Peter Guber, minority owner of the Golden State Warriors and an entertainment industry executive, is among four people appointed Friday by Gov. Jerry Brown to the University of California Board of Regents… Former Bay Area Rep. Ellen Tauscher was also appointed. Now a strategic adviser for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, a law practice specializing in health care, Tauscher served in Congress from 1997 to 2009, and as the undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs for the State Department from 2009 to 2012. Also appointed were Maria Anguino, 38, of Riverside, and Lark Park, 47, of Sacramento. Park is the governor’s senior adviser for policy, a post she has had since 2015 after serving as his deputy legislative affairs secretary for four years.

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by Michael Cabanatuan, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: June 2nd, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Riverside resident Maria Anguiano, a former UC Riverside vice chancellor and accountant, was appointed to the University of California Board of Regents, which oversees the UC system. Anguiano, 38, was one of four board picks announced Friday, June 2, by Gov. Jerry Brown’s office. The state Senate must confirm the appointments, which are unpaid… Varner said Anguiano not only knows how the UC Office of the President works, from the five years she spent working there, but she knows UC Riverside from the inside as well… As chief finance officer at Minerva Project, she has seen how technology can help lower a college’s costs and other ideas that may also work for the UC system, she said. “A lot of what being a regent is about is accountability and asking good questions of the decisions that are being made,” Anguiano said.

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by Alicia Robinson, The Press-Enterprise.

Posted: June 2nd, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

An investigation into outgoing Chancellor Nicholas Dirks’ misuse of public funds, which revealed he failed to pay $4,990, cost the university a total of $57,671 to carry out — more than 10 times the cost of the misused funds — according to invoice documents obtained by The Daily Californian. In order to obtain this information, Public Interest Investigations, Inc., investigated over five months, from May to September 2016, for a total of 279 billed hours at $200 an hour. In addition to billed hours, Public Interest Investigations, Inc., included receipts for airfare, parking, restaurants, Lyft rides and hotels used by Keith Rohman, president of Public Interest Investigations, Inc., as he traveled back and forth from Los Angeles to Oakland.

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by Audrey McNamara, The Daily Californian.

Posted: May 30th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California will no longer pay for its governing board members to throw themselves dinners and parties after a Chronicle report showed that the regents regularly billed the university for their festivities. Longtime Regent Richard Blum, a wealthy financier and former chairman of the board, said the policy change was his idea. After reading The Chronicle’s story Sunday, Blum said he called Napolitano and suggested it. “I said, ‘Janet, it’s not worth the aggravation. Let’s have the regents pay for their own dinners,’” Blum told The Chronicle. “I just called Janet and said, ‘Look, for the amount of what it costs to have a dinner, let’s have everyone pay for their own dinner. And if they can’t pay, I’m happy to pick it up.’”

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by Nanette Asimov and Melody Gutierrez, San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: May 29th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The night before the University of California Board of Regents voted to raise student tuition to help cash-strapped campuses, they threw themselves a party at the luxury Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco and billed the university. The tab for the Jan. 25 banquet: $17,600 for 65 people, or $270 a head… “These types of dinner events look really, really bad, and they give the appearance that (Napolitano) is buying the support of the regents,” said Jamie Court, president of the good-government advocacy group Consumer Watchdog… UC policy prohibits reimbursements for “entertainment expenses that are lavish or extravagant” and limits dinners to $81 a person… Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-San Ramon, said more information is needed about how the regents and Napolitano’s office are spending money.

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by Melody Gutierrez and Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: May 28th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Some of the biggest declines have been in the University of California system, which has long been the most economically diverse place in elite higher education. On the San Diego campus five years ago, 46 percent of freshmen received Pell grants. Last year, the share had dropped to 26 percent. When I first saw that number in The Times database, I figured it was a typo. It wasn’t. The United States is investing less in college education, at the same time that the globalized, digital economy has made that education more important than ever. Gaps between college graduates and everyone else are growing in one realm of society after another, including unemployment, wealth and health. Given these trends, the declines in state funding are stunning. It’s as if our society were deliberately trying to restrict opportunities and worsen income inequality.

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by David Leonhardt, The New York Times.

Posted: May 25th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Unfortunately, generational progress in college completion has nearly stalled in California. Although more California high schoolers are completing their diploma today than 30 years ago, the share that subsequently earns a bachelor’s degree has not changed much: 33% of those age 25–34 in California today have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 31% of those age 55–64. Other countries have made much stronger progress. Indeed, the share of college attainment among young adults in California ranks 22nd of the 32 OECD countries, and the state’s generational progress is dead last.

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by Sarah Bohn, Hans Johnson, PPIC.

Posted: May 24th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Over the past five years, the number of UC administrators earning salaries in excess of $174,000 a year has nearly doubled — from 5,931 employees to 9,640. Today, there are 712 UC administrators, excluding faculty and physicians, who earn more than $190,103 — the salary we pay the governor… I am authoring State Constitutional Amendment 13, a bill that will amend the state Constitution and force a recalcitrant UC to stick to a new budgetary constraint: No tuition increases can be implemented if the number of administrators making a salary above that paid to the governor exceeds 600. Right now, UC has 112 well-paid administrators beyond that ceiling. At the same time, the amendment would prohibit UC from contracting out lower-paying jobs if the 600-limit is crossed.

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by State Senator Cathleen Galgiani, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: May 24th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said a preliminary analysis indicates that the Trump budget would cut about 17 percent from the overall federal research effort… Congress has the power of the purse and could essentially ignore the more detailed budget request. Early reactions on both sides of the aisle have been generally unfavorable… Advocates for cutting science and medicine budgets point to the funding that agencies provide research institutions for indirect costs, or overhead. On Wednesday, the House Science Committee will hold a hearing, titled “Examining the Overhead Cost of Research,” that will look specifically at how the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies negotiate those costs.

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by Joel Achenbach and Lena H. Sun, The Washington Post.

Posted: May 23rd, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California, under fire for controversial budget practices, would lose the autonomy it has enjoyed for 138 years under a state constitutional amendment proposed Tuesday. The amendment suggested by state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-Azusa) would give the Legislature the power to directly fund the UC Office of the President, which is currently supported by campus fees… To broaden representation on the UC Board of Regents, the bill would expand membership and voting rights to the California Community Colleges chancellor, three more students, two faculty members and a staff member. Regents’ terms would be reduced from 12 years to four — although reappointment to as many as three terms would be possible. The UC president would lose voting rights and become a non-voting regent.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: May 23rd, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.