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.
In the future, please post your blog material in our bloggers forum.
Thanks,
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?
“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/