SAN FRANCISCO — Despite protesters briefly halting the third and last day of the UC Board of Regents meeting Thursday, members of the board focused most of their discussion on strategies to maximize revenue for the UC system using the relationship between the university and private enterprises.
The discussion came about a week after voters approved Proposition 30, a tax increase that would prevent a $250 million midyear budget cut to the UC system, and a day after the board’s finance committee voted to approve a budget plan that calls for state funding to increase by more than $267 million for the 2013-2014 fiscal year and assumes a 6 percent increase in student tuition.
Yet, on Wednesday, both Gov. Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said an increase in state funding to the UC system is unlikely, heightening public pressure for the university to find additional sources of revenue beyond student tuition increases.
Members of the board’s Working Group on Technology Transfer urged UC officials to re-evaluate how UC research and patents generate revenue. Although inventions and patents created by UC researchers have increased in recent years, the group found that the system could do much more to tap into those revenue sources.
The group proposed four recommendations to increase cash flow to the university over the long term, including investing more into UC research and startups, creating local advisory boards at each UC campus and establishing an ad-hoc committee of the board.
According to the group’s report, these strategies will not solve the at least $1.5 billion budget shortfall the university will face in the next five years. But, board chair Sherry Lansing and others spoke in support of technology investment’s long-term benefits, urging more public-private partnerships.
UC President Mark Yudof called the plan a “dynamite idea,” adding that those who implement it need to collaborate closely with campuses.
“When you can bring together all the campuses to focus on one specific item, that’s power, brain power, to create,” said Regent Frederick Ruiz at the meeting.
The board also considered a proposal to transfer the Center for Executive Education at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to a nonprofit entity, in an effort to increase revenue for the campus.
Some regents expressed concern that the transfer aimed to evade UC oversight, but the board approved the plan, considering its fiscal benefits.
As a result of the transfer, UC Berkeley is projected to increase revenue by $50 million in the next seven years. The center offers open-enrollment programs to part-time students and currently accounts for 16 percent of Haas’ gross revenue, according to the plan.
“It’s anticipated that … this will generate significant revenue both for the Haas School and the (campus) overall,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau at the meeting.
The regents also approved the creation of an limited-liability company between the UC Davis Medical Center and Dameron Hospital in Stockton, Calif. to expand the campus’s medical education program.
Contact Libby Rainey at [email protected].
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Let’s speed up the privatization. The state is an unreliable partner, no one has faith in public institutions anymore, and it’ll allow the University to be better than ever before.
A lot of the privatization rhetoric has been overblown — but this “tech transfer” Orwellian phrase might be the real thing.
UC is a great public *research* university. And historically, the vast vast majority of the research was viewed as a public good — discoveries and information should be freely available for others to build upon. Researchers stand on the shoulders of giants standing on giants… As Jefferson said about fire: “He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.”
That’s something that resonates with the core mission of this place — fiat lux. A UC education is about lighting a fire not filling a bucket. And these metaphors matter, because the Regents (and the legislature and governor) seem to have lost sight of the true essence of this place.
Encouraging ideas and discoveries to be locked down with patents at a public university is absurd, and quite frankly, the faculty will simply not go along with it in any great numbers. Do we need an extra “incentive” to do research and publish our findings here? No. We are doing just fine in transferring technology and ideas to society at large, and to the extent there is room for improvement, patents and restrictive copyrights are certainly not the answer.
So we come out of this whole Prop. 30 panic just to have the regents approve an increase in spending that will force tuition increases in the future. Can’t we just live in the real world? It is time for the regents to either figure out a way to get the legislature to fund the UC (fat chance), or it is time to start working within the budget that the legislature gives the UC. One problem with the public side is that they never seem willing to recognize the restrictions of a budget. They will just go into debt until the system comes crashing down around us. Learn from the mortgage industry. Excessive debt and speculation isn’t good for the system. Next November, you won’t be able to get tax payers to support another Prop. 30, and tuition will be driven up. So Prop. 30 will do nothing to help the situation. It will just delay the huge tuition hikes, because the regents can’t work in the real world.
“Have them SHOT, Mark! Have them taken outside and summarily shot!”
i took a shit outside Pike once , just saying
Judging from what you say on here, that seems to pretty much encapsulate your relationship to the world.
Commander-in-chief Yudof and his regency assign a dollar value on most everything, and lose sight of the greater social benefit to open research and communication. these tech transfer programs promote secrecy and are antithetical to a public institution’s mission
Your value is approaching Zip in the limit.
This protest is simply the way Occupy people masturbate, as they can’t find their own genitals. Clearly, they have nothing else going on in their lives.
bp, you recognize that they assign a dollar value on things, because the UC costs money to run? All you need to do is to find an alternate solution, and then the regents don’t have to figure out other revenue sources. What is your solution?
bp has no solution.