UCLA faculty members voted Thursday to approve a proposal that would allow the campus’s graduate business school to detach its full-time Masters of Business Administration program from state funding.
The Legislative Assembly of the UCLA Academic Senate voted 53 to 46 to approve the UCLA Anderson School of Management proposal, according to a campus press release. The proposal will now go to the UC-wide Academic Senate and to UC President Mark Yudof, who has final say on the matter, as stated in the release.
“The UCLA Anderson proposal would aid not only the professional school but the entire campus as we adjust to the loss of state funding, so I am very pleased with the outcome,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in the release. “My administration, deans and the Academic Senate will continue to work in partnership to develop creative solutions that ensure academic excellence amid dramatic reductions in state support.”
According to the proposal, state funding that would normally have gone to the Anderson MBA program would be available for campus use to support programs affected by budget cuts.
However, Student Regent-designate Jonathan Stein has voiced displeasure over the approval of Anderson’s proposal, wondering whether other professional programs like UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business or the School of Law will seek to stop relying on public funding.
“It’s inappropriate and unfair for one program at one campus to leave the rest behind simply because it has a greater ability to do private fundraising and can charge its students insanely high tuition,” Stein said. “We’re one system. We should suffer the slings and arrows of budget cuts together.”
In a 2010 press release, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Dean Richard Lyons said the school has no plans to pursue a self-supporting model for its MBA program. According to Haas Media Relations Manager Pamela Tom, that position has not changed.
Christopher Yee is an assistant news editor.
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Am I missing something, or does Jonathan Stein make absolutely no sense with his argument? UCLA won’t charge insanely high tuition compared to what it charges now. A year in the UCLA MBA program costs about $70K. The difference in cost between residents and non-residents is only about $3K a year. Californians going to UCLA will not really notice a difference, and UCLA will not increase the tuition beyond what it already charges non-residents, because it needs to stay competitive with other schools.
And isn’t it insane to want the UCLA MBA program to stay public so it can suffer like the rest instead of allowing them to go private so they can prosper and so the rest of UCLA can get some budget relief by getting the public money that the UCLA MBA program doesn’t use? I would say we should privatize the graduate schools who have a similar economic situation to the Anderson school. All the MBA and law programs in the UC should be privatized for the same reason that the Anderson school should.
Passes the buck? By who? Most certainly not by California Tax Payers.