UC-AFT Merced Local

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Committee approves audit request by Senator Yee

SACRAMENTO – The finances of the University of California will finally be examined by the state auditor as a result of an official request by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo). After several improprieties and poor decision-making by UC executives, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC) today unanimously (10-0) approved Yee’s request.

“Unfortunately, not even one month can pass without another scandal plaguing our university,” said Yee, who is an alumnus of UC. “A comprehensive state audit will help further uncover the extent of the waste, fraud, and abuse within the UC, and finally hold university executives accountable.” “The UC administration expects taxpayers and students to foot the bill without asking any questions,” said Yee. “It is long overdue for the UC administration to start acting like a public institution and not a private country club.”

While campuses cut classes, raise fees, furlough employees, and lay off instructors, they have been hiring outside firms to help them restructure. A few months ago, Berkeley announced that it would pay Bain and Company $3 million to suggest ways to reduce the Cal budget, and now UCLA has hired the Huron Consulting Group to assist in the campus’ restructuring. Not only should we question the cost of bringing in outside firms to perform tasks that could be handled internally, but we need to ask about the role of shared governance when an outside group is hired to make important decisions that will affect all aspects of the university. Read rest of Bob's Blog.

A coalition of academic associations is today issuing a joint statement calling on colleges to recognize that they have "one faculty" and to treat those off the tenure track as professionals, with pay, benefits, professional development and participation in governance.

 

The joint statement, "One Faculty Serving All Students," calls for colleges to adopt a series of policies that would significantly improve the treatment of adjunct faculty members at many institutions. The statement was organized by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, and has been signed by 14 disciplinary associations as well as by the American Federation of Teachers. The disciplines involved represent such major fields as anthropology, art, composition, English, foreign languages, philosophy and religion.

Read the rest of the article.

by Bob Samuels (1/28/2010. Huffington Post)

In August 2009, just one month after the state of California cut over a billion dollars from its higher education budget, the University of California (UC) turned around and lent the state $200 million. When journalists asked the UC president, Mark Yudof, how the university could lend millions of dollars to the state, while the school was raising student fees (tuition), furloughing employees, canceling classes, and laying off teachers, Yudof responded that when the university lends money to the state, it turns a profit, but when it spends money on salaries for teachers, the money is lost.

Rest of article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-samuels/how-americas-universities_b_440954.html

Monday Memo from UPTE is well worth checking out each week. This memo is delivered only once a week and compiles a lot of the information and actions surrounding the UC Budget issue. You would be better informed if you checked it out: http://www.upte.org/publication-mm/index.html