Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 48291
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2025/07/10 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/10    

2007/10/11-15 [Academia/Berkeley, Academia/GradSchool] UID:48291 Activity:kinda low
10/11   How a secret backroom deal between The Governor and
        The Chancellor have sealed the UC into a permanent low
        level of funding:
        http://www.csua.org/u/jpe
        \_ So, bad as this is, 2011 is not "permanent."
        \_ Um, bad as this is, 2011 is not "permanent."
           \_ While I don't support op or the article's editorials, the way
              I read it, the author is pushing the idea that by 2011, UC
              system may have lost much of what made it great, making it
              difficult, though probably not "permanent" to regain its
              excellence and status. I mean, would you have decided to come
              to Cal if you had to pay 10-15k tuition a year to attend
              a university where half of the classes are taught by TAs and
              faculty members were mediocre? You'd have to throw a lot more
              money at the problem if it ever gets that bad to fix it.
              \_ how is that different from most research universities
                 including most of private ones? TAs for most part "teach"
                 the discussion sections only. The only class that I had
                 including most of private ones? At Cal, TAs for most part
                 "teach" the discussion sections only. The only class that I had
                 that was entirely taught by a grad student was RHET 1A/B.
                 When research universities hire new faculty, no one really
                 cares whether the candidate is a good teacher anyways. It's
                 all about research. That's the reality of the US research
                 universities, and I kind of like it, because it teaches people
                 to fend for themselves and not to expect to be spoonfed
                 all the time.
                 "teach" the discussion sections only. The only class that
                 I had that was entirely taught by a grad student was RHET
                 1A/B. When research universities hire new faculty, no one
                 really cares whether the candidate is a good teacher
                 anyways. It's all about research. That's the reality of
                 the US research universities, and I kind of like it,
                 because it teaches people to fend for themselves and not
                 to expect to be spoonfed all the time.
                 \_ TAs leading discussion section is fine, but at least
                    at when I last took summer sessions years back, many
                    summer sessions were taught by non-professors. I also
                    agree with you in that one of the stronger teaching tool
                    present at Cal compared to, say, Stanford, is the "fend
                    for themselves" nature. It may just be that I'm not as
                    capable as you are, but I do wish there was a just a tad
                    more hand-holding for me when I was an undergrad. That
                    aside, even if as a college-bound high school student or
                    a parent of one, if you had to pay similar amount of
                    tuition to send yourself/kid to a "public" school with
                    the "fend for yourself" mentality or a private school,
                    would the choice have been easy to make? And what if
                    there weren't even good *research* faculties at this
                    public school? I mean, why did you choose Cal, instead of,
                    say, Irvine or other UC's? Quality of faculty, regardless
                    of whether or not they're good teachers, matter. And the
                    article is suggesting that we are losing out on bid for
                    quality faculty members due to lack of funds. -pp
2025/07/10 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/10    

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2007/9/7-10 [Academia/Berkeley/Classes] UID:47937 Activity:nil
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2/27    http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/06/pf/college/professor_pay/index.htm
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2013/4/30-5/18 [Academia/Berkeley, Academia/GradSchool] UID:54667 Activity:nil
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2013/2/21-3/26 [Academia/StanfUrd, Finance/Investment] UID:54612 Activity:nil
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Cache (5162 bytes)
www.csua.org/u/jpe -> www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-compact7oct07,1,3349297.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
California | Local News Lawrence K Ho / Los Angeles Times SEEKING MORE PAY: Victor Vincent, a custodian at UCLA for 17 years, attended the UC regents meeting in July. We cant even afford to send our kids to the university, and we dont understand why you dont understand that, he told them. Less to bank on at state universities Seeking more pay Lawrence K Ho / Los Angeles Times SEEKING MORE PAY: Victor Vincent, a custodian at UCLA for 17 years, attended the UC regents meeting in July. We cant even afford to send our kids to the university, and we dont understand why you dont understand that, he told them. Educators fear a 2004 funding deal has schools sliding toward mediocrity By Richard C Paddock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer October 7, 2007 SANTA BARBARA -- Library assistant Linda Snook isn't usually someone to stand up in front of hundreds of people and discuss her personal finances. But when the UC Board of Regents met here this summer, she pleaded for help. Snook told the regents that she makes $26,000 a year working full time at UC Santa Barbara and pays more than half of that in rent. Her supervisors have recommended her for raises, she said, but there is never enough money in the budget. She'd like to enroll in graduate school at UCSB, but, on her pay, that's a distant dream. click to enlarge "I am barely making it," she told the regents. Students, custodians, campus police, clerical workers, faculty and administrators regularly beseech the regents to give them more money. But soaring student fees, huge fundraising drives and controversial corporate donations have not made up for a sharp decline in the state's commitment to higher education. UC administrators and faculty fear that waning commitment is eroding the 10-campus system's reputation for excellence and will trigger a slide toward mediocrity. Already, the salaries of professors and workers lag behind comparable institutions while faculty posts remain open and more classes are taught by teaching assistants. Administrators and faculty also worry that the University of California and the 23-campus California State University will become de facto private institutions, where most of the costs are paid by students. Officials at UC and CSU say that each institution needs about $1 billion more in annual funding to match their level of quality in 2001, the last time the universities were in relatively good fiscal health. University leaders say the two public institutions are the state's engine of long-term growth and its main supplier of highly skilled workers. But the universities' importance to state policymakers is declining, at least as measured in tax dollars. In 1970, the state spent 69% of its budget on the University of California. Unlike other state-sponsored programs -- such as health, schools and community colleges -- UC and CSU have no level of state funding guaranteed by law. Will the two huge university systems, with 665,000 students, become the equivalent of private institutions? "I worry about it every day, because we must continue to look for other sources of support," said UC President Robert C Dynes. "And the question is, do we end up becoming a private institution to get those resources?" In May 2004, Dynes and his CSU counterpart, Chancellor Charles Reed, traveled to Sacramento to meet privately with Gov. The state was facing a $14-billion shortfall and the new governor was threatening the universities with major cutbacks for the third consecutive year. The two university chiefs struck a deal with the governor: They agreed to slash spending that year by hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for a funding formula lasting until 2011. Titled the "Higher Education Compact," the agreement calls for modest annual increases in state funds, private fundraising to help pay for basic programs, and large student fee hikes, especially for graduate and professional students. Many UC regents were not told of the deal until it was done. Richard C Blum, who became the regents' chairman this year, called the lack of disclosure "an error in judgment." Reed and Dynes, who will step down by June, say the compact stopped the universities' bleeding and gave them fiscal stability. But critics say the pact has left UC and CSU chronically underfunded and locked the universities into a steady decline. "Bob Dynes and Charlie Reed fundamentally changed the nature of higher education in California without any public debate," said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco who chaired a faculty committee that analyzed the agreement. "The effect of the compact is a permanent substantial reduction in the quality of the university." The compact itself acknowledges that the universities have "significant unmet funding needs. and insufficient funding of programs critical to the academic enterprise." Among its many provisions, the compact set a little-noticed precedent by calling for the use of private fundraising to pay for core university operations. "UC will continue to seek additional private resources and maximize other fund sources available to the University to support basic programs," it says.