The Candidate

As readers of this blog will know, UC is looking for a new president to replace Mark Yudof who is resigning in August.  What you may not know is that there is talk in university circles that the next president should be someone atypical with political skills rather than an academic. Such thinking characterizes not only the UC search but similar searches at other public universities.  An example is columnist suggestion that UC should choose Gray Davis:

...(D)oesn’t this sound like a job for Gray Davis? Say what you want about California’s only recalled governor, but he knows politics and state government. He’s got the brains and academic credentials to raise universities. And he’s a former chief of staff to Brown. And you want to talk fundraising? Davis was so effective as a fundraiser that it became a political liability for him. He’s also the right personality for this moment. And that personality is prickly. He’ll yell at people who get in his way. That’s usually not an effective way to lead, but the UC badly needs someone who won’t be stepped on...

Full op ed at http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2013/04/gray-davis-for-uc-president/

Would the Regents agree? I think the general idea - not necessarily Davis - is circulating at that level.

Nobody here

The LA Times today carries an article about the search for a new UC president to replace Mark Yudof who is resigning in August. It's a slam on the current crop of UC campus chancellors and UCOP administrators since apparently the Regents think they have no feasible inside candidates.

...The search is secretive; officials say the selection process is a confidential personnel matter. Leading the effort is a committee of 10 UC regents, including Gov. Jerry Brown and student and alumni representatives. Its members declined to comment and so did the executive search firm—Isaacson, Miller. Matthew Haney, executive director of the UC Student Assn., said he expected the next UC president to come from outside the state, as did Yudof, who previously led state university systems in Texas and Minnesota. (Yudof is retiring in late August after five years in the UC job.) "It doesn't seem as if [the UC regents] have elevated internal administrators for systemwide leadership to prepare them for this role," Haney said. The campus chancellors "don't have a significant or noticeable systemwide leadership presence," he said, and other top administrators don't have the national prestige that the faculty seeks in a president...

Full article at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-president-20130415,0,7690756.story

So they will search beyond UC:

More on Yudof Private Thoughts

In an earlier post, we reproduced part of a Daily Bruin article that dealt with UC President Mark Yudof's comments on "privatizing" the UCLA Anderson School of Management at the March 7 IMED Seminar.  Below is a link to what he actually said (audio with a still picture).  Yudof's comments were more ambiguous than the news item suggested.  First, the interviewer, Prof. Lee Goodlick, used the word "privatize" without defining it.  (The P-word hasn't been used in actual proposals regarding the Anderson School; "self-sufficiency" is preferred.  In addition, the latest version of the proposal referred only to the MBA program and not the entire School.)  Yudof interpreted it to mean a stand-alone school which was affiliated with UCLA but more or less autonomous.  Using that definition, Yudof said it was incompatible with a public university, in part because a privatized school might disregard such public goals as access.  Second, he said he could imagine a situation in which Anderson paid more of its own bills and thereby freed up taxpayer monies for other departments.  Third, he noted the issue is before various levels of faculty review. The interviewer joked that the process might take a hundred years. Yudof said he hoped it would be faster. But, of course, after the end of August, it will be some other UC president's problem.

The actual Anderson portion of the interview can be heard below:

The earlier post is at:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/03/mark-yudof.html

Mark Yudof's Not-So-Private Thoughts

"Yudof... said he opposes the privatization of parts of the UC, specifically mentioning the UCLA Anderson School of Management, which had been considering becoming financially independent from UC funds. He said he is concerned that privatization would shift priorities away from those of a public university."

Full story from yesterday's Daily Bruin at:
http://dailybruin.com/2013/03/08/mark-yudof-featured-speaker-at-institute-for-molecular-medicine-seminar/

Now he tells us!

Yeah, sure. We believe you, Mark.

From the LA Times:

...Governor Jerry Brown suddenly became active in UC policies and Mark Yudof resigns. Is there any connection?
There is really no connection because I've been pondering [resignation] for a long time. The governor is extraordinarily intelligent, he is extraordinarily passionate. It does require some energy to respond to his ideas, but I'm fine with that. That would not be a reason to move on. If anything, I have some confidence that out of this passion of the governor, some very positive things for the university can come...

Of course, we believe you, Mark...

...But there were the good old days:

You can read the full LA Times interview with Yudof at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-yudof-20130203,0,7317927.story

Listen to Radio Interview with President Yudof on UC Future

Yesterday, KPCC's Airtalk with Larry Mantle featured an interview with the heads of the three segments of higher ed in California: President Mark Yudof of UC, Chancellor Timothy White of CSU (and until recently Chancellor of UC-Riverside), and Brice Harris, Chancellor of the community colleges. The full broadcast ran about three quarters of an hour.  I have pulled out just the Yudof excerpts which run about one third as long.

As blog readers will know, Yudof has resigned as UC president, effective August.  So he may now be a bit freer to say what he wants - but, of course, not totally free since he continues to serve and will have to deal with the governor for several more months. He discusses tuition (frozen for now), pensions (which he cites as the major rising cost factor for UC), the rising student-to-teacher ratio (which he says is why other costs have not risen), and faculty pay (which he says is below what private institutions pay but faculty at UC do it for the social good).  He stresses that the state doesn't pay for research which brings in outside funding.  Also discussed are elitism, the $10,000 degree pushed by various governors, state support, online education and larger classes.  Since the state won't pay and tuition can't rise, the only solution is some mix of larger classes, online ed, transfers from community colleges, credits for work experience.  Will this hurt quality? He hedges but says that's what is coming.  Yudof is annoyed, and says so, about media complaints concerning high executive pay.  UC pays less than the privates, you have to pay attention to the labor market, and that there is the social good argument. (Administrators, like faculty, work for less than market due to the social good.)  He would like to see UC take 30,000-50,000 students more than it does due to population increases and the rising Latino population.  And he would like to see regular faculty do more undergraduate teaching.

You can hear Yudof's comments at the link below:

Peter Schrag on Yudof Retirement

Peter Schrag, a former columnist for the Sacramento Bee, wrote an op ed about President Yudof's retirement.  Excerpt:

...All told, the UC is in far better shape now than when he came. But it's unlikely that it can ever again exercise the kind of influence, both in this country and abroad, that it did in its glory days under Clark Kerr in the 1950s and 1960s. It was an era when new UC campuses and new programs were created one after another, when students paid low "fees" and not tuition, and when California adopted a master plan that promised every Californian who could benefit from it a place somewhere in its three-tiered higher education system. UC was that rarest of rare institution, a tax-supported world-class research university that was elitist and democratic at the same time.

Ever since he came, Yudof promised to resist privatization, but privatization has come in any number of ways: in spiking tuition; in recruiting and admissions policies increasing the percentage of foreign and out-of-state students and the high tuition they pay; in the pursuit of industry contracts. UC is still the nation's premier public university. But in its attempt to keep pace with Harvard and Stanford, it's becoming more like Michigan and the University of Virginia, nominally public universities that started down the road to privatization even before UC did.

Yudof had been thinking about retirement well before he made his announcement last week. But it's hard to imagine that Gov. Jerry Brown's muscle flexing at recent meetings of the regents – even his pointed reminder that he is the legally designated board president – did anything to encourage Yudof to stay...

Full op ed at
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/25/5139675/uc-president-had-unheralded-victories.html

Bottom line: We'll miss him when he's gone:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/25/5139675/uc-president-had-unheralded-victories.html#storylink=cpy

Why the Resignation?

They don't seem to be looking in the same direction.

President Yudof resigned shortly after last week's Regents meeting.  Undoubtedly, the resignation was planned earlier so nothing that specifically happened at the meeting could have been the triggering event.  The official press release mentioned health, family, etc., obliquely.

While the Regents meeting was not the trigger, I would guess that what happened at the meeting was no surprise and could have been anticipated by anyone who heard or attended prior meetings.  The governor wants to take a bigger role than have prior governors.  That's fine by itself, but the question is how should that role be played out.  There can't be two presidents of UC.  (We noted in an earlier blog that the governor at one point at an earlier meeting said he was the President of UC, although he is President of the Board of Regents.)  But there seemed to be little push-back from the Regents about the governor's intentions.  If I were Yudof in that circumstance, I would quit, too.

A key role of the Regents is providing a degree of insulation from state politics for UC.  Obviously, that insulation can never be total.  Indeed, the fact that the Regents include key political leaders as ex officio members suggests the ambiguity.  Nonetheless, issues such as online education, while sexy and of obvious interest to the governor, are ultimately getting close to crossing the fine line of micro-management.  There need to be improvements in UC management, to be sure, but micro-managing is not one of them.

If there is to be a new relationship between UC and the state, it cannot be developed by the governor, or the president of UC, or even the Regents in some unilateral fashion.  As we noted in a prior post, the only way it can be done is a process something like the one that produced the Master Plan originally.  It may be that we need a restructuring of the way in which UC is managed and the way the Regents are structured.  And let's keep in mind that the state is putting in only about $1 dollar in $10 of the UC budget.  Students are putting in a roughly similar amount.  So there is a big institution to be considered, much of which is outside the purview of state attention.

The Yudof resignation announcement says "UC remains the premier public university system in the world..."  Note that the qualifier - premier PUBLIC university - has crept into the description in recent years.  And yet the official comparison-8 universities on which UC is supposedly benchmarked are half public and half private.  The governor's statement that UC wants 11.6% as a state budget increase but will only get 5% - which he implies is a long-term indicator of budgetary reality - suggests the obvious.  The state can't afford the old UC/Master Plan model.  So a new model is needed and, at the moment, we can't get there from here.

The Yudof resignation announcement is at:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/28955

An article about the resignation in Inside Higher Ed today can be found at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/21/yudof-retire-president-u-california

UPDATE: The LA Times today carries a story about how the governor wants to reshape the community colleges.  Again, this is Master Plan stuff.  The original Master Plan was intended to coordinate the three segments of higher ed: UC, what is now CSU, and the community colleges.  The article is at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-college-budget-20130121,0,904916.story

UPDATE: Columnist Joe Mathews wonders whether the governor should be running UC, CSU, and the community colleges and thinks it is a bit much:
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2013/01/chancellor-brown/