The governor’s May budget revision, released Tuesday, remains largely unchanged from the January proposal. Patrick Lenz, the university’s vice president for budget and capital resources, said the university did not receive any additional increases in funding in the May revision.

The budget also calls for a four-year tuition freeze for all students except those in professional schools, a restructuring of debt and discontinuation of a proposed unit cap on state-subsidized courses, which could have affected 2,200 UC students in the next school year.

Student Regent Jonathan Stein and Regent Bonnie Reiss raised concerns about rising costs of professional student fees while undergraduate and other program costs have been held constant.

“Because Prop. 30 passed and because of new state revenues, we’ve been able to hold tuition constant,” Stein said. “In reality, we’ve been able to hold undergraduate and Ph.D tuition constant while professional schools continue to rise.”

The regents also discussed restructuring the university’s debt. The state of California currently takes out bonds on behalf of the university, but UC officials say shifting the responsibility of the debt to the UC system would help lower the debt.

“That debt is greater because the state of California’s credit rating is not as good as ours,” said Brooke Converse, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President. “What we’re asking is that the state of California let us take over and restructure that debt, because if we restructure it, we’ll be able to save $80 million a year.”

The university is also working with the governor to expand facilities at UC Merced, said Nathan Brostrom, the university’s executive vice president for business operations.

“The highest priority is a classroom and academic building at UC Merced,” Brostrom said. “They are now close to 6,000 students, and they do not have space for continued growth unless they get more classroom buildings.”

The regents also approved a plan to build a new aquatics center at UC Berkeley on the current site of the Tang Center parking lot.

Protesters from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299, a union representing patient-care workers at UC medical centers, also interrupted early in the meeting for about 45 minutes to protest in favor of higher pay and increased staffing.

On Thursday, the regents will meet in closed sessions to discuss collective bargaining matters and lawsuits related to the UC system.

Staff writer Virgie Hoban contributed to this report. 

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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Following months of controversy, UC Berkeley announced that it will withdraw from the systemwide UC Student Health Insurance Plan in the fall.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced the decision to withdraw Thursday, joining four other UC campuses that are abandoning at least some parts of UC SHIP. The announcement comes after the systemwide Council of Chancellors approved various changes to UC SHIP, including campus withdrawal, in a meeting Wednesday.

“Today I am stating my support for the students’ position and, following their urging, announcing that UC Berkeley will be withdrawing from UC SHIP and returning to a UC Berkeley-operated student health insurance plan,” Birgeneau said in a statement.

Beginning Aug. 15, UC Berkeley will transition back into a campus-managed, fully funded insurance plan similar to what the campus had in place for decades before joining UC SHIP in 2011.

UC SHIP follows a self-funded model in which those paying the costs, in this case the UC system, are responsible for absorbing the plan’s risks, according to Bahar Navab, UC Berkeley’s student representative to the UC SHIP Advisory Board. Fully funded plans place risk on a separate insurance provider but generally have higher premiums.

UC SHIP currently has a $400,000 lifetime cap and a $10,000 prescription drug coverage cap. As a fully funded plan, UC Berkeley-provided insurance would also have to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits these coverage caps.

In a letter sent to Birgeneau last month by UC Berkeley student representatives, Navab and ASUC President Connor Landgraf wrote that poor management from the UC Office of the President and a desire for more local control were some of the reasons students favored withdrawing from UC SHIP.

“I think that localized control and more decentralized governance is what’s best for our campus right now,” Navab said. “It’s a two-year plan, and we can always re-evaluate after two years. If UC SHIP has changed enough that we want to go back to it, we always have that option.”

UC Berkeley’s decision to withdraw comes in light of UC SHIP’s projected $46.5 million net deficit, which earlier prompted the possibility of premium increases across the board.

According to Kim LaPean, communications manager at the Tang Center, the new plan is expected to include a 13 percent premium increase for undergraduates and a 20 percent increase for graduate students, though the campus has yet to finalize rates. LaPean said benefits will not decrease under the campus plan and that officials are working to ensure that students will be able to see the same outside carriers.

“Berkeley students were really clear that they did not want to lose benefits,” LaPean said. “The changes that they’re going to see are all going to be in the favor of the student.”

Other campuses that decided to partially withdraw from UC SHIP include UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara. Some campuses, like UCLA, have opted to stick with UC SHIP.

Students with coverage through UC SHIP next year will also see changes, including lifting the lifetime maximum, annual pharmacy cap and other caps on essential care. The UC Office of the President is currently reviewing options to close the deficit, but UC spokesperson Brooke Converse said students will not have to pay for the deficit through premium increases.

“Our job right now is to respect the campuses that want to leave,” said Scott Arno, the UCLA student representative to UC SHIP Advisory Board. “No campus should be forced into this plan. We need to make it run better so that they’ll want to come back.”

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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UC Berkeley will transition back to its own campus-run health insurance plan beginning Aug. 15, similar to what was in place for decades before the campus joined UC SHIP.

“Today I am stating my support for the students’ position and, following their urging, announcing that UC Berkeley will be withdrawing from UC SHIP and returning to a UC Berkeley-operated student health insurance plan,” Birgeneau said in the statement.

The move to abandon UC SHIP comes as the program faces a projected $46.5 million deficit, down from the originally projected $57 million deficit and what could have been a premium increase of up to 19.8 percent for UC Berkeley students. The new plan will have no coverage caps and is expected to include a 13 percent premium increase for undergraduates.

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org.

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The rally began at noon and was followed by a protest in the streets surrounding the campus before ending outside California Hall. UC Berkeley’s May Day event coincides with other International Workers’ Day activities throughout the Bay Area that seek to improve conditions for workers and citizenship opportunities for immigrants.

“We need to say that this university belongs to the public,” said Hatem Bazian, a professor of Near Eastern studies who attended the rally. “It was built by us collectively … yet we have institutions and leadership that think they are on the board of directors of corporation A or B.”

Workers from multiple unions — including AFSCME 3299, a union representing health care and service workers, and UAW Local 2865, a union representing UC student workers — attended the rally.

Wednesday’s May Day rally comes in the midst of labor negotiations between AFSCME 3299 and the university.

“It’s all part of putting the pressure on UC to give us a just and fair contract,” said Sarah Leadem, an organizer for AFSCME 3299.

AFSCME recently scheduled a strike vote from April 30 to May 2 to bring attention to alleged patient-care violations and the elimination of hundreds of frontline care jobs. In a statement, Dwaine Duckett, UC vice president for systemwide human resources, said that the university is open to compromise but needs engagement from AFSCME leaders.

Amanda Armstrong, head steward for the UAW 2865 and a graduate student in rhetoric, said GSIs, readers and tutors are also entering into contract negotiations. Armstrong spoke to a crowd gathered outside California Hall about demands the union has, including a cap on class size, better wages and health benefits for student-workers and an end to discrimination in hiring in the workplace.

“Being a graduate student in the university, I do have a lot of benefits.” said Vreni Michelini, a graduate student in art practice who was a GSI in the fall. “But I also see and I live the struggle in the sense that even though I have two scholarships that’s almost paying for my tuition, I still got to have three jobs to just make it with the rent, food and everything else I have to pay.”

Supporters also rallied behind immigration reform.

“We have a broken immigration system, and there are people in our community who have been deported,” said City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, who attended the rally. “We can no longer divide families and use (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) as a way to try to suppress workers’ rights.”

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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The Berkeley Business Academy for Youth, a program run through the Center for Young Entrepreneurs at Haas, will add 20 seats for international students as part of its International Berkeley Business Academy for Youth program.

“The way we are thinking about this is we want to give young kids a chance to be exposed to the Berkeley culture and the Berkeley environment,” said professor Teck Ho, director of the Asia Business Center and the faculty sponsor of the international program. “I’m from Asia, and I always think that Berkeley could do a lot more internationally to increase our brand presence and serve our alumni better.”

Ho said the program includes a hands-on team business project, visits to local companies and guest speakers from business-related fields. The additional 20 international students will live in university dorms and take classes with American students at Haas.

The original U.S.-only program, B-BAY, is in its fifth year and will run from July 1 to 12. The all-day program is open to 40 students and is taught by undergraduate and graduate students at Haas, according to the program’s website.

Olive Davis, a director with YEAH, said that students this year have come from across the country and all over the world, with locations including Taiwan, Canada, Utah, Virginia, India and China.

“In this first phase, we’re actually doing Asia and Canada right now, but we’re hoping to go to India and Chile and other places where the university has attracted students,” Davis said.

Although students pay a fee for the program, Ho said accessibility is important.

“We want this program to be accessible to everybody,” Ho said. “Obviously, you have to pay a fee for it, but in the long run, we want to give out scholarships to people who can’t afford it. We are not doing this to make money. It is a good way to energize the alumni and increase our brand presence globally.”

In addition to its summer programs, YEAH offers year-round programs for under-resourced sixth- to 12th-grade Bay Area youth. Proceeds from the summer programs allow the year-round mentorship programs to be offered free of charge to participants.

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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UC Berkeley beat out Harvard in the final round of the tournament by one-hundredth of a point to be identified as the university with the best research performance of all American institutions competing in the NCAA basketball tournament.

“Our goal was to use proprietary scientific data and analytics from Thomson Reuters to have the schools compete on a different plain that would show a unique perspective into how those institutions compare in terms of their intellectual prowess,” said Gordon Macomber, managing director of Thomson Reuters Scientific & Scholarly Research, in a press release. 

The winners of each round were determined weekly from March 19 to April 8 using Thomson Reuters’ InCities program, a web-based evaluation tool that analyzes a university’s research productivity and performance based on citation data against peers, according to a press release.

In addition to inching out a lead over Harvard for the final battle, UC Berkeley beat out Duke and UCLA in the final four.

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court ruled that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment and that the government cannot keep corporations or unions from spending money to support individual candidates in elections. CalPIRG hosted the rally to raise awareness of the impact the decision could have on the relationship between wealthy interests and politics.

“Citizens United is the single most drastic, damaging action of the Supreme Court in our lifetime,” said City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who spoke at the rally. “Pretty much every policy that the government votes on is going to be skewed by the super rich, who can afford to put millions of dollars into elections.

Speakers at the rally urged that corporations are not people and therefore should not be subject to the same free speech regulation.

“My name is Nolan Pack, and I am a person, not a corporation,” said ASUC Senator Nolan Pack. “People can come before you and say that. The day that ExxonMobil can stand here and say that they’re a person — I don’t even know what that will look like.

In March, the ASUC Senate voted to place a referendum on the ballot asking students whether they support overturning the Supreme Court’s decision. If a majority of students vote in support of overturning, the ASUC president and Graduate Assembly president will send notice to the president of the United States and California’s congressional delegation annually until both Congress and the California Legislature have passed legislation to address the Supreme Court’s ruling.

ASUC Senator Mihir Deo said that although he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision, he has problems with the way the referendum is worded.

“Constitutional free speech rights is very broad,” Deo said. “If this referendum were to be taken literally, then it would be a statement saying that corporations have no free speech rights at all, and that is wrong. The issue is that the Supreme Court ruled that money is something that is freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

Caitlin Quinn, political director of Cal Berkeley Democrats and a Vote Coalition deputy, said that the Citizens United ruling could have actually encouraged higher voter turnout in November’s election.

“I think that it’s a good sign that even though Citizens United is this really messed-up thing, I think that it also scared a lot of people into voting for their first time,” Quinn said. “Right now, politics is a very moneyed game, and students have to care about it.

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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The UC SHIP Advisory Board, which consists of student and health care representatives from each UC campus and from the UC Office of the President, voted unanimously in favor of eliminating the $10,000 annual prescription drug coverage cap. All but one campus voted in favor of eliminating the $400,000 lifetime coverage cap and instead voted in favor of raising the lifetime limit to $500,000, according to UC spokesperson Brooke Converse.

For months, students have been urging UC SHIP officials to have the plan voluntarily comply with the Affordable Care Act’s ban on lifetime and annual prescription drug limits on essential care. As a self-funded insurance plan, UC SHIP is exempt from the health care reform law.

Few students actually surpass the coverage caps, but for those who do, like Kenya Wheeler, a former graduate student in city planning at UC Berkeley, the effects can be devastating. Wheeler began treatment for primary central nervous system T-cell lymphoma in November 2011. Since then, he has met the lifetime coverage cap and has had to pay at least $10,000 in out-of-pocket expenses for his treatment.

“The advisory board that oversees UC SHIP considered removing the caps last year, too, but didn’t recommend making that change for the 2012-13 academic year because of the increases to student premiums that would have resulted,” said UCOP spokesperson Shelly Meron in an email. “It was the intent of the advisory board to reconsider the removal of the plan benefit limits and to time that with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014.”

The movement to lift the caps comes as UC SHIP is facing a projected $57 million deficit by the end of the current plan year. The UC Office of the President has considered raising premiums by an average of 25 percent systemwide as a way to close the deficit.

Lifting the coverage caps would not affect the deficit, Converse said, although it would require another premium increase that is expected to be significantly smaller than the proposed 25 percent.

The advisory board’s recommendation will now be considered by the UC SHIP Executive Committee, a group of top UCOP and campus health officials, at its April 24 meeting. Following its recommendation, the Council of Chancellors will make the final decision on lifting the caps. The council is scheduled to meet May 1.

Several lawmakers have expressed support for eliminating the caps. Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, urged in a letter in February to align UC SHIP with the national standards set in place by the Affordable Care Act. State Assemblymember Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, introduced a bill in February that would force health insurance plans run by a university or college to comply with the section of the Affordable Care Act that lifts limits on lifetime and annual coverage of essential health benefits.

Mitchell Handler covers academic and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org

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AB 314 would force health insurance plans run by a university or college to comply with a section of the Affordable Care Act that lifts limits on lifetime and annual coverage of essential health benefits. Because UC SHIP is a self-funded plan — students pay into a health care fund that the UC system manages — it is exempt from the health care reform law and currently imposes a $400,000 lifetime coverage cap and a $10,000 annual prescription drug coverage cap.

“We felt it’s important that students have the same protections as every other American,” said Assemblymember Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, who is the lead author of the bill. “I think that it’s important that the state make a firm decision and make it law that students deserve the same protections as other insured Californians for their health plans.”

Under AB 314, UC SHIP would not be allowed to impose caps on the 10 categories of “essential health benefits” as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services, including prescription drugs, hospitalization and maternity and newborn care. Like all health insurance plans that are regulated by the Affordable Care Act, limits could still be put in place for health care that does not fall under any of the essential benefit categories, like adult dental care.

The movement to lift the caps comes as UC SHIP is facing a projected $57 million deficit by this summer. The UC Office of the President has considered raising premiums by an average of 25 percent systemwide as a way to close the deficit. Lifting the coverage caps would require another premium increase, although it is expected to be significantly smaller than the increase proposed to close the deficit.

Although the university does not have an official position on AB 314, UCOP spokesperson Shelly Meron said the UC system is currently analyzing the costs of lifting the caps.

“As the university considers removing the caps, we’re cognizant of the need to keep the plan financially viable and affordable for students,” Meron said in an email. “We have to balance all of those factors as we move forward.”

After passing through the Assembly Committee on Health, the bill now awaits the chamber’s appropriations committee.

“The Obamacare law, the ACA, makes these kinds of caps illegal, and we don’t believe that the UC system should have the ability to implement a rule that, just because they can, adversely affects a portion of the UC student population,” said Darius Kemp, director of organizing and communications for the UC Student Association.

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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In a letter addressed to UC SHIP officials, Birgeneau cited a survey of more than 450 UC Berkeley students showing 67 percent in favor of lifting the $400,000 lifetime coverage cap and 63 percent in favor of lifting the $10,000 annual prescription drug coverage cap in exchange for slight premium increases.

“From the survey, we frequently heard from Berkeley students that they felt a moral need to lift the caps,” Birgeneau said in the letter.

For months, students have been urging UC SHIP officials to have the plan voluntarily comply with the Affordable Care Act’s ban on lifetime and annual dollar limits on essential care. As a self-funded insurance plan, UC SHIP is exempt from the health care reform law.

UC Office of the President spokesperson Brooke Converse said UC officials are in support of ridding the plan of the caps but are still examining the financial implications of the proposal.

“In general, we’re in the support of lifting the caps,” Converse said. “We’re working to see how we can do that, but it is going to take a raise in premiums in order to do so.”

Although few students actually reach the coverage limits, the effects on those who do can be devastating.

In his letter, Birgeneau acknowledged Kenya Wheeler, a former graduate student in city planning at UC Berkeley who began treatment for primary central nervous system T-cell lymphoma in November 2011. Since then, he has met the lifetime coverage cap and has had to pay at least $10,000 in out-of-pocket expenses for his treatment.

“I was really excited and pleased that the chancellor has taken a public stance in support of better health care for all students,” Wheeler said. “For me, it adds a sense of there being a meaning from all the challenges and hard times that I went through in fighting cancer.”

Other local and national leaders, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, urged in a letter last month to align UC SHIP with the national standards set in place by the Affordable Care Act.

Last month, California State Assemblymember Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, introduced AB 314 to require plans like the UC SHIP to comply with the federal requirement and end lifetime and annual coverage caps. The Committee on Health is scheduled to hear the bill on Tuesday.

The systemwide Council of Chancellors will accept recommendations regarding the coverage caps from the UC SHIP Executive Committee, a group consisting of campus and UCOP officials, before making the final decision on the coverage caps. The council’s next meeting is scheduled for May 1.

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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