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Excellent statement delivered today at @UCLA by @HankReichman with @uc_faculty about ULP by faculty asserting labor rights to protect free speech o campus.

Here is a 🧵 those interested in the gory details of the @UofCalifornia Regents' vote yesterday to provide "market based adjustments" to UC executives, while refusing similar adjustments for its workers. This adds to this morning's reporting by @TeresaWatanabe at @latimes.

Faculty from across the UC system — long synonymous with the Free Speech Movement — have filed a ULP to fight a systematic, illegal campaign conducted by UC to repress academic freedom. https://t.co/3Nt66o1UUX

“We foresee this mandate being applied in ways that unnecessarily restrict protected speech..., resulting in both indefensible censorship and administrative discipline,” says @ACLU_CalAction in @theintercept article about SB 1287: https://t.co/6fCaoTJhAr

"...when faculty members choose to support academic boycotts, they can legitimately seek to protect and advance academic freedom and the fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate ... one or more of those rights..."

The AAUP has released a statement reversing its prior categorical opposition to academic boycotts. This historically momentous shift will shape the response to UC's efforts to regulate speech and academic freedom around Israel/Palestine. https://t.co/YU45CMFZTs

Given all of the above, it will be interesting to see what Governor Newsom has done to higher ed funding in the May Revise, which will be release May 10 at 11AM PST with a live event streamed at: YT: https://t.co/RXOVCsTHYC FB: https://t.co/TfYlhoMG7E… X: @CAgovernor

2-year colleges in CA are funded at $10,752 per student, while nationally they are funded at $13,081. 4-year colleges in CA are funded at $16,444 per student, while nationally they are funded at $20,507. That is a 20% gap for UC and CSU. https://t.co/cCJ8tK4qQB

Coincidentally, the latest national data on higher education funding came out yesterday, showing, once again, that California public higher education is drastically underfunded. In 47th place for Total Education Revenue (read funding) per FTE. https://t.co/bqOjGMMHtA

The full report is online at: https://t.co/QvFJqNO6Rh

They note on page 17 that UC is hiring non-academic positions much faster than academic positions. There's other stuff about the pension fund having been stabilized, credit scores, the impressive amount of research funding UC lands, etc.

Starting on page 14 the report does start using per FTE student data. You can see state funds topped out for UC at $40k per student (inflation adjusted) in 2000-01 (for the range shown) and is literally half that now.

So on the next page, when they say UC core funds (that's the stuff spent on teaching) increased from about $3B to about $10B when inflation would expect $7B, that neglects that UC is teaching twice as much with that extra 30%.

E.g. 1st graph "Total University Funding Has Outpaced Inflation Over the Past 30 Years" shows UC had $10 B in funds in 1991-92 and $50 billion in 2023-24, more than the $10 B inflation adjusted. Not mentioned, enrollment doubled during that time.

The LAO released a new report on higher education funding in California. I'm afraid people will misread the data in the first several pages since it is not adjusted for workload.

Last year, the state legislature cut over a billion dollars in funding for CSUs and UCs related to campus expansion, student housing, de-carbonization, and other capital expenses. This year, even with a budget deficit, the state should hold the line against cutting the compact.

When you track California general fund spending on public higher education in relation to FTE undergraduate enrollment, you get a chart that shows a 20+ year process of asking schools to do more with less. ($ is 2021 inflation adjusted)

California legislators are being presented with information that makes it look like they've been generous with public higher education funding recently. They do this by discussing budget separate from enrollment, and setting their baseline at the nadir in 2012, like this.

The latest, from The Council of UC Faculty Associations (union of faculty associations from all UC campuses, across all disciplines). "... it has become abundantly clear that several of these 'data science,' and even some statistics, courses do not actually satisfy Senate