State auditors on Friday provided new details of questionable travel and entertainment expenses approved by the University of California system. The amounts are small compared to the main finding of the April 25 audit that UC’s Office of the President failed to disclose tens of millions of dollars in reserve funds, but the audit said the questioned expenses represent issues that should be addressed… “Our request for this information clearly indicated that we sought all data related to its travel, business meetings and entertainment expenses, yet it only provided us with data relating to $10.4 million in costs — incurred over 5 years,” Howle said.

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by Patrick McGreevy, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: May 12th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Lawmakers from both parties have issued denunciations since the audit. Democrats promised legislation that would criminalize obstruction of the state auditor. Republicans called for Ms. Napolitano’s office to be subpoenaed. One lawmaker demanded she step down.The administrations said to have tweaked their surveys — including the campuses in Santa Cruz, San Diego and Irvine — have so far faced little scrutiny. Some faculty leaders have argued that campus administrators have been cowed by the president’s office, which oversees the system’s $31.5 billion budget. In an essay on the recent turmoil, Christopher Newfield, a professor of American culture at the U.C. Santa Barbara, wrote in part, “Much if not most of U.C. has become a culture of silence, of conformity.” Dianne Klein, a spokeswoman for Ms. Napolitano, rejected the characterization… “I really do not believe that there’s this clicking of the heels and saluting when Janet Napolitano walks in,” she said.

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by Mike McPhate, The New York Times.

Posted: May 11th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

We accept, and already have begun implementing, all 33 recommendations that the auditor made to my office. The recommendations, largely about transparency and best practices, are constructive. They will be implemented thoroughly and on time, and we will report back at regular intervals to the Legislature and the UC Board of Regents. Our progress will be posted on a UC website dedicated to this purpose. I have been privileged to lead the University of California system since September 2013. I’ve made many changes at UC, all of them with the intention of making wise and efficient use of public and private funds, ensuring that programs are well run, and that our stakeholders — students, faculty, staff, the Board of Regents and the public at large — are well served.

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by Janet Napolitano, San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: May 10th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Chris Newfield, a professor of literature and American studies at the Santa Barbara campus, said that state audits can have real power if there is a response from the Legislature, and that the recently concluded one represented a setback for public transparency. “Basically, [Napolitano] was hired because she was a political heavyweight,” Mr. Newfield said. “I didn’t agree with it, but I saw the logic of hiring someone like her. If you think your problem is Sacramento, then you hire a politician to deal with the pols of Sacramento,” he said. “I don’t think that’s worked out.” To regain the trust of the State Legislature, faculty members, and students, Mr. Newfield said it will take full disclosure from the president’s office of what happened with the audit, and a reform process that doesn’t hire outside consultants. Michael Meranze, professor of history at the Los Angeles campus, said the audit certainly has increased skepticism in the Legislature.

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by Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: May 10th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California, aiming to end fighting over how many out-of-state students it admits, on Tuesday announced a revised proposal to limit non-Californian and international undergraduates. Under the proposal, UC would restrict the percentage of nonresident students to 18% at five of its nine undergraduate campuses. UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine — whose proportion of nonresident students exceeds 18% — would be allowed to keep, but not increase, those higher percentages. The new plan is a retreat from the proposal for a 20% systemwide cap on nonresident students that university officials presented to the UC Board of Regents in March… Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy, D-Sacramento, has been a leading critic of the increase in nonresident students but said this week he was generally pleased with the revised proposal. If the regents approve it, he said, he would support the release of the $18.5 million in additional funds for UC.

Posted: May 9th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

By a 21-15 vote, the Cal State San Bernardino Faculty Senate passed a vote of no-confidence on Tuesday directed at university President Tomas Morales. The vote followed an hourlong discussion during which some senate members complained about a toxic environment on the campus, with faculty fearful of speaking out because of potential retribution, and of a failure of the campus administration to effectively include the faculty in decision making. Supporters of Morales said he was being unfairly attacked, primarily for the changes he has implemented.

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by Mark Muckenfuss, The Press-Enterprise.

Posted: May 9th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Prompted by a massive state audit that found misleading budgeting practices and extravagant spending in the University of California’s central administration, one lawmaker is demanding the resignation of UC President Janet Napolitano. “The leaders of our state university systems are duty-bound to maintain the highest levels of transparency, integrity, and accountability to California taxpayers, students, their families, and the Legislature, especially when it comes to public monies,” Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva said in a statement Tuesday. “President Napolitano no longer engenders the public trust required to perform her duties. It’s time she resigned.”

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: May 9th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

John Douglass, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, agreed. In a 2015 paper on the history of UC’s autonomy, the scholar concluded that self-governance — and steady funding by the state — have been the essential ingredients in creating “one of the world’s premier research universities.” But none of that has stopped lawmakers from trying to step in. If Galgiani’s proposed Constitutional amendment is approved by the Legislature, voters would then be asked to decide whether to prohibit UC from raising tuition and paying “substandard wages” to cleaning and maintenance workers in any year when more than 600 UC administrators earn a salary higher than the governor’s.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: May 7th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The community college announced this week that Santa Ana Unified School District students will receive free tuition their first year, beginning in September… Tuition will be paid by the nonprofit Santa Ana College Foundation, funded in part by city and Santa Ana College employees through payroll deductions, a $5 million state grant and Santa Ana College’s Centennial Scholarship Campaign. Santa Ana College’s tuition for full-time students is $1,104 a school year. About 85 percent of the students there, from low-income families, already receive tuition waivers through the California Community Colleges Board of Governors. Others get help from other state and federal grants.

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by Roxana Kopetman, The Orange County Register.

Posted: May 7th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

We can identify many of the threats to public higher education in the United States: political attacks on faculty by conservative politicians, systematic budget cuts, selling out academic programs to big-money donors. Who would have thought that a major threat would come from a university’s own president? Yet that’s the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from State Auditor Elaine Howle’s scalding report on the University of California Office of the President… those flaws undermine the administration’s ability to make the case for UC’s mission and protect the system from its enemies.

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by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: May 5th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.