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Friday, 30 October 2009
1. Letter: Berkeley's doors still open to Valley students
Visalia Times-Delta
October 30, 2009
I am writing to correct a serious misunderstanding created by your editorial of Oct. 22, "UC strays from its mission."
While it is correct that as one of its multiple strategies to deal with the $150 million budget deficit created for the Berkeley campus by the state's disinvestment in the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, UC BERKELEY will be gradually increasing the number of out-of-state students that it accepts, this strategy does not reduce opportunity for students of Valley families, and in particular, students who lack family funding and receive aid. Quite the opposite is true.
At present, Berkeley is over its target of California students for whom it receives funding from the state by some 2,500 students....
We cannot responsibly continue to remain overenrolled without state funding for these students and have plans to return to our target enrollment over the next three to four years.
Rather than leave these seats empty, we will fill them with out-of-state and international students who pay the full cost of their education.
This funding, which we estimate may bring in some $60 million in additional revenue to the campus over the next several years, will help improve the situation for our California students, including contributing to the financial aid available to our lowest-income California students....
Central Valley families should not be concerned that their children will not be able to afford Berkeley, nor that they will lack a place at this great public university.
If they earn a place at Berkeley, they will not be turned back, and we will ensure that they have the means to earn a UC Berkeley degree.
We welcome and encourage all Central Valley applicants. Full Story
2. Cal budget slashed by UC system
Stanford Daily
October 30, 2009
It’s no secret that the state is suffering from the economic recession. These financial problems have in turn translated into $813 million in budget cuts for the 10 schools of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (UC) SYSTEM. Particularly affected is Stanford’s neighbor, BERKELEY.
At the beginning of this school year, Berkeley cut nearly $150 million from the budget, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Totaling more than eight percent of the school’s budget, these cuts have begun to show on campus and may likely have a ripple affect across the region....
As a top public university, Berkeley’s plight has struck a chord with many, including members of Stanford’s own faculty and staff with current or prior affiliations with Cal....
“It would be a tragedy if one of the country’s greatest universities were seriously weakened due to lack of state support,” [Stanford] Provost John Etchemendy wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “Stanford benefits from having such great academic partners [and, yes, competitors] as Berkeley and UCSF in close proximity. Berkeley’s continued strength is in the interest of California, of the Bay Area and of Stanford.”...
Despite these worries, UC-BERKELEY CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU believes that there is still hope.
“Everyone should be clear about one thing: We are not going to let Berkeley deteriorate,” Birgeneau said in an interview with the Berkeleyan. “We should not underestimate or mask the challenges that we are facing. But I think that we are facing them extremely well...But it’s important to keep in mind that we see this as a several-year process. I cannot stress it enough: There is no silver bullet. We are all in this together.” Full Story
3. Harvard University again world's best: Chinese ranking
Agence France Presse [AFP]
October 30, 2009
Beijing — Harvard University in the United States is once again the world's top institute of higher education for 2009, according to a Chinese ranking that is dominated by American colleges.
Stanford University was second, followed by the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, said the annual ranking by the Centre for World-Class Universities and the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai's Jiaotong University.
The Annual Ranking of World Universities was posted on its website at www.arwu.org.... Full Story
4. Bad Time for Sports Overspending
Inside Higher Ed
October 30, 2009
Compared to many of its peer universities that play big-time sports, the financial state of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY'S ATHLETICS DEPARTMENT looks pretty good in some ways. While the Golden Bear sports program is among the 90-plus percent of all Division I programs and the 75 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision programs that do not turn an annual profit, the $7.4 million subsidy it received from general institutional funds in 2008 is actually $1 million less than the median for public institutions with major football programs.
But to the consternation of some faculty members at Berkeley, the university's sports program is running multimillion-dollar deficits -- on top of the annual institutional subsidies -- that are requiring the university to make short-term loans to the sports program. Not only that, but Cal officials revealed that the central administration in 2007 forgave $31 million in previous loans to the athletics department to cover annual deficits.
There's probably never a good time for professors to find out that their athletics programs are draining university funds. But it's hard to imagine a worse time for such revelations at Berkeley, given that faculty and staff members are being furloughed and students are being shut out of enrolling.
That combination of factors has some members of the faculty at Berkeley up in arms, placing a resolution on the agenda of an University Senate meeting next week that calls for CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU to end the annual subsidies, limit the department's spending to its actual direct revenues, require it to repay its outstanding loans, and ramp up faculty oversight of the sports program.
"Everybody thinks we [play intercollegiate sports] because it brings in big bucks, when that's clearly not the case," says BRIAN BARSKY, A PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AT BERKELEY.
Birgeneau is "disturbed" about the deficits and plans to "insist that athletics do everything it can to cut them," says DAN MOGULOF, BERKELEY'S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, who attributed the shortfalls to sharp drops in football and men's basketball ticket revenue and a 20 percent cut in direct support from the university.
Cal administrators are insistent that the athletics department will repay the roughly $12 million in loans that the university is providing to fill the 2009 and 2010 budget holes, Mogulof said, and campus leaders are exploring a wide range of potential increases in revenue (such as endowed stadium seats and renegotiated conference television contracts) and budget cuts ("including reductions in the scope of the program" -- i.e., cutting teams) to ensure that it can pay its bills in the future. ... Full Story
5. Editorial: Bay Bridge incident shows need for vigilance
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
October 30, 2009
More than a quarter million Bay Area commuters have had to find alternative routes to work because of the closure of the Bay Bridge. Two steel tie rods and a crossbeam from a steel saddle near the new S-turn broke and fell to the upper deck during the Tuesday evening rush-hour commute, rendering the bridge unsafe....
We hope that the latest repairs to the 73-year-old bridge will be sufficient to ensure safe passage until the replacement span being constructed alongside opens as scheduled in 2013.
However, the repairs made less than two months ago were supposed to have been sufficient, and they had been inspected several times since then by Caltrans.
ABOLHASSAN ASTANEH-ASL, A CIVIL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR AT UC BERKELEY who has studied the Bay Bridge for years, was critical of the repair, calling it a Band-Aid, and accused Caltrans of putting public relations ahead of public safety.... Full Story
6. Op-Ed: Jobs Now, Deficit Reduction Later
The U.S. economy still needs fiscal stimulus. Attack the debt once demand returns
Business Week
November 9, 2009
Policymakers in Washington are in a quandary—one that has arisen before at this early, fragile stage in a recovery—over what to do about the federal deficit. An unprecedented amount of fiscal stimulus has been brought to bear to prevent another Great Depression, but it has driven the deficit to more than 11% of GDP, a post-World War II high.
The headline-grabbing size of the deficit makes the case for reducing it a compelling one, and many voters, members of Congress, and investors are convinced that now's the time to strike. According to the most recent Office of Management & Budget estimates, even with a strong recovery, annual deficits will average about 5% of GDP over the next decade, and total debt will climb to nearly 77% of GDP, its highest level since 1952. Persistent deficits of this size will put upward pressure on long-term interest rates, crowding out investment and stunting long-term growth. Interest payments on the debt will be onerous—by 2019 they will exceed defense spending. And investor anxiety about the huge borrowing needs of the U.S. government could trigger a sharp decline in the dollar and another crisis in global financial markets....
Now is not the time to begin cutting the deficit. But it is the time to craft a multiyear plan for gradual reductions in the deficit once the economy is on solid ground. Since fast-rising health costs are a primary source of future deficits, health-care reform with credible cost containment would be an essential first step. And passing legislation soon to spell out a long-term deficit-reduction plan would assuage voter and investor anxieties about runaway debt, ease upward pressure on long-term interest rates, and reduce the risks of another financial crisis sparked by a loss of confidence in the U.S. government and the greenback. Full Story
7. Biz Break: Does this mean the Great Recession is over?
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
October 29, 2009
Today: The U.S. economy had its best showing in two years, according to the government's quarterly GDP report. Plus: Symantec and other Silicon Valley stocks surge....
Of course, if you're unemployed, underemployed, have taken a pay cut or furlough days, your mortgage is underwater, or you lost a lot of money in the stock markets, your personal fortunes might not be doing any better.
"It will take sustained, robust GDP growth to bring the unemployment rate down substantially," CHRISTINA ROMER, A ...UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY ECONOMIST [ON LEAVE] who is chair of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement posted on the White House Web site. "Such a decline in unemployment is, of course, what we are all working to achieve."...
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times] Full Story
8. Sources: Fertility and living standards
Economist Online
October 29, 2009
Special thanks to Vladimira Kantorova of the UN Population Division for generously calculating for The Economist the number of countries at or below replacement fertility. Also to Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. A presentation of Mr Eberstadt’s work on falling fertility and population decline is available here.
THE BIXBY CENTRE FOR POPULATION, HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY gathered new research on demography, fertility and growth as part of a forum, the World in 2050. The papers from this forum have now been published in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: The Impact of Population Growth on Tomorrow’s World, edited by ROGER V. SHORT and MALCOLM POTTS (abstracts are available free but a subscription is needed to access the full text).... Full Story
9. Boeing's S.C. jobs a setback for unions
Manufacturers grow more willing to use unorganized labor
Washington Post
October 30, 2009
Boeing's decision to open a second assembly line for its 787 jetliner in South Carolina is another blow for organized labor, experts say, signaling that major manufacturers are increasingly willing to look for non-union workforces during a time of economic stress.
Chicago-based Boeing said Wednesday that it had picked North Charleston over Everett, Wash., the home of Boeing's commercial aircraft division, because it best fit its production plans for the 787 Dreamliner. Full production of the jet has been much anticipated because it has more than 800 orders and is designed to carry up to 250 passengers. But the Dreamliner, which is assembled from parts made by suppliers around the globe, is two years behind schedule. It has been plagued by production problems and delays, including strikes by union machinists in Everett and other sites in Washington state that forced the company to take costly write-downs as it closed commercial aircraft operations last year for eight weeks....
HARLEY SHAIKEN, A LABOR EXPERT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, said Boeing is "sending a message to the union that this is our other alternative" by moving the second assembly line to South Carolina.
He said that Boeing has had disagreements with the machinists union and that they "marred the fact that they have a skilled and capable workforce" in Everett. Experts say it could weaken union support as Boeing is expected to decide in the coming years where to build the next generation of its 777 and 737 aircraft.... Full Story
10. Get to Work Blog: Government job creation? Private sector incentives? Either, or, both?
San Francisco Chronicle Online
October 30, 2009
The Chronicle has held three round table discussions in recent weeks to ask academic, non profit and business leaders to talk about the job market. Some of the ideas we heard have led to stories, editorials, even blog entries -- like a recent post in this forum about the CEO who quit accepting resumes and started using performance tests to hire programmers.
Two speakers at our third and final forum earlier this week advanced ideas that touched on public-versus-private approaches to job creation that I want to throw out here for discussion.
UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR RICHARD WALKER talked about his work on the Living New Deal Project which looks back at some of the direct government job creation programs undertaken during the Great Depression. Walker asked: why not do the same thing today?... Full Story
11. Illinois school test scores: Income-based gap proves hard to close
Schools try to narrow the divide with strategies such as mentoring, double periods for math and reading
Chicago Tribune
October 30, 2009
Surrounded by sports fields and suburban lawns, Hadley Junior High School could be the envy of the state.
Nine of every 10 students at the Glen Ellyn school passed state exams in reading and math, according to the 2009 Illinois School Report Card made public Friday.
But average scores belie a widespread problem the federal government has spent billions trying to fix nationwide: While at least 95 percent of Hadley's well-off students passed the eighth-grade reading and math tests, about half of their low-income classmates met the same goals, revealing an achievement gap that is as persistent as it is pernicious....
Poverty, parental education, life experience and even access to books play a role in preparing kids to learn, said BRUCE FULLER, AN EDUCATION PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA- BERKELEY.
"Family poverty and parenting practices are much bigger drivers of student learning than anything that happens in the classroom," Fuller said.... Full Story
12. 17-Year Bay Area Residents Facing Imminent Deportation
KTVU
October 29, 2009
A Guatemalan family that has made the Bay Area home for 17 years is facing imminent deportation Friday, after exhausting all of their legal options.
Homeland Security officials said the family has had numerous chances to make their case in court, and lost. But the family's advocates say that's precisely why immigration laws must change....
THE DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION POLICY AT U.C. BERKELEY'S LAW SCHOOL [AARTI KOHLI], says President Obama is pushing for comprehensive immigration reform next year. Too late for this family.... Full Story
13. Genetic Crossroads Blog: Delivering a Baby: Commercial Surrogacy in India
The surrogacy business in India is booming.
Psychology Today Online
October 29, 2009
What's it like to grow a baby in your body for nine months, feel it start to move and kick, give birth, and watch as the newborn is whisked away to the waiting arms of its...mother?
Media descriptions of commercial surrogacy (1, 2, 3, 4) tend to focus far more on the lives and feelings of the "contracting parents" than on those of the surrogates. Typically the stories discuss the despair associated with infertility, the hopes aroused by the prospect of a genetically related child, the anxieties of "outsourcing" the gestation of the child, and the joys of "taking delivery" of the baby. The surrogates usually figure briefly and say little. This is especially true when they are poor women recruited from rural villages, as is most of the "work force" in what has become a half-billion dollar per year industry in India alone. Many of the clients are from Europe and North America.
Two recent accounts do much better at portraying Indian surrogates as real people and letting them speak about their experiences. In the current issue of The American Prospect, UC BERKELEY SOCIOLOGIST ARLIE HOCHSCHILD recounts a round of interviews with commercial surrogates and surrogacy brokers in Gujarat, India. Her article, titled "Childbirth at the Global Crossroads," focuses on the concept of "emotional labor," which she introduced in her 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Surrogates, she says, have something in common with nannies and nurses. Like them, surrogates perform "emotional labor" to suppress feelings that could interfere with doing their job....As science and global capitalism gallop forward, they kick up difficult questions about emotional attachment.... Full Story
14. Your city now, October 30
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
October 30, 2009
Free health seminar for local businesses
On Nov. 3, the state Compensation Insurance Fund and UC BERKELEY'S CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND EMERGENCY READINESS will hold a free seminar to help businesses plan for the impact of H1N1 influenza.
The seminar is designed for business owners, HR managers, health and safety leaders, and risk and security managers, this seminar will help prepare businesses on key concepts of business continuity and emergency planning....
To register, contact Karen Moon at (909) 384-4742 or visit the seminars page at www.scif.com.... Full Story