Outsourcing California #HigherEd

…today's higher ed news broke outside the higher media silo, immediately mainstream. Proposed California legislation would identify and approve up to 50 online courses for the three public systems, UC, CSU and CCC, to accept as credit for admitted students. 

Bob Samuels' focus, UC, University of California, may be the best known of the state's three systems: a top tier system of R1 universities, all world class and more than a few world famous and in the top 100 international ranking. CSU, California State University system is the largest  and most diverse university system in the nation, with 23 campuses, almost 437,000 students, and 44,000 faculty and staff. CCC, California Community Colleges system is the largest system of higher education in the nation, with 2.6 million students attending 112 colleges.These are the interlocking elements of legend, the visionary California Master Plan.

Bob Samuels writes:

Reading Room: Links from Remaking the University

…a little something to tide me over until I get to deciding what to post about after taking the day more or less off yesterday. e.g. local post, email and social media exchanges. Does getting into it with a local SoCal transplant, gated community resident, over student loan rates count? 


Back to deciding (which also depends on what shows up in my feed and comes in over the transom). Suggestions invited! So far, I'm thinking: Corporate U; cooperative efforts; interests and alliances outside highered vs academic precariat version of the Ivory Silo™ tendency; touring the adjunct blogosphere; social media matters; adjunct faculty with student loan debt; implication of changes in graduate access. Additionally, we are past due for another round of Petition Junction... new petitions and reminders about old ones that still matter. Or maybe I'll just ramble and see where it takes me...


In the meantime, Michael Meranze collects and regularly posts higher ed relevant links covering California, US and global higher ed. (Can COCAL Updates be far behind?)

Keeping up with California, #futureof HE

... in many senses of the word and, over the years, in different ways, from the California Master Plan to its meltdown. Michael Meranze's Links for April 18, 2012 from Reclaiming the University,  (even if does seem sometimes like a link farm around here)

Chris Newfield has a new piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education: "How Unequal State Support Diminishes Degree Attainment" 

 

CSU faculty, librarians, and counselors begin voting on rolling strike

UC Davis Police Chief Spicuzza retires effective Thursday.

UC admitted over 40% more out of state and international students in next year's entering class. 

CSU may eliminate cash grants that help support up to half of its grad students. 

David Crane's students think that the state should make UC go private. 

Is UC Berkeley going to have to cover millions of dollars of losses on the new football stadium? 

Berkeley joins with venture capitalists, University of Michigan, and ivy league institution in new online start-up.

A March 1 "Virtual Sit-in"

Tomorrow, more on other #M1 actions, which we've tweeted today and will follow on Twitter tomorrow. For a good overview/ preview, see Angus Johnston on "Student The March First National Day of Action — What to Expect on #M1." Coverage includes linked background on2009 and 2010 March actions, which preceded and the Occupy movement. Check Occupy Colleges for lists and locations. The 2010 March Action included a Virtual Sit-In that involved logging into the UC portal and adding a pin with your name and location to a Google map. Presumably this version, details forthcoming shortly, will be different enough to avoid DDoS investigations, as in 2010.

UC San Diego issues a Call to Action for a Virtual Sit-In (truncated and snipped version, complete version online here)

 

March 1st is one day of action in a growing movement, but there are any number of ways to support it. This one is a call to VIRTUAL ACTION. UCSD cordially invites the citizens of the world to become actors in a performance of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) through a virtual sit-in that borrows tactics of trespass and blockade from earlier social movements, applying them to the virtual sphere. 

Electronic Civil Disobedience, as a form of mass de-centralized electronic direct action, utilizes virtual blockades and virtual sit-ins. Unlike the participants in a traditional civil disobedience action, an ECD actor can participate in virtual blockades and sit-ins from home, from work, from the university, or from other points of access to the Net. 

The virtual sit-in will begin on March 1st at 12:00 AM and end on March 5th at 11:59 PM. To participate, follow reclaimucsd.wordpress.com or send an email to march1stvirtualsitin@gmail.com. Details will be posted to the blog and sent out via email about how to participate....See you on the streets and the virtual networks of the world.

Links: education & labor news

Not all or just about #highered per se but all relevant... even the accompanying illustration but you'll have to read to the end to learn why.

 

• Cut the pious baloney! about reactions to NLRB recess appointments (finally!)
  
• Jeff Bryant writes about Why accountants should not run schools (or set education policy)
  
• Disrupt Education (stay informed about changes coming whether you like them or not): Opening the Language Learning Classroom to the World 
  
• Bob Samuels takes apart Yudoff's defensive mythbusting about UC
  
• Best of the Ed Blogs: Misunderstanding & Misrepresenting the “Costs” & “Economics” of Online Learning
  
• Jonathon Rees at More or Less Bunk writes about Why there is no history department at the University of Phoenix
  

Catching up with California: links for September 15 & 16

By Michael Meranze from Remaking the University: excerpts from links for September 15

• The LAT has more info on UCOP's Magic Never-Ending Tuition Machine.
• Community Colleges across the nation face increasing financial strains. So do students.
• California Student Default Rates: They are highest at for-profits.
• SAT scores are down. Whatever that means.

and September 16

• Even the Regents don't seem to buy UCOP's Magic Tuition Machine But they are happy to raise executive salaries.
• Regent David Crane thinks UC should become more like a private university.
• Berkeley Public Education Coalition responds to Tuition increases.
• Regents discuss Graduate Funding
• And the LAO is skeptical that UC needs so much money. (h/t Dan Mitchell)
• Is the renovation of Cal Stadium a huge financial mistake? (h/t Catherine Cole)
• The Defense has rested its case in the Irvine 11 case.
• Cutting Administration may not be everything. But it sure isn't nothing.
• If you want to improve K-12 education you need to work with teachers not attack them

Applications for Unemployment are up, the economy is down, and the political class is pushing for more cuts to government spending. Have a great weekend. More for you to read tomorrow...

Resist, Mobilize, Transform

Protect Your Education RGB 8.5x11, originally uploaded by Nick Bygon.

Please click through the image above (or link beneath to read Nick Bygon's comments on his poster for the March 4th Day of Action in Defense of Public Education and all Public-Sector Services, supported and endorsed by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), the California Faculty Association (CFA), AFT 2121, UESF, the San Francisco Labor Council, Community College students and unions, and dozens of public education and public-sector unions.

"Resist, Mobilize, Transform" surely applies to the New Faculty Majority's mission as well as it does to protecting higher education ~ which we, especially as "The New Majority," are part of too.

Do you recall that well-used and by now well worn favorite of pundits: "as goes California, so goes the county"? It's not just an old pundit's tale. California's higher ed dilemma is either coming to your campus or has already arrived.

If you don't feel you can support the proposed actions (not place to tell you what to do or how ~ and vice versa), at the very least you owe to yourself and your profession to be as well informed as possible, which means reading more than just the mainstream media and the established/ establishment academic press.

The following are my personal picks from the many excellent independent online sources out there:

• Remaking the University (Chris Newfield)
• Changing Universities (Bob Samuels)
• How the University Works (Marc Bosque)
• Student Activism (Angus Johnston)
• University Probe (Charlie Schwartz et alia), a critical forum on Research Universities, their finances, their governance... their futures

To be sure there are more ... all worthy of listing. And who knows, may well get their hat tip or even a blogroll of their own.

Do you have favorites to recommend? Please submit them, preferably annotated...

Where Should We Go After the Fee Hikes?

Where Should We Go After the Fee Hikes?: "legitimacy and the great public absence"  ~ cross-posted from Chris Newfield’s Remaking the University, 11/21/09, guest post by Kris Peterson, UC Irvine:


I just finished watching a YouTube video of Regents Bonnie Reiss and Eddie Island make a quick get-a-way to their vehicle at UCLA - just after they voted to increase student fees by an unprecedented 32%. They were surrounded and followed by students chanting, "Shame on you!" Reiss represents the banking and finance industry; and Island, a retiree of McDonnell-Douglas, represents the defense industry.  So, given that these two industries, with their ballooned subsidies and profits, have done nothing more than take this country down over the last several years, I'm thinking a lot about legitimacy. Not legitimacy related to governance. Rather, legitimacy in terms of representation and intent.


Let me go back in time. Between 1952 and 2007, UC had a vibrant relationship with its patron, the weapons industry. Over the years, some found this relationship egregious, as the public was concerned about nuclear proliferation and Cold War military conflicts throughout the world. Culminating in the 1970s, student protests against UC-managed Labs indexed these global events. Yet despite all this, the one thing that the weapons industry, and indeed the US military, had in common with a stellar, highly endowed, multi-campus, public university was the priority of research. Whether it was about NSEP language grants, private sector-federal government partnerships, or DOD and NSF funding that blurred the lines between foreign policy and military interests, a strong interdisciplinary research institution, writ large, was good for this industry.


But now we have a new relationship that constitutes a mix of patronage and competition. It's been built with the finance industry, commercial real estate – Big Business generally – all of which the Regents represent.

How Administrators Took Over the University of California

Another excellent piece by Bob Samuels. If you want to understand higher budget mischief in general and, more specifically, what went awry with the UC system, you can't do better than by following Bob's blog, Changing Universities.

How Administrators Took Over the University of California via Changing Universities by Bob Samuels on 10/19/09

In the UC system, we have a saying, "When two administrators walk into a room, three always walk out." The question then is how do administrators reproduce and what effect does their reproduction have on the University of California. While I will not describe the mating habits of administrators, I will show how the growing rise of the administrative class means less money for everyone else, higher student fees, and a loss of shared governance.

According to a 2008 UCLA Faculty Association report, "Over the past decade, the numbers of Administrators in the UC almost doubled, while the number of faculty increased by 25%. The sharpest growth took place among Executives and Senior Managers: 114%. Because Administrators command high salaries and benefits, any increase in their number higher than the expected growth rate for the University results in high costs: rough estimates of the costs of carrying extra administrators at UC range around $800 million."

 The first thing to stress here is that during the last decade, as the number of students increased in the UC system, there were fewer faculty to teach them, but many more administrators to run the show. In this structure, power shifts to the administrative class, while the faculty are pushed out of shared governance. Moreover, due to their high compensation packages, administrators suck up the funds that could be spent on faculty salaries and wages for the lowest paid workers.

As I pointed out in a previous post, "In 2008, there were 397 administrators in the over 200k club making a total of $109 million, and in 2006, the same group had 214 members for a collective gross pay of $58.8 million. This group and its collective salaries, then, almost doubled in just two years." Not only has the administrative class grown in numbers and the percentage of the budget they consume through their salaries, but during the current period of "fiscal emergency," we have seen several million dollars spent on increased compensation for administrators.

UPTE has documented that during the same regents meeting where a fiscal emergency was declared and the furlough system was approved, hundreds of administrators got compensation increases,