The Daily Cal has an article describing how the chief financial officer of Berkeley gave a presentation last week.* As blog readers will know, there was a recent announcement that academic funds would have to be used to bail out the athletic stadium project.** But the article makes no mention of that development being part of the CFO's presentation. Was it forgotten?
Oh right! Because no state funds or tuition are being directly used for the bailout, it won't cost anyone anything.
"I'm shocked, shocked that tapping is going on here."
UC Berkeley to tap academic funds to help bail out Memorial Stadium
By Nanette Asimov, November 3, 2017, San Francisco Chronicle
Cash-strapped UC Berkeley will tap money for academic programs to help pay off a massive debt from the remodeling of Memorial Stadium, Chancellor Carol Christ said Friday. Although the source of the bailout funding hasn’t been identified, it is not expected to come from students’ tuition dollars or taxpayer-supplied state money, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof.
In exchange for the bailout, which could total nearly $200 million over several decades, the athletics department will have to balance its money-losing budget by 2020. Christ said the rest of the campus has also committed to closing a deficit of $77 million. The athletics department may also have to hand over Edwards Stadium, the 85-year-old field at the west edge of the campus that is used for track meets and soccer matches, Christ said. The campus would turn it into classrooms, student housing, a performance arts center or other use that raises money and addresses campus needs, Christ said.
“While no decision has been made about Edwards Stadium, as the campus moves to assume responsibility for some portion of the stadium debt, I believe it would be rational and equitable for intercollegiate athletics to make a corresponding concession that will help us address pressing needs,” Christ told The Chronicle.
The chancellor said the athletics department would also have to undergo a financial analysis and audit, and create a revenue plan, among other requirements. The deal commits a vast amount of UC Berkeley’s future academic revenue to a nonacademic purpose: stadium debt. Aside from tuition funding and state money, sources of academic revenue can include gifts and grant money.
Cal unveiled its rebuilt and earthquake-retrofitted Memorial Stadium and brand-new Simpson Training Center in September 2012. Total debt on the complex is $438 million — a figure the athletics department doesn’t expect to pay off for more than a century. The campus would help pay off only the retrofit debt on the stadium, Mogulof said. He said officials are still trying to determine what portion of the stadium’s $314 million debt comes from the seismic overhaul. However, the figure is expected to amount to at least 60 percent of the total debt, or $188 million, said one campus source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Christ said it was not only fair that the campus take on that part of the athletics department’s debt, but practical. Citing a recent report assessing the future of Cal athletics, Christ said it would be impossible for the department alone to pay down its debt while also balancing its budget and maintaining its current size.
Not only that, but “no other (department) on campus has ever been asked to assume financial responsibility for seismic costs,” she said. The idea of taking Edwards Stadium from the athletics department is expected to lessen faculty opposition to a bailout. Still, some faculty members were dismayed.
“My concern is that we cannot afford this,” said Déborah Blocker, associate professor of French who voiced her criticism when Christ informed the UC Berkeley Academic Senate on Thursday. “We’d have to cut academic excellence, and we’d have to cut academic programs and research money. Basically, if we pay this debt, we’ll be left in a hundred years with nothing but a stadium and no university.”
Citing the cuts required to help close the campus budget deficit, Blocker said she doesn’t even have $5,000 to bring speakers in from France. “Or take my students out for dinner after a class — all these things are disappearing.”
Christ has tried to close the campus’ budget deficit as much by raising revenue as by cutting, and said the effort is so far succeeding. Athletics can also find ways to raise more money, she said. “Reducing the size of our intercollegiate program is, and will, remain a last resort.”
As for the campus’ ability to pay the seismic part of the stadium debt, Mogulof, the campus spokesman, said it will be manageable - at least for now.
Until 2032, the athletics department needs to pay only interest on its debt for the stadium complex, or nearly $18 million a year. Of that, $12.5 million is interest on the stadium debt alone. If the seismic portion of that is roughly 60 percent, the amount from campus coffers would be $7.5 million a year — which Mogulof said the campus could absorb.
“It becomes more significant as time goes on, because you start paying principle,” he said. “But the campus budget will be balanced by 2020. So for right now, it’s not a pressing issue.”
Athletics Director Mike Williams said he was pleased with the chancellor’s announcement.
“We believe this decision to be fair, particularly given that the stadium houses multiple academic units, as well as the campus visitor center and a recreational sports facility,” Williams said in a statement, adding that the deal will help the department make ends meet by 2020, as required. Last year, Christ’s predecessor, Nicholas Dirks, gave the athletics department $23 million to close its gap — and Christ said that needs to stop.
According to a recent report, the University of California has failed to enforce a minimum wage policy that garnered much praise a few years ago.
The San Jose Mercury News reported last week, based on a review of several internal audits related to vendor compliance University’s Fair Wage/Fair Work Plan, that UC is not properly monitoring compliance with the edict.
“With each new scandal, UC administrators appear to have embraced the distorted priorities that are eroding trust in our public institutions, and the persistent income inequality that plagues our country,” said AFSCME Local 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger in a statement.
UC President Janet Napolitano announced the UC Fair Wage/Fair Work Plan in 2015. The program guaranteed that by October 2017 all UC employees hired to work at least 20 hours weekly would be paid at least $15 per hour. The FW/FWP also requires contractors that do business with the university to guarantee a $15 per hour salary for their workers and includes measures to ensure contractors meet UC, state and federal law and policies...
The table above is from the latest Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll on higher ed. In evaluating it, you might note the chart below on educational attainment of adults in California.
Note: Both images can be enlarged by clicking on them.
From the Bruin: The University of California and other groups suing President Donald Trump’s administration for ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals jointly filed a motion Wednesday asking a federal judge to keep the program operating while their lawsuits are being reviewed. In September, Trump ended DACA, a program enacted by former-president Barack Obama in 2012 that deferred deportation for undocumented individuals brought to the United States as children. The UC and the state of California filed lawsuits in September against the Trump administration, claiming it was unconstitutional for the administration to end DACA. The joint motion, which the UC filed with several groups, including California, Santa Clara county, San Jose and individual DACA recipients, asks the court to allow DACA to continue operating until a final court ruling. The groups argue in the motion that the federal government rescission of DACA is unjust, unlawful and violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the federal government to seek public comment when ending large programs like DACA. William Alsup, the judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, will hear oral arguments in the case on Dec. 20. The UC, which has about 4,000 undocumented students, provides legal and counseling services to undocumented students and directs campus police officers not to work with federal agencies to enforce immigration law.
Inside Higher Ed today has a piece on an incident in which a student at the U of Iowa used a "keylogger" device to obtain a professor's password and then changed his grades.
Want one? I just typed "keylogger" into Google and an ad for one popped up instantly.
In any case, the multifactor authentication system that just went into effect at UCLA is noted as a way to defeat keyloggers. Even with a stolen password, someone could not get into the university computer system without also having the second device to log on, typically a smartphone.
