Uc Employees

THE TIMING COULD HARDLY have been worse for the University of California. Just as it was raising student fees by 8%, bringing them to nearly double what they were in 2001, it had to contend with revelations that it spent millions of dollars on bonuses and other perks for top administrators. These perquisites may be a worthwhile investment. The UC system must compete with top universities across the nation for outstanding researchers, scientists and administrators, and none of them come cheap.

The University of California on Wednesday announced a merit increase plan for non-unionized employees that seeks to fend off faculty hiring raids while mollifying critics of high executive salaries during the state's budget crisis. Under the plan, all faculty with good performance reviews will receive 3% raises this year, and nonacademic staff, who have received no increases since 2007, could be in line for larger raises. About 78,000 UC employees will be eligible under the plan, officials said.

UC Irvine employees staged a lunchtime rally Tuesday, one of more than a dozen demonstrations planned to protest contract proposals they say are unfair. Holding signs that called for raises, more than 60 UCI steam operators, engineers, electricians, painters and carpenters circled the administration building during their lunch break.

A much-debated plan by the University of California to expand its freshman applicant pool and reduce the tests required for admission won final approval Thursday from the Board of Regents. The new rules, among other changes, mean that applicants will no longer be required to submit scores from two SAT subject exams but as before, must take the main SAT or ACT test, as well as 15 UC-approved college prep courses in high school and keep a minimum 3.0 grade-point average.

UCLA will rename its renowned medical center after Ronald Reagan as soon as friends of the former president fulfill a pledge to donate $150 million to help rebuild the hospital, which was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, officials announced Wednesday. Reagan supporters have already raised $80 million for the eight-story building, designed by celebrated architect I.M. Pei, and for a separate Reagan library foundation.

UC, then and now Re "Bring back the idea of free UC," Column, April 11 My husband and I started at UCLA in 1966; our fees were about $80 per quarter. I applied only to UCLA, where I was virtually assured a spot because of my 3.0 grade point average. I had the best education money could buy. Every time fees increased, I feared that tuition would be next and that one of the best university systems in the country would be placed out of reach of most California students.

Dagmar Barnouw, a USC professor and author whose provocative works about the aftermath of World War II took aim at what she called the sanctification of Holocaust survivors, the "politics of not-forgetting Nazi evil" and the idea of collective German guilt, has died. She was 72. Barnouw died May 14 at a San Diego hospital from complications of a stroke she suffered April 14, said her husband, Jeffrey Barnouw.

As president of the University of California during much of the tumultuous 1960s, Clark Kerr was confronted by students who reviled him as a symbol of the establishment and conservatives who vilified him for not cracking down on demonstrators. But he never suspected that his worst enemy was the FBI. Kerr, who died Monday at 92, seemed an unlikely target for FBI dirty tricks. He was a soft-spoken economist, an advisor to both Democratic and Republican presidents and an avowed anti-communist.

Unionized teaching assistants, tutors and readers throughout the University of California system will not show up for classes today, after a breakdown this week in contract talks. More than 10,000 graduate and undergraduate students who teach at the system's eight undergraduate teaching campuses will participate in a one-day strike intended to protest what union officials describe as a pattern of unfair labor practices by university negotiators.

More than a third of UC Irvine employees who responded to a survey reported that they were the victims of harassment or discrimination at work, UCI officials said Wednesday. The survey, conducted by the Staff Assembly Affirmative Action Committee in early 1993 to examine staff opinions on discrimination issues, gathered 582 responses from employees on the main campus as well as at the College of Medicine and UCI Medical Center in Orange.