Governance in the University of California: The transformation of politics into administration

Higher Education Policy

Volumn 11, Issue 2-3, 1998, Pages 201-215

  Trow, Martin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0032089262     PISSN: 09528733     EISSN: 17403863     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0952-8733(98)00007-5     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Paper prepared for a Gei man-American conference ‘The University in Transition,’ March 17-21,1997, Berkeley, California. This paper might equally as well have been subtitled ‘The minimization of conflict.’
2. If the budgets of the three big national laboratories administered by the University are excluded, the operating budget of the University is then about $8.5 billion. Of this, only about $2 billion come from the state of California. So the University is not precisely a state university, but a state-aided university. But those phrases do not adequately define the relationship of the University of California to the state’s government.
3. Neij J. Smelser, ‘Growth, Structural Change, and Conflict in California Public Higher Education, 1950—1970,’ in Neil Smelser and Gabriel Almond (Ed.), Public Higher Education in California, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1974, pp. 9-143.
4. Verne A. Stadtman, The University of California 1868-1968, New York, McGraw Hill, 1970, p. 82.
5. Symbolic, because University lawyers are reluctant to actually test the constitutional protection in the courts for fear that it would not sustain the weight of institutional autonomy placed on it.
6. “The Legislature often attaches ‘budget language’ to a budget it passes, indicating its interests in the way the budget is used by' the University, and pointing to particular activities or conditions it wants to see the University honoring. The University is sensitive to these indications of the Legislature’s wishes, and can anticipate having to explain how they were followed, or why they were not. But the University will not conform to such ‘instructions’ if they seem to violate its sense of its own autonomy.
7. The Regents themselves elect a student for a one year term.
8. Each campus arranges its own Senate rules. Currently, most campuses, but not Berkeley, also elect their Divisional Chair as wel I as their Committee on Committees.
9. The governor’s budget for UC also calls for. .employee pay increases equivalent to an average 2% salary increase… and additional funding equivalent to a 3% parity increase for faculty. That funding would bring faculty salaries to within 1.6% of the average pay at UC’s eight comparison institutions. This is a priority of Regents, w to hope to close the faculty salary gap by 1998-99.’ ‘UC begins discussion of long-term fee policy.' Focus, vol. 11, No. 3, February/March 1997, p. 7.
10. Annual Financial Report, University of California 1995-96, p. 5.
11. In addition to the three public segments—UC, CSU and the community colleges the Master Plan also recognizes and provides a place for California’s many private colleges and universities.
12. ‘UC begins discussion of long-term fee policy,' Focus., p. 1.
13. The potential agreement is embodied in AB (Assembly Bill) 1415 (Bustamante), The Higher Education Partnership Act of 1999,’ published by the University of California, July 8, 1997. My thanks to Associate Vice-President Lawrence Hershman, Director of the Budget for UC, for a helpful conversation on these issues, though he is not responsible for my interpretations of its effects on governance.
14. For example, Berkeley received over $182 million in 1996/97 from 66,000 contributors. ‘Direct state support now accounts for 38% of the campus’s budget, compared with 52% in 1985.’ (‘Campus Gets More Gifts in 1996-97,’ The Daily Californian, August 8, 1997.) Of course many of those gifts are earmarked for particular uses by the donor, but that still leaves large sums at the discretion of the chancellor.
15. Pamela Burdman, ‘UC Pressed on Partner Benefits,' SF Chronicle, 5 April, 1997, p, 1.
16. This is a central concept in the essay by Neil Smelser. ‘UC Pressed on Partner Benefits,' SF Chronicle.
17. Martin Trow, ‘Leadership and Organization: The Case of Biology at Berkeley,’ in Rune Premfors (Ed.), Higher Education Organization'. Conditions for Policy Implementation. Stockholm: Almqvht and Wiksell, (1984), pp. 148-178.
18. The current Dean of the Biological Sciences has made reference to this reform as necessary ‘in order for us to maintain a high visibility [in biology] in the country.'
19. Though there are legitimate questions about whether it has to be quite as big as it is.
20. David P. Gardner, The California Oath Controversy, Berkeley: University of California Press. 1967.
21. Verne A. Stadtman, The California Oath Controversy., pp. 487-493. The story will be told in detail in Clark Kerr's forthcoming history of his own service to the University of California.
22. One perspective on these events can be found in Martin Trow, ‘A Divided UC Faculty Seeks a Path to Consensus on Affirmative Action.’ Public Affairs Report, Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley. Vol. 37. No. 2. March 1996, pp. 9-13.
23. This controversy should perhaps not be labeled a failure of governance, but is included as an example of the intervention of national political issues directly into the life of the University.