Salary Gate erupted in late January when an early version of the new salary schedule appeared to give a 19 percent raise to vice chancellors and associate vice chancellors. Meanwhile, salaries for faculty and other administrators were cut by 4 percent… Days later, responding to a Chronicle inquiry, college officials disclosed that their three vice chancellors, all hired since July, were being paid between $202,000 and $217,150 – more than the top rate of $191,518 on the salary schedule to be approved. Faculty were furious at the apparent secrecy… The vice chancellors were hired during bitter contract negotiations between the college and its faculty. “It’s not clear to me that faculty would have said yes to the contract had we known that these exorbitant salaries were happening at the same moment,” Messer said.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: February 27th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Thirty-one current and former UC Berkeley students filed a federal complaint Wednesday morning alleging the university has mishandled sexual assault cases on campus, creating a hostile environment for female students. In a petition to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights seeking a formal investigation, the students charged that UC Berkeley procedures discourage victims from reporting sexual assaults, favor assailants in the adjudication process and re-victimize survivors.

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: February 26th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California has lost tens of millions of dollars, and is set to lose far more, after making risky bets on interest rates on the advice of Wall Street bankers… Among Augustine’s advice was for the university to greatly increase its borrowing by pledging student tuition monies to cover the debt. Until that time, the university had counted on the state government to issue bonds, which were secured by taxes… Taylor was a managing director at Lehman and head of the bank’s West Coast public financing operations. He oversaw 15 investment bankers, according to his résumé. Taylor was also then closely connected to top university officials. He was on the board of directors of the UCLA Foundation and had earlier served as a regent.

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by Melody Petersen, The Orange County Register.

Posted: February 21st, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In the end, Schwartz and Lange don’t disagree on the value of what goes on at places like Berkeley and Duke. The disagreement is over the story that Duke tells its undergraduates. So if you’re a student at Duke, are you getting a massive discount on the cost of your education? Or are you subsidizing a giant educational edifice that you as an undergraduate student will barely come into contact with? The answer sort of depends on what kind of student you are. If you’re engaged in research and capitalizing on your professors’ expertise, maybe you’re getting something that’s worth more than what you paid. If you’ve got a good financial aid package, you’re definitely getting a good deal. But if you’re a full-paying student, who’s not learning much from professors outside the classroom, it’s the university that’s getting the deal.

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by Lisa Chow, National Public Radio.

Posted: February 21st, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

City College of San Francisco’s special trustee abruptly quashed a resolution last week that would have handed big raises to administrators, saying, “It was never the intent that any administrator was to receive a salary increase.” Yet the college’s three vice chancellors, all recently hired, are being paid 10 to 13 percent more than the salaries posted for those jobs, records obtained by The Chronicle show… The issue of administrative pay exploded at City College on Jan. 24, when angry faculty, whose pay has been cut by 4 percent, noticed a resolution that would have elevated the pay scale of vice chancellors, associate vice chancellors and the chief technology officer by 19.3 percent.

Posted: February 7th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

You can’t blame faculty salaries for the rise in tuition. Faculty salaries were “essentially flat” from 2000 to 2012, the report says. And “we didn’t see the savings that we would have expected from the shift to part-time faculty,” said Donna M. Desrochers, an author of the report. The rise in tuition was probably driven more by the cost of benefits, the addition of nonfaculty positions, and, of course, declines in state support. Howard J. Bunsis, a professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University and chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Collective Bargaining Congress, wasn’t surprised by the conclusions of the study. “You see it on every campus—an increase in administration and a decrease in full-time faculty, and an increase in the use of part-time faculty,” he said. With that trend, along with rising tuition and falling state support, “you’re painting a pretty fair picture of higher ed,” he continued. “It’s not what it should be. What’s broken in higher ed is the priorities, and it’s been broken for a long time.”

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by Scott Carlson, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: February 5th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Maria C. Maisto went to Capitol Hill last fall to correct what she saw as a misperception about colleges’ response to the nation’s new health-care law. By the time she left, she had accomplished something bigger. She had gotten lawmakers talking about higher education’s reliance on adjuncts and how their working conditions make it difficult for them to do their best work. “There’s a huge lack of understanding of what it means to be in the adjunct world,” Rep. George Miller, a Democrat from California, said during the hearing at which Ms. Maisto testified.

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by Audrey Williams June, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: February 3rd, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

UC Berkeley’s troubled system of two dozen libraries will receive a yearly infusion of cash under a new plan that is nothing short of a rescue mission for the intellectual centerpiece of the great university. The plan will pull in about $6 million a year in new money from a variety of sources, some of it still undetermined… The Library lost 12 percent of its budget during the recession, even as such rivals as the University of Michigan augmented their stacks and staff. In 2012, UC Berkeley asked faculty members to make a decision: Did they prefer to close 16 of the libraries or just 10, with fewer librarians for those that remained? Faculty just said no.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: January 29th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In the last year, a little-known panel of educators has been denounced by state lawmakers, sued by San Francisco’s city attorney and faulted by the federal government for violating its own policies. Critics have called the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges tyrannical, vindictive and out of control. The catalyst was the agency’s move last summer to withdraw accreditation from City College of San Francisco.

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by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 26th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The process — and some of the sanctions — are “completely insulting” to victims of sexual violence, said Sofie Karasek, a Cal junior who has campaigned for campus reforms since her assault and agreed to be named in this story. “The person this happened to is going to be living with this for the rest of their lives,” she said. “It’s grossly unfair.” … President Barack Obama last week called on colleges to do more to protect students. On Wednesday, citing federal statistics that show one in five college women is a victim of rape or attempted rape, he announced that a White House task force would study ways to protect students from sexual assault.

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by Katy Murphy, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: January 25th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.