Uc System

Whether academic officials like it or not, Gov. Jerry Brown has a few good ideas for the state's four-year university systems: Reduce administrative bulk, keep tuition costs down. But several of his demands show a lack of understanding of the universities' role, especially the University of California, in attracting great minds to the state. The UC system Brown outlines - one in which professors do more teaching and less research and state funding is tied to whether the colleges graduate a certain percentage of students - could change the very nature of the state's premier public universities, turning them into workmanlike producers of academic degrees.

Gov. Jerry Brown has a history of tangling with California's public universities, which pride themselves on their independence. As governor decades ago, he shook up the UC Regents with such unconventional board appointments as music mogul David Geffen, a local YMCA director and a Zen Buddhist porpoise expert. He said faculty pay should be reduced because professors derive "psychic income" from their job. Now he is challenging the UC and Cal State systems again -- minus the eccentricity.

Re "New UC logo a no-go for many," Dec. 11 I don't understand the kerfuffle over the new University of California logo. In my view, the insignia is a forthright representation of the true state of the system. For years the UC system has been sliding into mediocrity. The Board of Regents and administrators long ago lost sight of the values and principles on which the university was founded and have turned the system into a poorly managed business rather than preserving it as a highly acclaimed academic resource dedicated to the public good.

Something was noticeably absent from the group of three letters in Wednesday's paper taking issue with the University of California system's new but not necessarily improved logo: a counterpoint. The following submission from UC Irvine English professor Julia Lupton would have run had it been sent to us before the letters page's deadline Tuesday afternoon. Lupton wrote: "The new logo cleverly derives a large 'U' from an abstracted version of the seal, which is itself based on the form of an open book.

University of California officials said they were trying to project a "forward-looking spirit" when they replaced the university system's ornate, tradition-clad logo with a sleek, modern one. What they got was an online revolt complete with mocking memes, Twitter insults and a petition to restore the old logo. Students and alumni have taken to Facebook and Photoshop to express their displeasure, showing the new symbol ready to be flushed down a toilet and as a permanently stalled computer operating system.

Despite strong opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown, the UC Board of Regents on Tuesday gave the incoming chancellor of UC Berkeley a $50,000 - or 11.4% - pay raise over the current campus head. The extra money will come from private donations, not state funds, the regents said. Nicholas B. Dirks will be paid $486,000, which officials said is $14,000 less than his current salary as a high-ranking administrator at Columbia University. Brown, who is a regent, described Dirks as an excellent choice but said he would not vote for the salary given the austerities that the state and the 10-campus UC system still face.

A national accrediting agency has approved UC Riverside's long-embattled plan to open a full medical school and to start enrolling future doctors next summer, officials announced Tuesday. It would be the sixth medical school in the University of California system and the first to open since the late 1960s. Last year, the same panel rejected the proposal because it looked too risky after the state refused to fund the school. But UC Riverside officials have since secured enough other public and private financing for a program that they say will help ease a doctor shortage in the Inland Empire and improve public healthcare there.

The University of California will pay damages of $30,000 to each of the 21 UC Davis students and alumni who were pepper-sprayed by campus police during an otherwise peaceful protest 10 months ago, the university system announced Wednesday. The agreement, which must still be approved in federal court, also calls for UC to pay a total of $250,000 to the plaintiffs' attorneys. It also sets aside a maximum of $100,000 to pay up to $20,000 to any other individuals who join the class-action lawsuit by proving they were either arrested or directly pepper-sprayed, a university statement said.

He's only 11. Still, BJ Bae blended in with the thousands of people of Korean heritage who swarmed an Orange County college fair this weekend. He stopped to sign up for a concentration test so "I can know what job might be good for me. " Angela Kim, 10, headed straight for the Stanford University table, then UC Berkeley, then Columbia University. "We have lots of choices," she said confidently. The mothers of both children tagged along, stuffing handbooks into their bags, promising to review them together when they get home.

UCLA's controversial plan to end state funding for the main MBA program at its management school and instead support it with tuition and donations has hit a significant roadblock that will at least delay the proposal. A powerful committee of the UC system's faculty senate recently voted to suspend its review of the Anderson School of Management's plan and raised questions about the proposal's budget, its effect on educational quality and affordability for students, and possible undue influence by donors.