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.
But look at the average professional salary of those scholarship basketball dropouts!
I agree completely, FRiend. It is way past time to eliminate the jockstrap mentality from our publicly-funded schools.
Gee, I went to college, graduate school in fact. I'm finding it difficult to understand why so many “freepers” are negative about college, unless of course, they didn't bother to pursue the experience.
What if blogpimping were a sport? How about if there were blogpimping scholarships?
Maybe students should just sit on their fat asses and pimp
lame blogs instead of playing sports. How cool would that be?
Good on ya for not bowing to the sports mafia!!
No problem, FRiend. I have nothing against sports. I like many sports and you’ll need a company of the 82nd Airborne to pry me away from a Braves game.
BUT... I cringe at the thought of the $$$$ we waste on school sports at all levels. I cringe at the numbers of ignorant jockstraps we produce all in the name of a “game”. While participating in sports CAN have lasting beneficial effects on children, far too often the hyper-competitive “win at all costs” mentality and the sense of entitlement they engender amongst the “stars” outweighs those benefits.
You want to participate in sports, or you want your kids to... fine; YOU pay for it. I want my money to go to the education of my kids - and sports plays a very small part in that education.
My position precisely. Sports are fine. Just not in school and not with my tax $$.
“Contrary to your extremely negative and uninformed opinion,
she IS learning......learning a lot. She has a 4.5 average, and lots of promise in several different fields. And this is a young woman who financially couldn’t attend college without some kind of scholarship to help.
Gee, I went to college, graduate school in fact. I’m finding it difficult to understand why so many “freepers” are negative about college, unless of course, they didn’t bother to pursue the experience.”
Like Juan Williams, I’m expressing my opinion which is not uninformed, is that everyone, including this young lady, has a choice...in this case to go to Berkeley or not.
I have four earned college degrees, thanks.
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.
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I really feel bad for that lady...I have seen the Cal women’s gymnastics team competing against UCLA at Pauley Pavilion...
I am really disappointed that Cal cut baseball also...Cal is the biggest school in the UC system...But, it will not have a baseball team after this school year...A long time ago, Cal team played Yale in the College World Series...George Bush the elder was on the Yale team...
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