Leaders of the University of California system appear strongly inclined to drop the requirement that applicants to UC campuses take the SAT or ACT test, heeding the argument that it hurts the chances of Latino and African-American students to be admitted.

A faculty task force is expected to deliver a report on whether the mandate should be retained in February. But UC Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who is also the chancellor of the California Community College system, has already called for scrapping the standardized test requirement. So has UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Michael Brown, the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs for the UC system and its 10 campuses. No one who works for UC appears to be standing up, at least publicly, for the testing mandate.

The SAT/ACT test has for decades been criticized for alleged cultural bias against minorities. But that claim is strongly disputed by the College Board, which administers the test and says it has long since fine-tuned the language of questions in the test so that they don’t presume knowledge of white cultural norms. Some academic studies back up this claim of neutrality and find that SATs are a better indicator of college success than grades.

But one of the SAT critiques offered by Ortiz, the regent, is mostly undisputed. It’s that low-income Latino and African-American families are unable to pay for the vast variety of test-preparation classes used by middle-income and wealthy families to help their children. “Perhaps the tests were well-intended, but they are perpetuating a wealth advantage and undervaluing low-income students,” he wrote earlier this year.

The Princeton Review test-prep company, for example, “guarantees” that its 30-hour, $1,599 class will lead to at least a 1400 score on the basic SAT. A 1400 is at the 95th percentile of the approximately 2 million SATs taken each year.

Meanwhile, upper-income families have long been willing to spend whatever it takes to help their children on standardized tests, in particular by hiring specialized English and math tutors who charge up to $450 an hour.

But the College Board pushes back on this front as well, saying it provides free test prep online that helps tens of thousands of students each year.

Nonprofit behind SAT defends UC admission practices

The New Jersey-based nonprofit is so worried that a UC decision to drop the SAT would be copied by many other U.S. universities – as a recent USA Today analysis predicts – that it is offering increasingly thorough defenses of how UC makes its admission decisions.

According to an EdSource report, Jessica Howell, vice president of research at the College Board, appeared at a symposium on the SAT two weeks ago in Berkeley in which she suggested that critics of the test exaggerated its importance to UC admission officers, who consider 14 factors in evaluating prospective students.

“Any effective standardized measure that is one of those factors is going to reveal underlying inequities in our society,” she said. “As researchers, we shouldn’t stop using them, or measuring them because we don’t like what they say. … [Instead,] we should continue to have a discussion about solutions to close the gaps that we see.”

The comment reflects the College Board’s argument that if SAT critics think it’s unfair that students from wealthy families with more resources do better than students from poor families, it’s not the test that’s unfair. It’s American life – the rich can help their kids more than other families.

To address this issue, the College Board proposed also giving SAT test takers an “adversity score” in May so colleges could quickly determine if a student came from difficult circumstances. But the plan was dropped in August after if faced harsh criticism that it was a facile attempt to label students from wildly different backgrounds with a simple number.

CA cities’ pension costs rise to meet CalPERS expectations

Good morning! TGIT. We begin this morning with pensions.

After two years of minuscule investment returns, the nation’s largest state pension fund – the California Public Employees’ Retirement System – has once again lowered its expected rates of return.

Even some CalPERS officials and consultants argue the lowered financial expectations don’t go far enough to shore up the fund’s financial position, as it now only has 68 percent of the assets needed to pay all its future retirement promises.

This end-of-year board vote to reduce expected investment returns from 7.5 percent to 7 percent portends difficulties for local agencies that provide pensions to their public employees through the CalPERS system.

Lowered earnings estimates mean these agencies will have to contribute significantly higher payments to the pension fund to defray the costs of these benefit packages. 

California local governments already have faced 50-percent hikes in their CalPERS payments over the past several years, which has led local officials and pension reformers to increasingly fear a continuing cycle of service cut-backs and tax increases.

Indeed, there was some pressure at CalPERS to push the expected return rates down to the 6 percent range, but some officials expressed concern about what this would mean, cost wise, for member agencies.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news: 

• “San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer has quietly started discussing a potential run for governor with advisers and prospective donors, according to a former Los Angeles mayor and sources familiar with Faulconer’s deliberations.” Politico has the story. 

• “California’s presidential primary could find itself squarely in the middle of the Super Tuesday political sweepstakes in 2020 under a proposal being introduced this week at the state Capitol.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• “The University of California will seek to raise undergraduate tuition and fees next year by nearly 3 percent, ending a six-year tuition freeze that followed steep rate hikes during the economic recession,” reports The Sacramento Bee. 

• “U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, wants companies that recruit highly skilled foreign workers to follow new standards aimed at making it more difficult to exploit the visa program that allows them to work in the U.S. Issa on Wednesday introduced legislation backed by multiple Democrats and Republicans that changes the requirements for the visa program known as H-1B, which was designed so foreign workers with specialty skills can fill jobs in the U.S. when qualified Americans aren’t available.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

Legislature:

• In at 9 a.m.

Gov. Brown:

• On vacation in Hawaii until Sunday, according to The Sacramento Bee. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @DaytonPubPolicy

The government of the state that is home to Silicon Valley and is widely considered the global leader in innovative technology continues to be plagued by problems with computers.

On Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles reported things were close to normal after a chaotic week of mass computer failures, with just three DMV offices still offline. At one point earlier in the week, more than 120 of the the DMV’s 188 offices statewide were unable to handle such basic tasks as processing requests for new licenses or vehicle registrations.

Both the DMV’s main computer and its primary backup computer suffered what officials called “meltdowns.” In post mortems on the problem, experts outside state government expressed disbelief that both the main and backup computer were directly connected and housed in the same room, making both susceptible to the same risks from overheating, hacking and other problems.

“If their definition of disaster recovery is having primary and backup systems in the same hardware chassis, that’s grotesque,” one expert told The Los Angeles Times.

IT problems with veterans, CalPERS, UC and more

But to followers of the state government, the DMV’s information technology headaches were only the latest in a long line of embarrassing, basic problems.

In June, a report from the state auditor’s office said the California Department of Veterans Affairs had wasted $28 million on an erratic computer system that was supposed to process services and pay bills for care provided to state veterans.

In 2015, the Sacramento Bee reported that attempts to upgrade the state’s payroll and court system computers had been shut down with nothing to show for $850 million in spending. Similar attempts to upgrade payroll computers of the University of California’s campuses and hospitals were reported to be $50 million over budget and two years behind schedule.

In 2013, unemployment benefits for 150,000 residents went unpaid over the Labor Day weekend because of problems with new computers used by the state’s Employment Development Department.

In 2012, the California Public Employees’ Retirement system was besieged by complaints from state retirees whose health insurance policies weren’t being renewed because of problems with CalPERS’ new $514 million computer system.

In 2009, state Controller John Chiang said he was unable to comply with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s order to furlough state workers and reduce their pay during a budget crisis because the state’s computers were based on a programming language from the 1950s — COBOL — and couldn’t readily be reprogrammed.

Chiang faced charges from Republicans that he was just trying to insulate government union workers from the pain of the budget crisis. But John Thomas Flynn, hired by Gov. Pete Wilson as the state’s first chief information officer, said in a 2009 interview with me that he was inclined to believe Chiang.

Candid self-assessment is not the norm

Flynn has described California government’s computer failures as being the direct result of a culture in which no one is punished when bad things happen and candid self-assessment is rate.

Sacramento-based computer consultant Alex Castro offered a similar observation last year to Bee State Worker columnist Jon Ortiz. He said when an organizational cultures refuse to acknowledge their shortcomings, “they run into brick walls: bad leadership, bad tech people, lack of vision, overestimation of (in-house) skill sets.”

CA’s majority-minority electorate heads to polls

Good morning. Happy Monday. By this point, you’ve no doubt heard that this election is historic for many reasons. However, one reason that doesn’t get mentioned as much is the historic nature of the electorate itself.

As early ballots arrive in mailboxes this week, Golden State voters will arrive at a symbolic and substantial demographic landmark: a so-called majority-minority electorate.

Despite a clear trend since the 1990s toward political dominance by Democrats, the longer term implications of the demographic shift have remained shrouded in mystery.

On the one hand, in-state Republicans have weathered a period of fracture likely to end eventually in a new but familiar rough equilibrium between the two major parties. On the other hand, nonwhite voting patterns, especially in recent immigrant families, have in some respects had a limited impact on California politics. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “Big cities throughout California continue to be roiled by police issues. Oakland and San Francisco have gotten the most attention because of high-profile police chiefs being forced out over a sex scandal involving an underage prostitute and because of unarmed African Americans being killed by officers, respectively. … But the two iconic Bay Area cities are hardly alone in having police problems.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• “Nationwide foreclosure settlement was a victory for California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, but an imperfect one,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

• “Seven in 10 University of California workers in clerical, administrative and support services struggle to put adequate food on the table, according to a new Occidental College study.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• “With Donald Trump’s deepening warnings about a ‘rigged’ presidential campaign, and renewing doubts about the legitimacy of the democratic process, California’s election chief said Sunday that he has great faith in the state’s county election officials and its thousands of volunteer poll workers,” reports The Sacramento Bee. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @AlexSamatorchen

UC’s Napolitano fights for free speech on campuses

Good morning! No doubt we’re all just killing time until the vice presidential debate tonight, so we’ll do our part, starting with a story about the First Amendment. 

With a single op-ed, UC chief Janet Napolitano has become an unlikely ally of conservative and traditionalist critics of the speech-policing movement among campus crusaders nationwide. 

In a Boston Globe op-ed entitled “It’s time to free speech on campus again,” Napolitano unburdened herself of judgments she appeared to have been forming over the past several years in the hot seat of one of the country’s most progressive university systems.

“As president of the University of California system, I write to show how far we have moved from freedom of speech on campuses to freedom from speech,” she wrote. “If it hurts, if it’s controversial, if it articulates an extreme point of view, then speech has become the new bête noire of the academy. Speakers are disinvited, faculty are vilified, and administrators like me are constantly asked to intervene.”

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “While some legislators may find humor in (passing resolutions), taxpayer groups and other critics say they are no laughing matter. They argue that they have become excessive and costly, and that there is little public benefit from them,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle.

• “The push to legalize pot for all has deeply divided the medical marijuana community,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

• “Blocked by lawmakers at the 11^th hour and facing a fiscal emergency, the State Bar of California has gone directly to the state Supreme Court seeking authority to levy dues on thousands of attorneys. The Bar, which filed the request Friday, said it would go out of business early next year without the money generated by the dues. The Bar has about 500 employees and an annual budget of $146 million.” Capitol Weekly has the story.

• ICYMI: CalWatchdog highlights some of the most significant legislation from the most-recent legislative session. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December. Although the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture will meet today in Bodega Bay to talk crabs.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @change4solar

After weathering unprecedented criticism for its revenue-driven admissions policies, the University of California system has appeared to shift officials’ opinion back in its favor, unveiling a modest but symbolic uptick in admissions for in-state students — with an emphasis on certain racial and ethnic minorities.  

The increase in admitted in-staters was broadly distributed, but did not accompany a rollback in a parallel trend — amped up out-of-state enrollment — that had rankled advocates of greater in-state admissions. “Each of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses also admitted more freshmen and transfer applicants for enrollment this fall,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “At the same time, UC continued its practice of increasing admissions to out-of-state freshman, who receive no tuition break and pay about three times the tuition that Californians pay.” The schools also allocated $3 million for student food aid, responding to a survey conducted in spring 2015 that suggested some “42 percent of UC students struggled with poor quality food and insufficient sustenance in the past year,” reported UC Santa Barbara’s Daily Nexus.

Turning a corner

The changes arose from a long-in-the-works deal, hammered out between University of California President Janet Napolitano and Gov. Jerry Brown, granting the UCs “an additional $25 million in exchange for enrolling roughly 5,000 more California freshmen this fall than last fall,” the Chronicle reported. “In-state tuition will also remain at a flat $12,192 for the fifth straight year, but will rise in 2017 at the rate of inflation.”

The in-state admissions boost appeared to serve a dual purpose, also keeping critics of a different kind at bay. Included in the incoming class are “the most African Americans and Latinos since voters banned affirmative action two decades ago,” the Los Angeles Times reported, calling the outcome “progress that is likely to ease pressure from state legislators to boost diversity at UC’s most elite campuses.”

“Critics have complained that non-Californians have seemed to edge out equally or more qualified state residents at UCLA and Berkeley, with African Americans and Latinos disproportionately admitted to less competitive campuses at UC Merced and Riverside.”

A complex game

Gathering outrage among Californians regardless of party led to support in Sacramento for a bipartisan inquiry and a sweeping audit. Its results “reinforced what many California parents already suspected: On a constant hunt for more revenue, the prestigious University of California system gave favorable admissions treatment to thousands of higher-paying out-of-state and foreign students, to the detriment of Californians,” as the New York Times recalled.

Auditors reported that “the university had tripled its population of nonresident undergraduate students, reducing the percentage of resident applicants it admitted to 62 percent from 77 percent, while increasing the percentage of nonresidents it admitted to 56 percent from 48 percent,” the Times noted separately. “The nonresidents included thousands of students who were less qualified than admitted Californians, the audit said.”

Instead of provoking a deeper crisis, however, the harsh news cleared the way for a remarkably rapid settlement. Notably, Assemblyman Mike Gipson, D-Carson, “the legislator who requested the audit — and castigated UC on the results — welcomed the new admissions numbers,” the Los Angeles Times observed. There were hints that legislators — especially Democrats — were eager to declare victory during an election year with an unusually populist flavor on both sides of the political spectrum. California tuition had briefly but prominently become a wedge issue in the national Democratic primary for the party’s presidential nomination. With the perception gathering that Golden State discontent was a canary in the coal mine amid a “broader, fundamental breakdown in the traditional operation of the public university,” the UC saga supplied “much of the impetus behind the announcement by Hillary Clinton […] that she was embracing a large part of Bernie Sanders’s proposal to provide free tuition at in-state public colleges,” according to the New York Times. 

Assembly speaker, transparency proponents spar

Good morning!

A war of words erupted in recent days between the proponents of a transparency ballot measure and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, after members of the Legislature and legislative counsel dismissed the measure as full of “ambiguities” and introduced their own watered-down versions.

In a scathing letter, the Lakewood Democrat accused the measure’s proponents of allowing their “passion” for the measure “blind” them to the “shortcomings that may be obvious to others,” painting them as unwilling to work with the Legislature.

But Hold Politicians Accountable — the committee formed by former Republican legislator Sam Blakeslee and Republican donor Charles T. Munger, Jr., backing the California Legislative Transparency Act — fired back that the measure was “refined by three distinguished attorneys, including a Constitutional scholar,” and independent vetting by cosponsors, none of whom found fault.  

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• Sweeping reforms of the state’s embattled Public Utilities Commission were announced Monday, which, subject to legislative approval, “would give the attorney general new authority to enforce limitations on private communications between PUC personnel and utility executives — a key issue after an email scandal revealed numerous improper contacts,” writes The San Jose Mercury News.
• “In the wake of a scathing state audit released in March, the University of California mounted a $158,000 publicity campaign to dispute claims that its admissions policies had disadvantaged resident students,” writes The Sacramento Bee.
• “The two groups at the center of a violent Sacramento rally that left at least seven people with stab wounds on the Capitol grounds Sunday represent a marriage of the past and future of white supremacist organizations, experts and law enforcement officials said,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
• How bad is water management in California? The Capitol Weekly answers that question. 

Assembly:

• Full day of hearings. 

Senate: 

• Full day of hearings. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @LostBookshop @KernQuirks

A protracted dispute in California about education funding for the UC system has sharpened over a new bill in Sacramento that would require big new hikes in tuition for out-of-state students. 

Assembly Bill 1711, introduced by Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, sailed through the Assembly, reflecting a broad-based reaction to a brutal audit of the UC’s revenue practices. “State Auditor Elaine Howle found that UC was enrolling a higher number of less-qualified nonresident students to boost revenue at the expense of California students,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “According to the report, nonresident enrollment exploded by 82 percent between the 2010-11 and 2013-14 academic years. The report further stated the UC system didn’t do enough to cut budgets before turning to recruiting out-of-state students.”

What’s more, over a broader 10 year stretch, “admissions of out-of-state undergraduate students soared 432 percent, a period in which in-state admissions only increased 10 percent,” as the U-T San Diego editorial board observed. “More than 4,000 California students ‘whose academic scores met or exceeded all of the median scores of nonresidents whom the university admitted to the campus of their choice’ were denied admission to UC,” according to Howle’s report. 

Medina’s bill would open up 30,000 additional spaces for in-state students at the University of California system over a period of six years. “To offset the lost revenue, the bill would raise out-of-state tuition to more than $54,000, a price few can afford,” as KCRA Sacramento noted. 

“In 2007, nonresident students made up just 6 percent of new enrollees. By 2015, that number was up to 20 percent,” the channel observed. “Out-of-state students pay an average of $38,000 per year for tuition and fees; in-state students pay more than $13,000.”

Policy and populism

Not just out-of-staters but out-of-country students have wound up in the policy hot seat. In fact, California has become a focal point for national candidates seeking a handle on the populist vote this election season. Campaigning in California, for instance, Hillary Clinton recently threw her support behind the bill, telling voters gathered at a Mexican restaurant she approved of limiting the number of foreign students. “[W]e have got to get back to using public colleges and university for that they were intended,” said Clinton, according to CNN. “If it is in California, for the children in California. If it is in New York, for the children in New York.”

Yet the University of California’s reliance on out-of-state and foreign tuition has not grown as severe as other state schools. “Students from other states and countries have flooded into the UC system’s campuses since the recession, smoothing over gaping budget holes with their tuition payments,” the San Jose Mercury News allowed. “Although they are a much smaller proportion of the UC student body than at the University of Michigan, where about 43 percent of new freshmen hail from out of state, nonresidents now make up 21 percent of last fall’s freshman class, up from 7 percent just five years earlier and about 15.5 percent of all UC undergraduates.”

University pushback

Despite the strong push for change, opposition within the UCs themselves has begun to mount: “The sweeping proposal has alarmed university leaders and some students, who fear it will cause further budget instability and spur talented students from other states and countries, an integral part of campus life, to go elsewhere,” the Mercury News detailed. “In three years, UC’s out-of-state tuition would surpass what Stanford currently charges: $45,729. Including housing, campus fees and other expenses, the annual cost of education for UC’s out-of-state students would approach $70,000 by 2019.”

In an effort to stave off criticism, UC President Janet Napolitano — who not long ago went to the wall in extended negotiations over tuition issues with Gov. Jerry Brown — released a substantial statement. In keeping with her protective posture toward the UCs, Napolitano sought to portray the schools as doing what it took to withstand serious financial pressure amid policy uncertainty. 

Last Monday, UC President Janet Napolitano reportedly told Katehi to quit or be fired. She cited evidence of abuse of power as well as a series of controversies about Katehi moonlighting without permission and her pursuing costly damage control efforts related to a campus police officer’s pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters at UC Davis in 2011. 

But in another in a series of unusual decisions, Katehi defied Napolitano, leading to her suspension. The electrical engineer’s strategy appears to be intended to force the university to pursue a formal investigation before it can move to oust her. While that inquiry gears up, Katehi and her allies have launched a public-relations counteroffensive, with her attorney claiming she’s being “scapegoated.”

‘Implicit gender bias’ behind suspension?

Meanwhile, two UC Davis professors claim she is only the latest UC woman executive to be a victim of sexism and double standards.

“Women in leadership positions are often the victims of intense implicit bias and, as a consequence, of the phenomenon of ‘single storyism’ — the reduction of their actions to a simple narrative that appeals to the biases of a broad section of society, in this case implicit gender bias and women being incompetent for their position. Whatever they say or do in response is twisted to fit the ‘single story,’” wrote Linda F. Bisson and Rachael E. Goodhue.

That claim may be tough to sustain, given that Napolitano is behind her ouster, with her name on the Wednesday letter that outlined UC’s concerns:

In the letter, Napolitano said UC would investigate the employment of her daughter-in-law, including raises that boosted her pay by more than $50,000 over two and a half years. She also expressed concern about whether Katehi made “material misstatements” about her role in UC Davis spending $175,000 on an attempt to scrub online search results of negative stories about the school – and Katehi herself – resulting from the 2011 pepper spraying of students.

That’s from a Sacramento Bee round-up of the problems that led to Katehi’s forced exit.

Katehi admirers unhappy about her woes

While the largest UC student group welcomed Katehi’s suspension after calling for her firing on April 15, the Bee noted that not everyone was happy. Many Sacramento business and civil leaders are admirers of what Katehi has done at Davis, 15 miles west of the state capital.

Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks said “the university had a ‘substantial and growing’ deficit that could threaten its long-term stability,” according to the New York Times, “and that it needed to reduce expenses and raise revenues to maintain its position as a premier public institution.”

Dirks indicated that a new committee would “develop proposals to address the $150 million deficit, or about 6 percent of Berkeley’s $2.4 billion budget, including looking at reducing staff, particularly in administration, and using online courses, real estate and branding to bring in new revenue,” the paper added.

A broader problem

The embarrassing revelations reverberated nationally amid an ongoing debate over the value of a college education in today’s cultural and economic situation. But in California, where Gov. Jerry Brown had entered into a protracted and at times acrimonious debate with UC president Janet Napolitano, news of Berkeley’s massive shortfall led observers to speculate whether the delicately negotiated agreement the two power players finally settled on would hold. Napolitano swiftly announced her support for Dirks’ plan, the Times reported, “while Mr. Brown declined to comment on it.”

Berkeley’s woes have come to epitomize the difficult situations colleges often find — or place — themselves in. “One of the campus’s primary sources of revenue — tuition and fees — has been frozen for undergraduate students for the last five years,” the Daily Californian noted, obliquely referencing the negotiated plan to keep UC tuition at current rates for in-state students through the 2017-2018 school year. “Meanwhile, inflation continues to inch upward, and costs beyond the university’s control have continued to rise, all in the context of an era of public disinvestment, according to campus sources.”

Sacred cows

The crisis has turned out to be so bad that the campus’s athletic programs could wind up on the chopping block. “Even Cal Athletics, which many perceive to be the campus’s biggest revenue generator, will not escape budgetary review,” added the Daily Californian. “Intercollegiate Athletics has run a deficit in recent years, with even more strain put on its pocketbooks by debt obligation — about $18.1 million annually until 2032 — accumulated after upgrading Memorial Stadium.”

Campuses across the country have come under fire in recent years as critics have questioned the impact of lavish facilities, prized sports teams, and ballooning administrative staff on tuition costs. At the same time, state support for schools in states like California has decreased. “The amount of money the state gave the University of California, as measured per student, fell from $16,000 in 2007-08, before the recession, to $10,000 in 2011-12,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Meanwhile, tuition more than doubled between 2002 and 2012, according to a 2014 analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California.”

In an effort to stave off another mutiny among alumni, Dirks “ruled out eliminating any teams,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle — “a subject of sensitivity in the past. When the university tried to cut the men’s baseball team in 2011, it prompted an uproar among alumni who eventually helped raise enough money to rescue it.”

Teams weren’t the only special groups taken off the chopping block. Although Dirks has insisted that “every aspect of Berkeley’s operations and organizational structure will be under consideration,” the Chronicle noted, he conceded in a recent news conference that “we’re not laying off faculty.”

In the red

To stay afloat, UC Berkeley has resorted to a supervised emergency bailout, with strings attached, from the UC system as a whole. The campus will “receive at least $200 million in loans and debt restructuring from University of California headquarters,” the Chronicle reported, “and will spend the next several months working with UC officials, faculty and the campus’ fundraising foundation to identify cuts and brainstorm ways to attract more cash.”

Plans have already been in the works sketching out exactly what that months-long process will entail. “Berkeley will scrutinize its entire workforce, redesign some academic programs, step up fundraising, expand online course offerings and take other steps to cut costs and increase revenue,” according to the Los Angeles Times.