Posted on 10/24/2010 1:58:52 PM PDT by Moravecglobal
UC Berkeley’s recent elimination of popular sports programs highlighted endemic problems in the university’s management. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians in Sacramento, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.
A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Compentent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up to $150 million….until there was no money left.
It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.
From time to time, a whistleblower would bring some glaring problem to light, but the chancellor’s response was to dig in and defend rather than listen and act. Since UC has been exempted from most whistleblower lawsuits, there are ultimately no negative consequences for maintaining inefficiencies.
In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC president, Board of Regents, and California legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, students, staff, academic senate, Cal. alumni, and taxpayers await the transformation.
A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Compentent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up to $150 million….until there was no money left.
It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.
From time to time, a whistleblower would bring some glaring problem to light, but the chancellor’s response was to dig in and defend rather than listen and act. Since UC has been exempted from most whistleblower lawsuits, there are ultimately no negative consequences for maintaining inefficiencies.
In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC president, Board of Regents, and California legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, students, staff, academic senate, Cal. alumni, and taxpayers await the transformation.
Did they cut Tree Sitting 101?
Well, you won’t get any sympathy from me for cutting sports. I think ALL sports should be cut out of ALL schools. Sports is utterly useless and teaches nothing. It is a giant waste of money and time in education. There is nothing wrong with sports outside of school but in school it should be eliminated. Want to play sports? Fine. Do it on your own time. Stop wasting education money on sports.
I have a young friend who is an absolute star on the Berkeley Women’s gymnastic team, which recently has been cut. She is Olympic quality talent and I think it is a crying shame that Berkeley has abandoned her sport.
Well, you won’t get any sympathy from me for cutting sports. I think ALL sports should be cut out of ALL schools. Sports is utterly useless and teaches nothing. It is a giant waste of money and time in education. There is nothing wrong with sports outside of school but in school it should be eliminated. Want to play sports? Fine. Do it on your own time. Stop wasting education money on sports.
A school like Cal does not take tax dollars to run the sports programs.
Sports programs are the only entity that brings in revenue to a college. Most of the booster of an athletic program are also the biggest donors to academic programs.
Sports are also the best PR a school can have. Most people could care less about an award-winning horticulturalist who created gay venus fly-traps.....a successful athletic program brings in the attention and the money.
If the colleges did not have sports...most of your colleges would disappear. Even Hillsdale College....pushed by so many radio talkers...has a successful Division II football program
Really?
I have seen some really silly and even stupid posts on here but yours really stands out
I suppose education in Art & Music is wasteful as well and has no place in mental or physical development.
So, bright boy, what would YOUR school teach?
Enlighten us all please
In the future, please post your blog material in our bloggers forum.
Thanks,
I think sports teach a lot. Leadership skills, competitiveness (which to a point is very good), dedication (hey I had to watch a soccer game in 38 degree weather with a steady wind last week and I wasn’t even a player) and other life skills. Also, when the body is in shape the mind works better as well. I am willing to pay extra out of my pocket for my kids school sports, but really don’t think I should have to. The money is already there if used wisely. There is band, drama, chess club, and lots of other activities for kids not into sports, and many like my kids enjoy many activities. And really, there is nothing like representing your school and home town on the field/ court. Life long memories. I love that my two girls want to play sports.
Now the way some schools choose teams or run their programs— completely different story but I don’t think the remedy is to get rid of sports at school. As to Cal - Berkley, probably just wanted to get rid of
anything “competitive”, after all we are all equal in a socialist utopia, don’t ya know.
While there are some sports of value, this is a value of recreation, not competition. As such, there is little academic value, but a means for students to relax between times.
Yet this points to an even greater problem, of States subsidizing worthless and useless college degrees, with no appreciable career possibilities for such graduates. Since such degrees are frivolous, they should be eliminated from any subsidized education and be for purposes of vanity only, fully paid for by the student or their parents.
It would be simplicity itself to determine which degrees should no longer be subsidized. Simply compare the number of subsidized graduates with a particular degree, to the number who have had successful placement in a degree oriented job within six months after graduation.
If a degree program does not educate for job placement, it should not be subsidized by the taxpayer. The public can no longer afford vanity degrees for the unemployable. Those degrees are superfluous.
As an aside, Bain and co. .. Wasn’t that Romney’s company?
UC Berkeley’s recent elimination of popular sports programs, such as, Contact Hula-hoop combat fighting and Beer Pong using Tippy Cups. Is gerbil racing also out?
How very sad. Will this mean there will no longer be government funding for their annual Rubber Chicken award?
“I think it is a crying shame that Berkeley has abandoned her sport.”
So do I, especially since that’s the ONLY university which she can attend...geeeze...why not go to the university to LEARN something?
“The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton”.
The Duke of Wellington is often quoted as saying that “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton”. Wellington was at Eton from 1781 to 1784 and was to send his sons there. According to Nevill (citing the historian Sir Edward Creasy), what Wellington said, while passing an Eton cricket match many decades later, was, “There grows the stuff that won Waterloo”, a remark Nevill construes as a reference to “the manly character induced by games and sport” amongst English youth generally, not a comment about Eton specifically.
How Berkeley can you be? (Warning - Disgusting display of liberals parading in the buff)
http://zombietime.com/how_berkeley_can_you_be/
At a lot of larger schools, the sports program brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the college. This, in turn reduces tuition and the impact on taxpayers for maintaining the campus, research, and classes there.
For roughly 120 years...American leadership didn’t have any connection to sports. For another 40 years after that, it had almost no contribution to our leadership in the country. I’m not exactly sure if this is a good argument or not. Plus I gaze over to sports in Europe...which exists but not within schools...and everyone is happy over the relationship of local towns and villages, without school involvement, to major-league sports.
I agree, taxpayer money needs to be specifically authorized by voters, or none should go to schools for sports after building of facilities. There can be private clubs that can be organized at school, but there are more important things than paying for coaches, equipment and insurance.
Sport has long been part of schools and colleges in England—and considered integral to the formation of leaders. The modern Division I version over here is a completely different beast, however.
When John Wooden won his first NCAA basketball title I believe he had but four scholarship players on the team, and all of them graduated. Compare that with today when there are four or five scholarships given a year, with most failing to graduate.
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