Free Republic

California Democrats, Republicans face mortgage defaults, 12% unemployment, pay reductions, loss of unemployment benefits. UC President Yudof has faculty eat cake

University of California (UC) picks the pockets of Californians, foreign, out-of-state students clean. UC shouldn’t come to the Governor or public for support. (The author has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at UC Berkeley (Cal) where he observed the culture & way senior management work) University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau ($500,000 salary) has forgotten that he is a public servant, steward of the public money, not overseer of his own fiefdom. These are not isolated examples: recruits (uses California tax $) out of state $50,600 tuition students that displace qualified Californians from Cal. public university education; spends $7,000,000...

Higher education universities must face fiscal reality.

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...

The UC President has a UCB Chancellor that should do the high paid job he is paid for instead of hiring an East Coast consulting firm to fulfill his responsibilities. ‘World class’ smart executives like Chancellor Birgeneau need to do the analysis, hard work and make the difficult decisions of their executive job! Where do consulting firms like Bain ($3,000,000 consultants) get their recommendations? From interviewing the senior management that hired them and will be approving their monthly consultant fees and expense reports. Remember the nationally known auditing firm who said the right things and submitted recommendations that senior management...