Outgoing systemwide Academic Senate Chair Ahmet Palazoglu wrote a long letter to UC President Milliken reflecting on shared governance.* It's too long to reproduce but the key points were listing areas in which there was lack of consultation. These included discontinuation of a fellowship program, creation of a program at two campuses which augment degrees with a paid internship, creation of a program to assist junior faculty which replaced a diversity program, and enhancement of a language program.
Prof. Palazoglu then goes on to highlight two programs that, he said, developed without consultation and which directly affect the pay and working conditions of faculty. I will reproduce that segment:
Both the Total Remuneration Study (Deloitte) and the Systemwide Assessment of Online Education (Noodle/Huron) could have benefited from early Senate engagement. Both studies were developed and contracted without meaningful early consultation with Senate faculty with relevant expertise. When faculty were eventually given an opportunity to review the work, significant methodological and design concerns became apparent, but only after the scopes of work had been established and contracts executed. In both cases, earlier engagement with faculty experts would not simply have increased faculty confidence in these studies; it could have materially improved their design, methodology, and usefulness to the University.
The two programs involved bringing in outside consultants to do evaluations. "Total Remuneration" involves assessing the value of noncash benefits such as pensions and health care. Longstanding methodology has involved looking just at cash pay in comparison with other universities. The total remuneration approach looks at wider definition of compensation. Note that the direct cost of a benefit is not the same as its value to the recipient. To take an example, there was a long period in which no contributions were made to the pension plan because it was deemed overfunded. But clearly, having a pension during that period was not seen by pension participants as having no value. As regards online education, there are issues of cost, convenience, and assessment of actual learning.
Prof. Palazoglu notes issues related to litigation with the feds which are typically discussed at Regents meetings behind closed doors. He acknowledges a need for nonpublic discussion, and it is somewhat unclear what he proposes. He also points to the (huge) health enterprise that is growing somewhat autonomously on campuses with such activities and for which shared governance is "far less developed." Again, exactly how that issue should be addressed is unclear.
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