This week, the University of California issued a new open access policy that gives anyone in the world free access to scholarly articles authored by UC employees. That means clinical faculty, lecturers, staff researchers, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and librarians at the system’s 10 campuses and numerous research labs will finally be allowed to share their work with the public.

“With the Presidential Open Access Policy’s inclusion of scholarly articles authored by a wide range of UC researchers, the University affirms its mission as a forward-looking public research institution in service to the people of California and to scholars around the world,” said Susan Carlson, the University of California’s vice-provost for academic personnel and programs.

UC Academic Senate paved way for open access

The latest UC decree builds on an open access policy previously-adopted by the UC Academic Senate, which represents more than 8,000 faculty members at all 10 UC campuses. In 2013, UC faculty members granted the public access to their research, but lacked the authority to require open access for work of non-faculty members.

“The Faculty of the University of California is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible,” states the Open Access Policy for the Academic Senate of the University of California, which was first passed in the summer of 2013. “In particular, as part of a public university system, the Faculty is dedicated to making its scholarship available to the people of California and the world.”

The new UC open access policy covers “all employees and students at the University of California campuses, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the UC Medical Centers, the Office of the President, and all auxiliary University locations not already covered by the Academic Senate Open Access Policy.” As a result of the change, UC says that its open access publishing policies now “cover more authors than any other institutional OA policy to date.”

“Until now, tenure-track faculty have had the privilege of passing such policies to govern themselves, but at most universities, such faculty are a fraction of the people who do research and publish articles,” said UCLA professor Christopher Kelty, who chaired the Presidential Open Access Policy Task Force. “Extending the same rights to those who aren’t part of a faculty governance system is an important and difficult step – I’m thrilled we have accomplished it.”

Walled content of academic journals

Previously, research produced by university employees was commonly walled off from the public in academic journals that routinely charge high subscription fees to access material. The old model empowered publications, which could dictate terms and conditions to professors and researchers in desperate need to “publish or perish.”

Advocates for open access say that old policy stifled innovation and academic research.

“Students have already recognized that significant academic contributions come from all corners of our university,” said Meredith Niles, a recent Ph.D. graduate from UC Davis who was active in a graduate student association involved in crafting the new policy. “Now UC has taken the next step to affirm what graduate students have already demonstrated: a strong desire to make all scholarly research, regardless of its source, openly available to all members of society.”

UC authors will continue to retain legal control over their work and will not be required to publish in open access journals. Instead, the new policy merely commits UC employees to submit a copy of their work to a free digital database maintained by the university. The new policy, which takes effect for scholarly articles published after October 19, 2015, also does not apply to books, textbooks or student theses.

According to UC officials, the system is responsible for 2 percent of the world’s total research publications.

UC slow to act on new technology

The University of California’s hasn’t always been quick to embrace new technology. Last year, the University of California initially banned reimbursements for travel expenses incurred with sharing services, such as Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. That led to a public outcry with some Democratic politicians calling for the UC system to modernize its travel policies.

“Sharing economy companies offer consumers more choices at often less cost than comparable services offered by traditional vendors,” Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a member of the UC Board of Regents, wrote at the time. “Prohibiting UC employees from using services that cost less is simply bad for the university’s bottom line.”

Eventually, the UC system backed away from its ban. This year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation authored by Asm. Ling Ling Chang that guarantees state workers’ ability to use sharing economy services on state business.

As part of an arrangement that includes four years of funding increases, a two-year tuition freeze and additional money for UC’s sizable pension debt, the university is undertaking a significant overhaul of its retirement system. Though details remain to be worked out, it will introduce a pension tier with a dramatically lower compensation cap, and could shift new hires from a guaranteed benefit to a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan. …

 

Under the deal, UC will adopt a state limit on the amount of employees’ salaries that are used to calculate their guaranteed pension. The limit, which would be adjusted for inflation, now stands at $117,000. The current cap for UC workers, based on a federal ceiling, is $265,000.

The seriousness of the UC pension problem has gotten relatively little attention until now, but as CalPensions’ Ed Mendel pointed out in May, UC has had to engage in risky borrowing to pay its bills:

Four years ago UC began borrowing to help close the pension funding gap. By last July UC had borrowed $1.8 billion from internal sources and $937 million more from external sources.

 

Borrowing to pay pension costs can pay off in another way, if money loaned at a low interest rate is invested and earns a higher rate. The UC pension fund, valued at $52.8 billion last June, is expected to earn 7.5 percent a year, which critics say is too optimistic.

 

The “arbitrage” looks good so far. Last fiscal year the UC pension fund returned earnings of 17.8 percent. The UC short term investment pool, the source of the internal borrowing, earned about 1.5 percent.

 

But borrowing to pay pension costs is a gamble. The city of Stockton sold $125 million worth of pension obligation bonds in 2007 and put the money in its CalPERS investment fund, just in time for big losses during the recession and stock market crash.

UC employees pay bigger share of pension costs than CA teachers

To help get UC pensions on firm ground, UC officials have agreed in recent years to an arrangement in which the university system pays 14 percent of its payroll toward pension costs and individual employees contribute 8 percent of their gross pay. This means taxpayers foot 64 percent of the costs.

This is in contrast with the new standards for state teacher pensions enacted in 2014 as part of a law to shore up the struggling California State Teachers’ Retirement System. The contribution changes are being phased in through the 2020-21 fiscal year. When they are complete, teachers will contribute 10.25 percent of their paychecks, school districts will contribute 19.1 percent and the state government will contribute 8.8 percent. This means taxpayers will pay for 73 percent of the costs of teacher pensions.

Under the old status quo, taxpayers paid for about 63 percent of total CalSTRS contributions. So while teachers will pay somewhat more toward their pensions because of the CalSTRS fix, taxpayers will pay a significantly bigger share.

This doesn’t reflect the broad pension reform goals that Gov. Brown announced in 2012. He proposed that the state and its employees split the “normal” cost of pensions. In pension-speak, that refers to the value of retiree health care earned during a year of working, as determined by actuarial standards. The “normal” cost doesn’t include the cost going forward of dealing with a pension system’s unfunded liabilities, only the cost per specific employee.

The UC pension deal seems likely to move UC toward that goal of splitting “normal” costs, especially if enough new hires accept a hybrid benefits plan. But at least until June 30, 2021, the state is legally committed to a deal with public school teachers that goes away from that goal.

Napolitano orchestrated the UC Regents’ approval last fall of a five-year, 28 percent tuition hike — conditioned on whether UC got more money in the 2015-16 budget. She also took steps toward limiting enrollment at all but two UC campuses.

In response, Brown, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and several lawmakers said UC should get its house in order before it demands more money. They cited the sharp growth in administrators on the UC payroll and UC’s resistance to a state law meant to force the public university system to more specifically explain its spending practices.

Conclusions of ‘committee of two’ not disclosed

This blowback led Napolitano to form a “committee of two” with the governor to review UC’s books. Napolitano and Brown never reported back to regents or the media with their findings. But in the revised budget released last week, the UC president appeared to get much of what she sought after agreeing to suspend tuition hikes for at least two years.

This is from the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage:

To win the tuition freezes, Brown agreed to contribute to UC’s pension obligations, paying out $436 million over the next three years. The money would come from the voter-approved Proposition 2, the rainy-day fund, and could be used only for the pension debt. UC has been asking the state for years to help, as it does for California State University.

“This is not free money. They are paying down debt which will put them in a stronger position,” Brown said. “It’s not available for adding new professors or raising salaries or anything they want to do. It’s to stabilize their finances going forward.” …

Under the agreement, the state would increase UC’s approximately $3 billion state allocation by 4 percent each year, starting at $119.5 million in the fall … .

UC would receive an additional $507.3 million to its base budget through 2018-19, with the potential of the state Legislature increasing that in the coming weeks.

UC’s known concessions to governor

Napolitano only made two concessions to Brown besides the tuition freeze, based on what’s now known, at least.

She agreed to add more online classes to make it easier for students to complete required courses and graduate within four years.

And, as the Chronicle reported, she agreed to a new pension scale for new hires:

Brown’s administration said UC also agreed to give new employees hired after July 2016 a choice of a defined benefit plan pension capped at $117,000 a year or a defined contribution plan. The defined benefit plan cap is the same as currently imposed by the state for employees hired after 2013. UC currently has a much higher cap of $265,000.

The low-key denouement to the fight wasn’t what many in Sacramento had expected earlier this year, when a showdown over not just UC’s budget, but its culture, seemed likely.

In a February op-ed, Atkins and Assembly Minority Leader Kristin Olsen, R-Modesto, expressed strong interest in bringing “zero-based budgeting” to UC. That reflected the widespread belief within the Capitol that the sort of extensive belt-tightening seen in much of state government during the 2007-2012 revenue crunch never happened in a university system that resisted transparency.

Now we are seeing a concrete reminder of the importance of the state laws established by these props: the constant stream of stories about the ever-bigger fees that California State University campuses mandate that students must pay on top of tuition and textbooks. Why do they keep going up? Because it’s an easy way to backfill budgets and make them balance instead of making tough decisions to keep spending in check.

Let’s look at fees demanded by San Jose State University, one of the larger CSU campuses:

The lack of public support for the strike is striking in that the union is arguably the state’s most sympathetic public employee union. The union says that 99 percent of its food workers, custodians and respiratory therapists are income-eligible for some form of public assistance, which it contrasts with the bloated salaries and lavish benefits provided to top UC administrators.

Despite the clear income inequality among the 190,000 faculty and staff at the University of California, a majority of Democrat elected officials have failed to publicly comment on the upcoming strike.

High-paid BART employees undermined low-paid UC workers

Since last summer’s strike by Bay Area transit workers, Democrat politicians have become fickle friends of organized labor.

Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “among the best-off in the country,” the 2,300 BART mechanics, custodians, station agents, train operators and clerical staff earned an average base salary of $71,000 per year plus $11,000 in overtime pay. That was before the union received a 15.38 percent pay increase over four years in exchange for increased pension contributions. Previously, BART paid both the employee and employer pension contributions.

Several Democrat leaders, including Assembly candidate Steve Glazer, publicly opposed the strike, signaling an intraparty split on labor issues.

“The prospect that well-paid Bay Area Rapid Transit system workers with lavish benefits and little-known perks might inconvenience rich white-collar liberals in the San Francisco area,” wrote CalWatchdog’s Chris Reed, “has finally triggered an intraparty battle of the kind that California Democrats have somehow managed to avoid for decades.”

Field Poll: Public sours on unions

Following that bruising battle at BART, for the first time, Californians have a negative view of organized labor. Last December, a Field Poll found that a plurality of registered voters said that unions “do more harm than good.” Forty five percent of those surveyed viewed unions negatively, a 16-point swing in just two years.

Union approval has even fallen among union households. Thirty one percent of union households have a negative view of unions, a huge increase from the 18 percent result reported in March 2011.

“It seems like they keep winning the battles,” Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said back in December when the poll was released. “The question becomes, ‘Are they moving the public in the direction where they may lose the war?’”

That first casualty in the war against unions are the low-paid service workers at the University of California. Earlier this month, AFSCME 3299 released a  list of elected officials throughout California who “have united in support of AFSCME 3299’s pursuit of a fair contract settlement with UC.” Just eight state legislators were included on the list.

Even former union members are jettisoning their union credentials. State Sen. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, who recently launched her third campaign in three years, wasn’t among the small group of state legislators to publicly back the lowest-paid workers at the University of California. Her absence was noticeable given that she’s a former member of AFSCME. Since being elected to the Legislature, Torres has distanced herself from the union by omitting her union activities from her official biography.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez stands with UC workers

Not all Democrats are shunning labor unions out of political expediency. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, a former secretary-treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, has repeatedly offered support for UC’s lowest-paid workers.

“UC continues to disregard the well-being of its lowest wage workers,” said Gonzalez, one of the eight Democrat legislators to publicly stand up for UC workers. “It makes no sense for the Legislature to continue to write the UC system a blank check while they continue to increase the wages of those at the very top, while leaving our service workers to be subsidized by taxpayers through safety net programs.”

She added, “All work is dignified and all workers should be accorded respect by our public university system.”

In addition to Gonzalez, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who serves on the UC Board of Regents, has voiced his support for AFSCME 3299 on various social networks. The union adds that more members are silently with them.

“Whether on picket lines, phone lines, in letters or in statements to the press, the overwhelming majority of the state Legislature’s Democratic Caucus has stood shoulder to shoulder with AFSCME 3299 members throughout their struggle for fairness and dignity at the University of California, and we are deeply grateful for their support,” AFSCME 3299 said in a statement. “We are equally grateful to the members of the GOP Caucus who have stood with us.  Our fight is not a matter of right and left, but right and wrong.”

96 percent of UC service workers and patient care workers voted in favor of the strike authorization. AFSCME 3299 represents 8,300 service workers and 13,000 patient care technical workers.

The eight legislators who publicly back AFSCME 3299

• State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett
• Assembly member Marc Levine
• Assembly member Paul Fong
• Assembly member Jimmy Gomez
• Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez
• Assembly member Shirley Weber, Ph.D.
• Assembly member Rob Bonta
• Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer

“UC’s newest wage and staffing proposals are a welcome sign, but they still fall far short of what they’ve granted to other UC workers and perpetuate an ever widening income gap at California’s premier public university,” said AFSCME 3299 President and UC Service Worker Kathryn Lybarger. “Now that UC has finally acknowledged its second class treatment of our members, we are hopeful that its negotiating team will work to reach a settlement by addressing the inequities at the heart of this dispute.”

AFSCME 3299’s unique strike message

AFSCME 3299, a statewide chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has adopted a unique strike message. Armed with white papers and payroll data, the UC’s lowest-paid workers are building a broad-based coalition that is centered on the best interests of taxpayers. And, surprisingly, AFSCME 3299’s primary target is the lavish salaries and pension benefits for UC’s top administrators.

“There are 7,000 UC employees that make more than the governor of California,” Todd Stenhouse, a union spokesman, told CalNewsroom.com. “It’s the sweetest deal in all of California, and you have to be a UC executive to get it.”

Stenhouse, who quickly rattles off UC payroll figures, points out that those high salaries for administrators hit taxpayers now and later when those highly paid administrators collect their pensions. That’s the case with former UC President Mark G. Yudof, who was the eighth-highest paid public education executive in 2012, according to a recent study by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Yudof made $847,000 in total compensation and can expect a sizable pension now that he’s retired. Yudof isn’t alone.

“2,000 UC retirees have +$100k pensions,” Stenhouse said. “Not one is one of our members.”

Union White Paper: How taxpayers fund UC’s executive excess

The union has assembled a detailed white paper, titled, “Runaway Inequality at the University of California: How Sudents, Workers & Taxpayers Fund UC’s Executive Excess.” The bullet points read like those from a taxpayer group or pension reform association:

• “Between 2008 and 2011, UC’s overall workforce grew by 2%, while the number of managers grew by 9%. Almost a third of new hires were managers. Since 1991, the ranks of managers at UC have grown 252% while total staff has increased by 51%.
• “Similarly, individuals making more than $200,000 in base pay have skyrocketed by 77% since 2008, swelling payroll costs by an additional $286 million for less than 2,000 individuals.
• “An increase in high earners has been accompanied by rising executive entitlements. Perks doled out to approximately 300 executives in 2012 totaled $24 million, a 50% increase from $16 million in 2008.”

It even quotes the San Francisco Chronicle’s lone conservative columnist. “UC has a fundamental problem: Administrators apparently believe that they can work in academia for a state university subsidized by state taxpayers and get paid like the top 1.5 percent,” Debra Saunders wrote. “They have no obligation to pinch pennies, no duty to be careful with Other People’s Money.”

The only time UC administrators pinch pennies is when it comes to the janitors and groundskeepers that maintain the university’s world-famous campuses. Stenhouse’s members earn an average salary of just $36,000 per year — with 99 percent of the union’s members being income-eligible for some form of public assistance.

UC Administration: Strike is not productive

The UC President’s Office said that negotiations with AFSCME are ongoing and more bargaining sessions are set for later this month.

“As we’ve said all along, we believe a strike is not productive and hurts our patients and students,” said Shelly Meron, a spokeswoman for the University of California Office of the President. “These issues need to be resolved at the bargaining table.”

No doubt the UC President’s office is speaking metaphorically. It’s AFSCME 3299 members that are responsible for cleaning those bargaining tables every night at the swanky UC offices. In some cases, they’re cleaning approximately 50,600 square feet in one eight-hour shift.

“UC has reached five new contracts with six bargaining units in the past three months,” Meron added. “As UC President Janet Napolitano said in her remarks to the UC Regents , the university is committed to reaching long-term, multi-year agreements with all of our labor groups.”

AFSCME’s president notes the irony that Napolitano, the former secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, is leading the fight against workers. Napolitano earns $570,000 a year, more than the $400,000 a year made by President Obama. And much of it is paid for by the students. Since 2008, UC tuition has increased by $5,556, or 84 percent.

“It is sadly ironic that at a time when her old boss, President Obama, is working to address the problem of inequity across America, Janet Napolitano seems to be working just as hard to perpetuate it at the University of California,” said Lybarger.

UC’s growing administration, shrinking staff

In recent years, the University of California has grown top heavy.

“In the early ’90s, lawmakers and UC administrators began a 20-year ‘holiday’ during which they stopped making contributions to the UC Retirement Plan, hoping that the Internet-fueled stock-market craze would maintain adequate funding for retirees, who now face a $10 billion shortfall,” explained State Senator Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, in an op-ed in the Merced Sun-Star. “During those same 20 years, UC brought on far more administrators and middlemen than professors, teachers, or support staff – creating a high-priced bureaucracy that doesn’t benefit students, their parents or UC hospital patients.”

The numbers are astounding. The University of California has more than 9,000 senior administrators, according to the Sacramento Bee. That’s “more senior administrators than full-time, tenure-track faculty,” and up from 5,400 a decade ago. Stenhouse says that those numbers are growing, not shrinking.

Meanwhile, the number of support staff — the people who guarantee UC hospitals are providing safe care — is shrinking. AFSCME 3299 traces the spike in workplace injuries and growing numbers of fines against UC hospitals for patient safety deficiencies as a result of unsafe staffing levels.

“It takes a whole team to take care of the patient,” said Shirley Toy, a registered nurse at UC Davis Medical Center. “While the nurses were able to win a great contract, we recognize that AFSCME Service and Patient Care workers are an important part of the team, and they deserve that same fair contract too.”

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — Public contracts should always be subjected to stiff scrutiny. Without public scrutiny and oversight, spending other people’s money is too easy.

But a new Assembly bill would not only increase the amount of money California’s public universities and colleges could spend without adhering to the competitive bid process, but would also exempt state employees from felony charges of corruption.

AB 173 by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, was introduced in January. The bill had its first policy committee hearing in February. In April, after making it out of the policy committee, Weber amended AB 173, making major policy changes, including the corruption exemption.

AB 173 is scheduled for the Appropriations committee next, which is a fiscal committee.  The problem is that, with major policy changes, the bill should be scrutinized again in a policy committee.

Will members of the Assembly still vote to pass this bill without proper vetting?

What was changed?

The bill started out merely upping the amount of money university employees could spend without using the competitive bid process. But the amendment exempting state college and university employees from corruption prosecution is truly disturbing.

The bill was amended to read:

California public contract code 10522: “Any officer or employee of the University of California who corruptly performs any official act under this chapter to the injury of the university is guilty of a felony.”

Section 10523: “Any person contracting with the University of California by oral or written contract who corruptly permits the violation of any contract made under this chapter is guilty of a felony.”

Section 10524: “Persons convicted under Section 10522 or 10523 are also liable to the University of California for double the amount the university may have lost or be liable to lose by reason of the acts made crimes by this article.”

Section 10525: “Willful violation of any other provision of this chapter shall constitute a misdemeanor.”

Bill analysis

The only bill analysis was done April 24. Weber’s amendment is dated May 9, so the earlier analysis does not include the changes. The bill is scheduled to be in the Assembly Appropriations Committee May 15.

The analysis says, “Specifically, this bill:

“1) Allows the University of California to award contracts for the acquisition of goods, services, or information technology that have an estimated value of between $100,000 and less than $250,000 to a certified small business or a Disabled Veteran Business Enterprises if UC obtains price quotations from two or more certified small businesses or two or more DVBEs.

“a) This shall only apply to UC if the Regents of the University of California make the provision applicable by appropriate resolution.

“2) Allows the California State University to award contracts for the acquisition of goods, services, or information technology that have an estimated value greater than $5,000 and less than $250,000 to a certified small business or a DVBE if CSU obtains price quotations from two or more certified small businesses or two or more DVBEs.

“3) Allows the California Community Colleges to award contracts for the acquisition of goods, services, or information technology that have an estimated value greater than $5,000 and less than $250,000 to a certified small business or a DVBE if CCC obtains price quotations from two or more certified small businesses or two or more DVBEs.”

AB 173 passed the Assembly Accountability and Administrative Review Committee 12-0, but that was before it was amended.

Those who voted to pass AB 173: Assembly members K.H. “Katcho” Achadjian, Joan Buchanan, Ken Cooley, Jim Frazier, Jeff Gorell, Curt Hagman, Ian Charles Calderon, Bonnie Lowenthal, Jose Medina, Kristin Olsen, Sharon Quirk-Silva and Rudy Salas.

Would these same lawmakers vote to pass AB 173 again, knowing it has had such a dramatic policy change?

By Chris Reed

Will 2013 be the year that unionized faculty members at UC, CSU and the state’s community colleges finally figure out the threat that online education poses to their futures? If it is not this year, it is coming sometime soon. The same dynamics that have killed Borders, Tower Records and travel agencies, made newspapers far less lucrative and shaken up dozens of industries — easy, free/cheap online access to content and information — threaten bricks-and-mortar higher education.

“Look at the music industry. It’s been completely overturned by the Internet. My vision of the world is that everywhere will be like the music industry, but we’ve only seen it in a few places so far. Journalism is in the midst of the battle. And higher education is probably next,” is how George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen, an online education visionary, puts it.

Yes, K-12 is likely to live on in its present form because of the role schools play in the socialization process. Yes, Ivy League universities will continue to serve in their role as de facto gatekeepers for entry into Wall Street and high finance. But in Silicon Valley, the value that is placed on traditional credentials in most of the U.S. isn’t nearly as consistently strong. It is understood that learning can happen lots of ways, and hardly just in a formal classroom. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg? All college dropouts. This is not lost on the rest of California’s elites.

Jerry Brown on the bandwagon

Now more and more online education is free, and the power of education apps on iPads and other devices is becoming more obvious, and people have realized how much great educational content there is on YouTube. At the very least, we seem sure to move toward a model in which online learning is a big part of traditional education because of its efficiency and low cost.

And guess who agrees this is a great idea?

“Quoting poet Robert Frost on the benefits of innovative thinking, Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that three unusual math classes offered this spring at San Jose State University hold out hope for resolving one of California’s most troublesome problems: overcrowded classes.

“‘Online is part of the solution,’ Brown told a roomful of educators at San Jose State before quoting from a 1939 essay in which Frost said, ‘Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country.’

“Although online courses have been part of college curricula for years, the three new ones – at $150 each — suggest a new and possibly cheaper direction for students, California State University and Silicon Valley.”

But when will unions figure out that convenient and inexpensive inevitably eventually means fewer well-paying jobs? When will unions figure out that the U.S. student-loan debacle also feeds the crisis atmosphere around the old bricks-and-mortar norm?

For reasons I can’t comprehend, none of this has sunk in. The UC faculty associations, the CSU faculty union and the California Community Colleges faculty union don’t seem to grasp that if good and improving higher education is free or dirt-cheap online, if a conventional degree loses its gatekeeper status in many jobs, and if huge student loan defaults keep making headlines, the status quo could wither quickly.

Cowen and many other educators, economists, philanthropists and futurists have been writing about online education for years, especially its disruptive possibilities. By contrast, read the coverage of Jerry Brown’s push to have San Jose State and Udacity team up in offering online courses on the CSU faculty union website. It suggests that this could somehow be a good thing for faculty:

“CFA President Lil Taiz agrees on the importance of asking questions about student success:

“She said, ‘It’s good the CSU is actually testing out these methods and starting on a small scale. We must find out which online tools work well (or not), for what kinds of students, and for what kinds of subject matter. There is a lot to unpack in the pedagogy.’

“CFA and CSU managers have met on how the terms of work in the first semester of the pilot accord with the faculty contract.

“’You can’t have quality learning conditions for students—online or in a classroom—without professional working conditions for the faculty. Our contract is an important piece of making sure we have fairness, equity, and quality in all aspects of CSU teaching.’”

Clueless and oblivious in the faculty lounge

Wow. The lessons of recent history don’t appear to have sunk in at all with UC, CSU and CCC faculty if profs think online education’s arrival and increasing acceptance bodes well for them.

When Jerry Brown talks about the need for UC, CSU and CCC to be more efficient, he may not be talking only about pushing students to graduate in as little time as possible and not dawdle on campus. He may actually want them to become more efficient in the way other information businesses have become efficient — by taking full advantage of technology.

When will we see this trigger the modern equivalent of a Luddite reaction?

Soon, I suspect. When the liberal governor of California’s enthusiasm for online learning sinks in, the Lil Taizes of the Golden State will have no choice but to think about its long-term implications.

By Chris Reed

I think Gov. Jerry Brown’s good image in the media is driven much more by how competent/effective he seems in contrast to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis than by actual success in making California a better state. He is best defined as the tax collector for the public employee state, not as someone concerned about all Californians.

But I do think he’s much more frugal than the average Democrat, and he showed it again Tuesday:

By Chris Reed

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Fisher v. the University of Texas, the latest big affirmative-action case to reach SCOTUS. Conservative justices used their questions to establish how intentionally slippery and vague UT officials are in explaining how race is included as a factor in deciding admissions to their first-rate public university. Here’s a mainstream media account that doesn’t capture the verve with which John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy went after the University of Texas’ lawyer.

To students of California politics and academia, what should be especially interesting is how the justices deal with the claim that fuzzy, “holistic” judgments that lead to less-qualified minority students being admitted over much more-qualified white or Asian students are somehow less objectionable than hard quotas. In California, this “holistic” approach to college admissions was long ago revealed as an explicit attempt to game Proposition 209, the 1996 state law which bans racial quotas in state government.

The N.Y. Times figures out the UC ploy

And which journalistic outlet made this point best? The New York Times! Economics columnist David Leonhardt wrote a long piece in the Sunday magazine on Sept. 30, 2007, explaining how the UC system, especially UCLA, used fuzzy talk to advance a clearly racial agenda — one with far more benefits for the kids of affluent blacks and Hispanics than poor Asians (or poor whites).

Here was my take then:

“One of the aspects of the University of California system/affirmative action debate that consistently gets short shrift in media coverage is that in the old quota system, African-American and Latino students with less impressive scholastic records weren’t bumping white students, they were bumping Asian-American students. So Asian-Americans paid the biggest price for a policy that has as its central rationale the need to remedy the dominant white culture’s historic discrimination against minorities. Huh?

“So when I saw the long New York Times magazine article … I wasn’t sure what to expect. Here’s what I got: a 4,800-word article explaining and implicitly praising the possibly illegal ways that UC officials got around Proposition 209 and its ban on racial considerations in admission.

“I understand why some people might think this is a good thing. But I cannot understand why Leonhardt would mention the following pretty much in passing:

“Even as the number of low-income black freshmen [at UCLA] soared this year, the overall number of low-income freshmen fell somewhat. The rise in low-income black students was accompanied by a fall in low-income Asian students — not a decline in well-off students. So under the old quota system, Asian-American students in general paid the price for society’s attempts to atone for white racism. Now under the new surreptitious affirmative-action program, poor Asian-American students are paying the highest price. If this is social justice, count me out.”

The Connerly perspective

Here is part of Ward Connerly’s take on Leonhardt’s telling essay on race and UC:

“‘The most useful lesson to be learned from Leonhardt’s article is that it would be prudent for those on both sides of the race preferences in college admissions debate to work toward some acceptable compromise for the good of our nation. …  We must also understand the national imperative of providing access to low income students and to those who are confronted with disadvantages that impede their ability to lead productive lives and to demonstrate their potential value to American society. It is not in our national interest to have hordes of people standing on the sidelines seething with anger because they cannot obtain a ticket to gain access to a better life in America. That ticket for most of us is higher education. Thus, those of us who believe in academic meritocracy must broaden how we view ‘merit.’ That largely means empowering admissions officers to search for talent from among all students and not just the “A” average, high SAT students. In short, socioeconomic ‘affirmative action,’ in a colorblind admissions process, can be that compromise.”

One factor or the factor?

This crucial detail in how affirmative action, disguised or otherwise, works was a focus of Justice Alito in Wednesday’s questioning:

“JUSTICE ALITO: Well, I thought that the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help students who come from underprivileged backgrounds, but you make a very different argument that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.  The top 10 percent plan admits lots of  African Americans — lots of Hispanics and a fair number of African Americans. But you say, well, it’s — it’s faulty, because it doesn’t admit enough African Americans and Hispanics who come from privileged backgrounds. And you specifically have the example of  the child of successful professionals in Dallas.  Now, that’s your argument? If you have -­you have an applicant whose parents are — let’s say they’re — one of them is a partner in your law firm in Texas, another one is a part — is another corporate lawyer. They have income that puts them in the top 1 percent of earners in the country, and they have -­parents both have graduate degrees. They deserve a leg-up against, let’s say, an Asian or a white applicant whose parents are absolutely average in terms of education and income?”

Like Jews and the Ivy League in the 1930s

Alito tied the University of Texas’ attorney in knots. I suspect the U.S. Supreme Court will end up limiting or killing affirmative action on a 5-3 vote next June (Elena Kagan recused herself). If that is what happens, California’s long, miserable record on affirmative action will have helped drive its demise.

This record goes back well before Prop. 209. By a quarter-century ago, it was apparent that innocent Asian-Americans were the victims of affirmative action in UC admissions, not historically oppressive whites. This is from a September 1987 Los Angeles Times story:

“There may be a parallel between what is happening to Asian-Americans now and what happened to Jews in the 1920s and 1930s at some Ivy League schools. … And, like Jews before them, the members of the new model minority contend that they have begun to bump up against artificial barriers to their advancement.

“Casual inspection of the Berkeley campus … makes any suggestion of anti-Asian bias seem implausible. Asians represent 6.7% of California’s population, but they account for 25.5% of the Berkeley student body. …

“But … the percentage of Asians in the student body might be even higher, the critics contend, if admissions were still based strictly on merit. Since the mid-1970s, both Americans of Asian descent and immigrants from Asia have so outperformed Caucasian, black and Latino students in high schools that universities have manipulated admissions criteria to hold back the Asian influx, say the critics.

“‘As soon as the percentages of Asian students began reaching double digits at some universities, suddenly a red light went on,’ said Ling-Chi Wang, a peppery Chinese-born professor of ethnic studies at Berkeley and one of the university’s severest critics. ‘Since then, Asian-American admissions rates have either stabilized or declined … university officials see the prevalence of Asians as a problem.'”

Affirmative action is a much easier sell when it is built on abstract talk about the historical effects of white racism. But when its reality is punishing another ethnic group in the name of atoning for white racism, it looks shabby — or, to use Chief Justice Roberts’ term, “sordid.”

This ugliness first became clear in California a generation ago.