The endowment returned an annualized net 6.5% for the three years ended June 30, compared to the custom benchmark’s 6.2%; 8.8% for the five-year period (benchmark 7.7%); 6.4% for 10 years (5.6%); and 6.7% for 20 years (5.6%). The endowment returned 15.1% in the previous fiscal year. The pension fund’s annualized net return for the three years ended June 30 was 6.5%, compared to the benchmark’s 6.6%; five years, 8.2% (7.7%); 10 years, 6.4% (5.8%); and 20 years, 6% (5.6%).

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by James Comtois, Pensions and Investments.

Posted: September 21st, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The California Public Employment Relations Board, or PERB, issued a formal complaint on behalf of the UC’s largest employee union against the UC Board of Regents for allegedly violating state laws that protect workers’ access to their union. The complaint alleges that the UC withheld employee contact information from unions and distributed mass communications to employees without consulting union members, according to a press release from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, Local 3299.

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by Amanda Bradford, The Daily Californian.

Posted: September 21st, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Haunted by costly degrees and insurmountable student debt, American college students now spend more time working paid jobs than in lectures, the library or studying at home. “The economics of the debt crisis have become a major distraction to students’ education,” said John Hupalo, founder and chief executive officer of Invite Education, an education financial planner… “The fundamental issue is that families and students don’t have a realistic knowledge of the actual cost of an education in advance,” Hupalo said.

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by Riley Griffin , Bloomberg.

Posted: September 20th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California’s president and investments committee chair are standing by chief investment officer Jagdeep Bachher following charges of mismanagement at the $118 billion investment office. An investigation by Institutional Investor, published September 6, found Bachher had allegedly used investment staff for personal errands, overrode asset-class heads’ opposition to invest with UC’s ex-investments chair, and twice leaked confidential information about an outgoing employee. “Just read the story. It’s an ugly one, no doubt,” UC President Janet Napolitano apparently wrote Bachher in a September 6 email, which he forwarded to staff. II obtained and verified a copy, along with several other internal documents. “You should know that I remain fully confident in you and your abilities,” Napolitano continued. “You are an important and integral part of our leadership team.”

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by Leanna Orr, Institutional Investor.

Posted: September 11th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Approximately half of the people Bachher’s team hired are gone… At least three members of the senior investment staff are actively eyeing the door… UC’s governance model endows the chief investment officer with extraordinary power and provides scant oversight. There is no investment office CEO to serve as a check on the CIO, as is the case at many other funds of UC’s size and complexity… The stakes of unilateral decision-making became unsettlingly obvious last year, according to four senior investors serving at the time. Bachher decided to invest about $250 million with Main Street Advisors, the wealth management outfit run by ex–investment chair and Bachher backer Wachter. The deals broke no UC rules and had approval from the Office of the General Counsel…

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by Leanna Orr, Institutional Investor.

Posted: September 6th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Student visa data show that the number of international students at U.S. universities declined last year after years of substantial growth. Professionals in international education attribute the decline to a range of factors, including reductions in scholarship programs sponsored by foreign governments, issues of cost and affordability, uncertainty about visa policies and the future availability of poststudy work opportunities, concerns about physical safety and, yes, perceptions of the U.S. as a less welcoming place to foreign nationals under the Trump presidency. The president reportedly called “almost every” Chinese student in the U.S. a spy at a recent meeting with CEOs. And various Trump administration policies on immigration have been broadly seen by many in U.S. academe as unwelcoming and counterproductive to the cause of recruiting talented students and scholars to American campuses.

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by Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: August 24th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The study catalogued the history of UC revenue sources and expenditures over its 150-year history across 10 campuses, noting its reliance on state funding from 1900 through the 1990s. Beginning in the early 1990s, however, state revenue per student started to decrease “dramatically,” while total enrollment grew alongside the California population from 166,500 students to the 273,000 students enrolled today. John Douglass, a co-author of the study, said in an email that the UC and the state had an agreement whereby more enrollment generated operating and capital investment by California lawmakers, but this is no longer in place.

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by Amanda Bradford, The Daily Californian.

Posted: August 23rd, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

It produces almost a third of the state’s bachelor’s degrees. The system is dominant on a federal level, too — its faculty and researchers secure almost 9 percent of all federal academic and research grants, the report says. Now, however, most UC campuses are at or near enrollment capacity, cutting into the chances that students will apply and be admitted to the UC campus of their choice. Significant pressure will likely continue to mount, as the state’s population has been projected to grow by 22.5 percent, from 40 million to almost 49 million, by 2040… Monday’s report comes just a few days after another report from the Public Policy Institute of California found UC and the California State University systems continue to receive shares of the state’s General Fund allocations that are at “historic lows.”

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by Rick Seltzer, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: August 21st, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The UC system released its annual payroll report in August, detailing employee compensation for 2017 in a continued effort to promote transparency and accountability. At UC Berkeley, seven of the 10 highest-paid employees are in the athletics department, according to the database… “Salaries for general campus tenured and tenure-track faculty lags the market by 12 percent,” the report said, citing a 2014 update. “An inability to address below market salaries weakens UC’s ability to attract and retain high-performing faculty and staff, particularly as other institutions become more competitive and attractive.”

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by Madeleine Gregory, The Daily Californian.

Posted: August 20th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In reaction to President Trump’s policy of separating families at the border, students and labor leaders at the University of California are urging UC President Janet Napolitano to sever contracts with dozens of companies doing business with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. UC labor leaders say they’ve found 25 companies — from uniform suppliers to weapons manufacturers — that do hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the university, and with ICE.

Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: August 11th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.