But upon further inspection, significant excitement over the UC policy is unfounded. As it stands, the policy is contradictory because of a loophole allowing faculty members to submit waivers on a per-article basis to opt out of open publication.

The university cannot call its policy an open access one when it allows some research articles to be exempt to open access over others. The waiver essentially disincentivizes those who work for a public institution from sharing all their research and allows them to pick and choose where their research goes, thereby creating a divide between those who can afford access to a private academic journal and those who cannot. It also isn’t much different from the way faculty members originally differentiated between publishing privately in an academic journal versus publishing for public access.

Additionally, as a co-founder of The Open Access Initiative at Berkeley pointed out, the waiver option is a problem because it could lead to uncooperative publishers taking advantage of authors. Also, by giving faculty members the choice of opting out of open access, there is a good chance the best research will remain in expensive journals exclusively, meaning it will once again be inaccessible to those cannot afford subscription fees.

It is true that some professors will want to choose whether to submit their research for public access or to academic journals. According to Christopher Kelty, a UCLA professor and Academic Senate committee member who drafted the policy, the opt-out clause was included at the faculty’s request. But this clause will misrepresent a movement that is proudly portrayed as universally open. The policy sets a dangerous precedent for other schools to adopt similar policies, thinking that it is acceptable to have open access movements in which openness isn’t actually guaranteed.

The point of The Open Access Initiative at Berkeley was to disseminate UC research for the public’s benefit, whether the public is at UC Berkeley or across the globe. The UC Academic Senate had the opportunity to accomplish this goal, but instead it passed a watered-down version of the policy that probably will fail to accomplish the original goals.

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Starting in November, academic papers published by UC researchers will be available for free through eScholarship, a UC scholarly publishing service.

The new policy, adopted on July 24, will cover 8,000 UC faculty members at all UC campuses and will facilitate the publication of up to 40,000 papers each year. Papers will still be published in scholarly journals but must be made available for free through eScholarship.

“(The) council’s intent is to make these articles widely — and freely — available in order to advance research everywhere,” said Robert Powell, chair of the Academic Council, in a press release Friday.

Faculty members, however, will also be given the choice to delay or opt out of the policy on a per-article basis.

The decision is part of a broader academic movement to provide open access to publications across the country, particularly for publicly funded research.

The University of California has openly supported AB 609, a California assembly bill that would require publicly funded research institutions to make their research available freely online.

“Scholars at the University of California have a vested interest in ensuring that their work reaches the widest possible audience, including members of the public whose tax dollars support the University’s research,” the university said in a statement regarding the bill. “This increasing restriction on the dissemination of research results runs counter to the spirit in which UC faculty, researchers and students undertake their scholarly activity.”

The Obama administration mandated in February that federally funded research be made publicly available within a year of publication.

As of May, the university spent about $30 million annually on access to 7,500 academic journals, according to UC officials.

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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Lexy Atmore/Courtesy

UC President Mark Yudof approved the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s proposal to change its full-time MBA program to self-supporting status last week.

Previously, the programs costs were covered by a combination of state funds and student tuition. Following Yudof’s decision, the program will be covered mainly by student tuition.

“I appreciate the fact that (Yudof) is supportive of this approach,” said Anderson Dean Judy Olian. “This is the sixth self-supporting program at Anderson. This is the natural progression.”

Yudof announced his approval and explained his decision on June 24 in a letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. As the UC Board of Regents delegated the authority for setting self-supporting charges to the president, the decision was ultimately Yudof’s.

“In all respects, the Anderson School and all its degree programs are expected to retain the characteristics of the great public research university that is the University of California,” Yudof wrote.

In his letter, Yudof also stated three conditions that his approval is subject to: The program must not use state funds or tuition from students in other programs; the program must continue to ensure that financial aid is offered for “financially needy” students; and the program must adhere to the specifics of the self-supporting policy on graduate professional degree programs.

Olian stated that the business MBA program will remain unchanged, including current tuition levels.

“It’s a mistake to think that state support has protected students from tuition increases,” Olian said. “Under state support, tuition increased.”

Yudof also acknowledged in the letter that the UC Academic Senate did not support the action but that he believes this action represents a compromise between two competing views.

“The Academic Senate was basically concerned from a policy standpoint that we didn’t conform to the recommendations for a self-supporting program,” Olian said. “We provided data that showed otherwise. Yudof saw both sides and made his decision.”

Olian said that the only changes to the MBA program will be improvements in assigning and compensating faculty.

UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Dean Richard Lyons said in a statement that he was delighted that Anderson succeeding in getting approval for the transformation.

“Dean Judy Olian has been bravely pursuing the goal of gaining maximum financial flexibility over this program so that it can continue to do well in a rapidly changing operating environment,” Lyons said in the statement. “We share in that overall goal at Berkeley-Haas but have taken a different path to achieve it.”

Lyons stated that the undergraduate business program at Haas will not change and will continue to receive state funding.

Contact Sohan Shah at sohanshah@dailycal.org.

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Wikipedia/Courtesy

California state senators unanimously passed a controversial online education bill Thursday that creates a grant program for faculty at the state’s higher education institutions to develop online courses.

Despite opposition from UC officials and faculty members in recent weeks, SB 520 passed in the Senate by a vote of 28-0 — with 11 senators not voting — and will now be sent to the state Assembly for review. Authored by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, the bill introduces an incentive grant program that would allow faculty at state public colleges and universities to develop courses with private online providers such as Coursera and Udacity. Critics have said the bill is overly prescriptive and relies too much on private companies.

Previous versions of the bill required that the 50 most impacted lower-division courses in the state be made available online — in part by developing partnerships with private course providers. The bill passed on Thursday, however, reflects new changes that relax previous requirements, offering grants for 20 “high-demand” lower-division courses in each state system. Both versions aim to relieve enrollment pressures and cut costs at higher education institutions.

Rhys Williams, Steinberg’s press secretary, said the bill helps standardize education across public educational institutions in California. Although faculty members will not be required to develop courses on private platforms, they still have the option of using them.

“By creating a framework from which the faculty lead the decision-making, the decision is being taken to scale,” Williams said. “The faculty has the ultimate decision as to whether they want to proceed to the online option or not.”

But Robert Powell, chair of the UC Academic Senate, said the most recent version of the bill fails to address long-standing concerns about the use of private contractors in public education, especially at the University of California.

“The bill has not met the criticisms that we’ve had of the bills since the beginning,” Powell said. “They undermine the efforts that the university has been making … It’s overly prescriptive.”

UC spokesperson Shelly Meron also criticized the bill, citing the existence of similar plans, such as the Innovative Learning Technology Initiative, which could use $10 million in state funds to increase access to high-demand classes in the UC system. Although the language of SB 520 has changed, the content of the bill remains largely the same, she said, adding that the changes haven’t fully addressed the concerns that the UC has.

The bill’s emphasis on partnering with private contractors continues to be a problem for the university, Meron said.

According to Williams, the bill is a response to long waiting lists at UC campuses rather than a replacement for classes taken in person. But Nolan Pack, ASUC executive vice president, said that the bill is an attempt to address a problem that the Legislature created.

“The problem is that they’re advertising it as a way to solve the problem of long wait-lists,” Pack said. “I think the takeaway is that the crisis in higher education and in public education is not going to be solved through online education.”

Contact Chris Yoder at cyoder@dailycal.org. Follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article misquoted Meron as saying “Those changes haven’t fully addressed the concerns that UC Berkeley has.” In fact, Meron said the changes did not fully address concerns that the UC has.

The article also incorrectly quoted Meron as saying “The contract providers are still definitely a part of the bill, and that remains a problem with the university.” In fact, the private contractors remain a problem for the UC.

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The proposal — which recommends that campuses be given control over approval of capital projects, academic programs and salaries — was criticized by UC President Mark Yudof in a Monday statement. Members of the campus community, who do not support devolving certain financial powers to individual campuses, have also expressed disapproval of the proposal.

“I’m troubled by the possibility of campuses setting student tuition and their own scale for faculty pay,” said Jonathan Stein, the UC Student Regent-designate. “It has the potential to make … ‘flagship’ UC campuses more expensive and harder to access for middle-class students.”

In the Tuesday interview, Birgeneau said the proposal was made public to initiate a discussion on how UC governance should evolve.

“It’s a natural evolution of the UC system because the UC system has always been agile in adapting to the realities of the situation at that time,” he said.

The proposal comes at a time of transition for the campus and the university, with Birgeneau expected to step down as chancellor at the end of the calendar year and pressure by student leadership to increase student involvement in systemwide governance.

The UC Student Association has begun pushing the UC Board of Regents to add non-voting student members to most board committees, and ASUC student leaders opened an application process for UC Berkeley students to directly interact with the Yudof-convened search committee to select Birgeneau’s replacement at their first meeting on May 4.

As a response to prior complaints by students, the proposal suggests appointing two students to be voting members of the  proposed campus boards that UC regents would also sit on.

According to Birgeneau, the proposal was written after extensive discussions with Yudof, UC Academic Senate chair Robert Jacobsen, various UC chancellors, two UC regents and campus student leadership.

Yet it has been met with criticism by campus School of Information Professor Yale Braunstein, who contends that there is “considerable evidence that the quality of local decision-making is not high enough to justify devolving any additional budget or financial powers to the campuses.”

Birgeneau said the proposal will continue to change as input is received from members of the campus community.

“Let me emphasize that this is meant to be a working document, and it’s our best thoughts, but we don’t pretend that we have the final answer,” Birgeneau said. “So we expect this to evolve over time, and student input will be an important part of it.”

Amruta Trivedi is the lead academics and administration reporter.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau consulted with UC Academic Senate chair Robert Anderson. In fact, he consulted with Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate chair Robert Jacobsen.

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A bill passed through the state Legislature in 2011 requires the California State University and community colleges to collect data on the sexual orientation of their students. In January, the UC Academic Senate recommended that UC schools do the same. Because of California state law, the data cannot factor into admissions decisions. While implementation at the CSU and community col­leges has no deadline, and the UC’s efforts may come to fruition even later, being able to someday quantify how many students identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or other increases the capacity of each campus to meet its students’ needs.

Giving students the option to state their orientation affirms the diversity already present at the UC.

Administrators tasked with interpreting the data should remember the still-sensitive nature of sexual orientation in American society. But nevertheless, the ability of UC campuses to collect statistics on the young people they teach outweighs the marginal costs of doing so. The UC strives to serve Californians from all backgrounds — being aware of the extent to which it does can only help make that quest a reality.

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Pitts announced last year that he would retire in February, after three years as UC provost. But even in mid-March, Klein emphasized that Pitts remains working with no definitive date for his retirement.

And although the university expects that a replacement provost will be appointed near July 1, it is unclear if Pitts will continue in his capacity until then.

“It depends on the timing,” Klein said in an email.

Pitts, who was named interim provost in September 2009 prior to his full-time appointment in March 2010, is a professor emeritus of neurosurgery at UC San Francisco. He has served as vice and acting chair of the Department of Neurosurgery, as well as chief of neurosurgery at San Francisco General Hospital. He has also worked on various UC Academic Senate committees in his time in the UC system.

After he leaves his current post, Pitts will fully retire and will not return to teach at UCSF, according to Klein.

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Damian Ortellado is the lead higher education reporter.

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Future University of California students may be asked to disclose their sexual orientation upon accepting an admissions offer to a UC campus.

Recent legislation and efforts to obtain this information were introduced with the goal of improving campus data and resources available for students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. However, UC officials say this will not be implemented for the incoming class.

Both the CSU and the UC may request information about a student’s sexual orientation on the Statement of Intent to Register in order to protect students not comfortable with sharing their sexual orientation with parents or guardians.

The Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, a committee within the systemwide Academic Senate, recommended in January that the UC work to gather this data in an effort to comply with AB 620 — state legislation passed in October 2011 that requires the California Community Colleges and California State University to collect demographic data on sexual orientation and requests the same of the UC.

Although the UC collects data on ethnic groups, socioeconomic status and other demographic categories to track issues such as retention efforts and graduation rates, Academic Senate Chair Robert Anderson said there is currently no method in place to measure how LGBT-identified students fare on UC campuses.

“We collect data on other groups, and it’s time that we treat LGBT people the same way,” he said. “I think this is a very reasonable aspect of expressing our diversity.”

According to Jesse Bernal, diversity coordinator at the UC Office of the President, discussions around this issue were already circulating prior to the passage of AB 620. Bernal said that a final decision on how to implement these efforts is “definitely at least a year out.”

Lawrence Pitts, UC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, will make the final decision on how and when to implement a plan for the UC.

“We have an internal group that has been investigating the challenges to gather this information and how best to go about it,” Bernal said.

Similarly, CSU spokesperson Liz Chapin said that efforts at the CSU are also far from finalized. She said the CSU is still exploring the issue, but adding the question to the registration statement may be the best option.

“The bill does not have any specific timeline,” Bernal said. “The only specificity is whenever you update forms, you need to now include sexual orientation.”

Including sexual orientation in demographic efforts is largely uncharted territory at universities across the nation. According to Bernal, Elmhurst College in Illinois was the first to ask for this information in its application — a practice it began for the 2012-13 academic year.

Andrew Albright, a gay ASUC senator, said that coming to Berkeley from a conservative town was “like a breath of fresh air” and that UC Berkeley consistently ranks as one of the top schools in the country in terms of friendliness toward LGBT students.

“But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do more work,” he said. “I have friends who are called ‘faggot’ walking down the street, and I know people who have been forcibly kicked and beat at a party. Microaggressions happen every day, even in a place like Berkeley.”

Jessica Rossoni covers higher education.

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The proposed Negotiated Salary Program would increase faculty salaries by tapping into the many sources of self-generated incomes faculty have access to in an attempt to supplement their general income, according to the proposal.

Under the new proposal, non-state funds — grants and contracts, endowments or special course fees — would be used to augment faculty salaries under certain conditions, according to an email from Dianne Klein, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President.  If implemented, state funds that would be used originally for faculty raises could be used for other purposes.

However, according to Robert Anderson, chair of the UC Academic Senate, there would not be a large increase in usable state funds.

“It is not clear that this proposal generates any new money,” Anderson said. “It doesn’t use any revenue source that is not already being tapped.”

The proposed policy would increase a faculty member’s salary by charging the raise to grants or other sources of self-generated income, Anderson said.

“The salary scale has not increased very much, and it is now significantly below what a comparable person would be paid in a comparable institution,” said Joe Kiskis, professor of physics at UC Davis. “It makes it harder for the university to keep their best faculty and to hire new faculty.”

The policy states that faculty in good standing who are meeting teaching, research and service obligations may propose a new, higher negotiated salary. The decision to negotiate an increase in salary is determined by the department chairs, deans and the executive vice chancellors or provosts at each UC campus.

However, faculty are concerned that this policy would concentrate the decision-making authority into a few positions. The policy would give the deans extensive power to reduce or increase a faculty member’s salary on a year by year basis without a review to justify the change, according to Anderson.

“It would decrease transparency,” Kiskis said. “It is inevitable that there would be more imbalance in the system.”

At UC Berkeley, increases to faculty salary are recommended by the Committee on Budget and Interdepartmental Relations as part of an academic review, according to campus Academic Senate policy.

The proposed salary plan utilizes the principles found in the Health Sciences Compensation Plan, a policy that allows UC campuses to award competitive salaries by drawing on a broad range of revenue funds. The compensation plan uses clinical income as well as endowment earnings, grants and contracts to create a more competitive market salary for their clinical faculty.

“(The compensation plan) works fine for what it is,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor in the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco. “If you try to apply this on the general campus, where you don’t have this big clinical revenue scheme, it will create chaos.”

The salary plan would not be enforced systemwide — each chancellor may decide whether or not to implement the policy. Currently, UC Berkeley is not set to participate in the program, according to UC spokesperson Steve Montiel.

“Campuses with medical centers seem more disposed towards the program because faculty in the sciences often feel at a disadvantage to their peers on the Health Service side who are able to take advantage of the (compensation plan),” Klein said in the email.

Currently, the proposal is still in the discussion phase, according to Klein. The Academic Senate is estimated to discuss the proposal in December, after which the proposal will be sent to UC President Mark Yudof for approval.

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