Edley is among 36 executives who sent a letter Dec. 9 demanding that the regents agree to raise the pensions of UC’s highest paid employees. They claim the regents agreed in 1999 to begin calculating retirement benefits as a percentage of executives’ entire salaries, instead of just the first $245,000, after the Internal Revenue Service agreed to lift that cap. The IRS did so in 2007. But UC President Mark Yudof has said lifting the cap has become too expensive for UC, and the regents are not required to do it… The pension demand has drawn no public support, but plenty of anger from everyone from Gov.-elect Jerry Brown and Assembly Speaker John P

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: December 31st, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Three dozen of the University of California’s highest-paid executives are demanding the educational system pay them fatter pensions. This group may be on firm legal ground, but their tone-deaf action is troubling for a list of reasons. The demand – better described as a veiled legal threat – comes as student tuition is due to rise by 32 percent and other UC employees ranging from professors to gardeners will pay more for future pensions.

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by The Editors, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: December 29th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Three dozen of the University of California’s highest-paid executives are threatening to sue unless UC agrees to spend tens of millions of dollars to dramatically increase retirement benefits for employees earning more than $245,000… Their demand comes as UC is trying to eliminate a vast, $21.6 billion unfunded pension obligation by reducing benefits for future employees, raising the retirement age, requiring employees to pay more into UC’s pension fund and boosting tuition. The fatter executive retirement benefits the employees are seeking would add $5.5 million a year to the pension liability, UC has estimated, plus $51 million more to make the changes retroactive to 2007, as the executives are demanding. The executives fashioned their demand as a direct challenge to UC President Mark Yudof, who opposes the increase.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: December 29th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California regents are bracing for more bad financial news from Sacramento, but board veteran Richard Blum doubts he and his colleagues could stomach another round of tuition hikes. "I think the emphasis is much more on making cuts," said Blum, who chaired the board until recently. "I think the last thing we want to do is touch student fees, but that depends on what they do to us." … The big question for UC is whether the state will, as promised, restore the $450 million it stripped from this year’s budget.

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by Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: December 26th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

UC is less and less of a bargain every year. Today’s undergraduates had barely gotten used to the 32 percent fee hike that went into effect this year when the new one was imposed, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Nevertheless, on a per-capita basis, UC is still cheaper than another big and expensive component of the California state bureaucracy — the prison system. According to the Department of Corrections data, it costs about $49,000 to keep an inmate in a California prison for a year. That’s 53 percent more than the per-capita cost at the state university.

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by Lance Willimas, California Watch.

Posted: December 22nd, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

What we do is different and our place in bringing California back is critically important. I mean, we will create the jobs and the new products. I just listened to a talk the other day by a New York Times journalist. It’s a different world, this great recession if you are a college graduate than if you are not a college graduate. It just is in terms of unemployment compensation. And we’re responsible in part, obviously for Silicon Valley, for the agricultural revolution, even our schools that do film-making and the like. That side that an educated populace going out and doing their thing, curiosity-driven research…it seems to me those are the types of things that will bring California back.

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by Jeremy Hobson and Mark Yudof, Marketplace.

Posted: December 17th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Some legislators in Sacramento think they’ve done such a fine job with the state budget that now they should take over operations at the University of California and California State University. No thanks.

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by The Editors, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: December 17th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

But with the recession sending more students back to school, the number of unemployed and low-income students eligible for Pell grants has grown rapidly — and with it, the gap in financing. "Next year, there will be 8.7 million Pell recipients, and the cost of the program will be about $34 billion," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, who is lobbying for full financing for Pell grants. "It’s more than doubled in five years. Congress has two choices now: they can add $5.7 billion more and keep the maximum award, or they cannot provide it and let the Pell for next year fall."

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by Tamar Lewin, The New York Times.

Posted: December 17th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Tuition revenue has increased rapidly at public institutions, which isn’t a surprise, given the budget pain caused by hard-hit state economies. The survey found an 11-percent median increase in net tuition and fee revenue among 96 percent of public colleges. But that trend will change, said the survey’s respondents. The median increase projected by the 81 percent that expect revenue gains is just 4.4 percent, while the median projected decline among the 19 percent predicting a drop in revenue is 5.2 percent. Erin V. Ortiz, an analyst at Moody’s and primary author of the report, said some public institutions are unsure how much more revenue they can raise through tuition. Politicians and students are resisting tuition increases, while 90 percent of the survey’s respondents expect growing financial-aid expenditures.

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by Paul Fain, The Chronicle for Higher Education.

Posted: December 16th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Lawmakers say years of fee hikes and pay bonuses threaten the right to an affordable, high-quality education in the University of California and California State University systems… Lenz, the UC vice president for budget, said he and his staff visited Sacramento in late October to brief the Legislature and the administration on the coming fee increases before regents considered the proposal. He rejected the notion of more legislative control, citing the turnover in the Legislature under term limits and the protracted state budgeting process of recent years. "We have a fiduciary responsibility to long-term planning. When you’re playing politics with the university year in and year out, how does a university manage that?" he asked.

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by Michael J. Mishak, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: December 16th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.