the Harvard Crimson: Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh told Peer Advising Fellows... that Harvard plans to enforce its new cap on A grades by automatically converting all of a course’s A’s to A-’s if professors refuse to bring their grades under the limit — but backtracked in [a later] interview..., saying the mechanism remains only a proposal. Claybaugh told PAFs that professors who entered too many A grades would first receive an alert instructing them to bring their course into compliance. If they nevertheless submitted grades above the limit, she said, all of the course’s A grades would automatically become A-’s, according to four students in attendance and a recording of the event obtained by The Crimson.

...The comments, made during a fireside chat that attendees had been told was off the record, offer the clearest indication yet of how Harvard could enforce the controversial cap once it becomes mandatory, answering a question that has loomed over the policy since faculty approved it in May. Claybaugh [later] backed away from the certainty of her...  remarks, saying the automatic conversion mechanism was only one option under consideration. She said a committee is still considering how to enforce the cap. While she said the mechanism “seems like the easiest enforcement option,” she added that she was unsure whether it was “physically possible in our system.”

“It sounds mean to hold a gun to the student’s head, but the thing about our faculty is they really care about our students,” Claybaugh said... The enforcement question has taken on added urgency as some professors have publicly said they may refuse to follow the cap...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/8/28/harvard-grade-cap-enforcement/.

Only NFL?

From the NY Times: Since the degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. was first scientifically linked to football about 20 years ago, and as hundreds of former professional football players have been diagnosed with the disease after their deaths, a haunting question has lingered: Just how many N.F.L. players will end up with C.T.E.? New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.

Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between. The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E. ... C.T.E. is a progressive neurological disease caused by repeated impacts to the head. It can be definitively diagnosed only by examining the brain after death. Studies have shown that the rate of C.T.E. in people who have not sustained repeated impacts to the head is nearly zero...

Experts say that the rate of brain disease represents an occupational safety hazard with little comparison in the American workplace...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/nfl-cte-brain-disease.html.

As the distinction between professional football and college football becomes murkier, with NIL, etc., is there anyone who seriously believes CTE is somehow a risk only to players in the former?

Straws in the Wind - Part 452

Ronald Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education: We developed the partnership with the American Enterprise Institute. We recognized it was going to take time to see a shift in the recruitment of faculty, but we wanted to move with some dispatch to make sure that our students and faculty were exposed to these ideas. 

The fact that conservative scholarship is underrepresented in our institutions ultimately means that the left gets flabbier because it’s not being tested and challenged in the way it ought to be. At the same time, the right, to the extent that it moves outside the university and finds itself in think tanks and is not subject to challenges or critiques from the center and the left, becomes more radicalized. This is not just a problem for our institutions. It’s a problem for America. So I do feel urgency in trying to remedy this issue. It was my colleague Steve Teles, who wrote in The Chronicle about this, who said he was hard pressed to identify a single tenured conservative scholar in the social sciences and humanities at Hopkins. I took that as a very serious critique.

Interviewer: A recent article about various political-diversity initiatives at Hopkins describes the university under your leadership as being on “an ambitious and uncharted journey to transform itself into a citadel of ideological pluralism.”

Daniels: I take it as a compliment. That’s something that I proudly embrace...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/conservative-scholars-are-rare-johns-hopkins-wants-more-of-them.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 194

From the Harvard Crimson: The Department of Justice appealed the dismissal of its antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard... seeking to revive a sweeping case accusing the University of violating federal civil rights law in its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students. The government filed a notice Thursday afternoon asking the First Circuit to review U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns’ August 13 decision granting Harvard’s motion to dismiss the case. The appeal comes two weeks after Stearns dealt a major blow to one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive legal efforts against Harvard, finding that the incidents cited by the government were “too isolated and episodic” to prove an ongoing violation of Title VI...

Stearns left open the possibility that should the government be able to present compelling instances of ongoing noncompliance, their case might be seen in a different light. And he did not quarrel with the government’s assumption that it could recuperate previously awarded funds under the Title VI or breach of contract arguments outlined in the original complaint...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/8/28/doj-harvard-antisemitism-appeal/.

The SAT Goes Political

We live in a world in which there is no issue that can't be politicized. If Trump says the sky is blue, Republicans see it that way and Democrats don't. If he says the sky is green, the same occurs. And no one bothers to look up. There was even a movie five years ago titled "Don't Look Up" about this tendency. The thing is, the color of the sky is a matter of observation.

Apparently, the SAT issue at UC is becoming politicized. From the LA Times:

Three Republican state senators are pressing the University of California to reinstate SAT and ACT scores in undergraduate admissions, urging the Board of Regents to act “as soon as possible” and warning that six years without the tests has left students underprepared. “Please re-instate the SAT or ACT ASAP,” wrote the three legislators — Sens. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks), Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) and Steven S. Choi (R-Irvine). Ochoa Bogh is vice chair of the Senate Education Committee and Choi is a member. Injecting legislative politics into what has so far been a largely academic debate about UC admissions policies, Ochoa Bogh also said in a statement that she plans to introduce a bill next session on testing...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-26/gop-senators-uc-sat-testing-legislation.

A related letter was sent to UC President Milliken and others to the same effect by Ochoa Bogh and Niello:

https://sr19.senate.ca.gov/sites/sr19.senate.ca.gov/files/OCHOA%20BOGH%20AND%20NIELLO%20Letter%20to%20the%20UC%208.20.26.pdf.

So he's not Co-CFO? He's the AD.

Blog readers may remember the image above from our Aug. 21st post concerning Tim Harris and whether he was being brought to UCLA as a kind of co-CFO, as suggested by an item in the California Post. Turns out he was brought in as the new (replacement) Athletics Director. From the Daily Bruin:

Martin Jarmond is out of Westwood. Chancellor Julio Frenk said in a campuswide email and written statement that Jarmond, who has served as UCLA’s athletic director since 2020, was dismissed from his position Monday. Jarmond will be replaced by former Los Angeles Lakers executive Tim Harris, who will serve as both director and CEO of UCLA Athletics on a pro bono basis, Frenk added. Jarmond has $6.5 million remaining on his contract...

In the 2024-25 fiscal year, the program ran a $21.6 million deficit – down from $51.8 million in the previous cycle. Most of that reduction came from media rights revenue upon joining the Big Ten, which provided more than three times what UCLA procured in the Pac-12. The university itself also provided $30 million in direct institutional support to pay for the remaining deficit and balance it out to zero...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/08/31/ucla-athletics-director-martin-jarmond-dismissed-from-position-after-6-years.

By the way, if the last paragraph makes no sense to you, you are not alone. As yours truly reads it, we had a deficit of $21.6, added $30, and got zero. (Maybe this is yet another argument for at least the math part of the SAT to be restored!) The problem, however, isn't arithmetic. It is the absence of budgetary numbers (once again) beyond June 30, 2025 - more than a year ago. We need a 2025-26 income statement, a balance sheet, and a breakdown by unit - including athletics as a unit. And we need projections for 2026-27. If Tim Harris is being brought in to deal with the financial side of athletics, he, too, will need up-to-date numbers.

So far, all we have is a promise that all will be disclosed in an upcoming "retreat" this month.

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Note: Chancellor's message at https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/building-the-next-chapter-of-ucla-athletics or https://archive.org/details/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Building%20the%20Next%20Chapter%20of%20UCLA%20Athletics%20-%20Office%20of%20the%20Chancellor%208-31-2026.pdf.

Picking Dates

The Regents pick tentative dates for their regular meetings a year or so in advance. But the dates tend to shift for unknown reasons as the original selections grow nearer. For example, the upcoming September meetings at UCLA were originally set for Sept. 15-17. Then the last day was lopped off and the schedule became Sept. 15-16. Why? Not enough business to do? Your guess is as good as mine. But recently, a day was added back, but this time it is earlier. So now the schedule reads Sept. 14-16. Why the addition after the subtraction and the time shift? Who knows?

The schedule is at https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/meetings/. The Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive was used to track the changes: https://web.archive.org/.

Union News: Police Contract

From UC News: The University of California and the Federated University Police Officers’ Association (FUPOA) have reached a tentative agreement on a new systemwide contract covering approximately 273 sworn, non-supervisory police officers across the University.

The four-year tentative agreement, which will run July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030, provides significant wage increases and includes enhancements to longevity pay, additional compensation and allowances. The agreement follows six months of bargaining and reflects the parties’ shared effort to address priorities on both sides...

Full news release at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/university-california-and-federated-university-police-officers-association-fupoa-reach.

Straws in the Wind - Part 451

From Inside Higher Ed: A number of faculty members at Texas A&M University–Victoria have quit after the university announced in late June that full-time faculty are required to be on campus for eight hours a day, five days per week this fall. As a result, multiple classes have been canceled and some departments are nearly empty...

According to a June 26 email from the provost... “faculty are expected to have day-to-day physical presence on campus for in-person interaction with students, administration, other employees and the community,” and “to be on campus 5 days a week and maintain a 40-hour workweek.” Failure to comply “may subject an individual to discipline, up to and including termination.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/2026/08/25/faculty-quit-texas-university-orders-them-back-campus.

Supreme Court Appeal

From E&E News/Politico: The Trump administration this week asked the nation’s highest bench to overturn a lower court ruling that said agencies’ termination of grants because they are “DEI” violated the First Amendment. The Constitution’s protections against free speech generally prohibit the government from showing “viewpoint discrimination.” This case the administration has presented to the Supreme Court could determine whether that includes terminating grants a new administration does not like, which President Donald Trump directed en masse after returning to power last year.

The petition was filed by several University of California researchers whose grants from EPA, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities were terminated, some allegedly because of a nexus to diversity, equity or inclusion, known as DEI.

Source: https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-asks-supreme-court-to-let-him-terminate-dei-research-grants/.