The online survey was launched in October 2012. The results were originally expected to be released in the summer and fall of 2013 but are now expected to be presented in early 2014, said UC spokesperson Shelly Meron.

The survey, which included participants from all 10 UC campuses, the UC Office of the President, the agriculture and natural resources department and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is the first of its scope on this topic in the university’s history, said Meron.

“The Campus Climate Survey has been a major undertaking — believed to be the largest study of institutional climate ever conducted — and everything has taken longer than had been anticipated,” Meron said in an emailed statement.

The survey included questions about institutional access, perceptions and experiences, academic and professional success, sexual and gender identity, spirituality and socioeconomic status, among others. UC Berkeley’s survey closed last spring.

There will be both an analysis of individual sites’ results and a systemwide report that will be presented to the UC Board of Regents in early 2014, said Meron.

“The results will help us develop future initiatives and action plans that build on past successes, address challenges and promote institutional change,” Meron said.

The results will not go public until they have been presented to the regents.

Contact Adrianna Dinolfo at adinolfo@dailycal.org.

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The Working Smarter Initiative, which was launched in 2010, aims to save $500 million across the UC system by streamlining administrative operations to help the UC system reach financial sustainability. At its meeting Wednesday, the UC Board of Regents will discuss the progress of the initiative and plans for the coming fiscal year.

According to the regents’ agenda, the initiative will focus on smaller-scale improvements, such as campus-specific projects that help make the day-to-day business of each campus run more smoothly and improve campus life for students and faculty members, for fiscal years 2013 and 2014.

So far, the Working Smarter Initiative has exceeded its initial goal of reaching $300 million in three years by $161 million.

“Money from the state is never going to be the same,” said UC Office of the President spokesperson Brooke Converse. “Right now, we have to work towards saving money, and the university has to get creative. That’s going to forever be the case moving forward.”

In fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the initiative achieved its highest annual fiscal impact of $171 million in cost savings and new revenue. Cost-saving projects added up to $95 million, and new revenue totaled $76 million.

Some of the large contributors to the success between fiscal year 2012 and 2013 included projects such as the Statewide Energy Partnership, which aims to lower utility costs, and Liquidity Management, which rearranges money into a longer-term investment pool for a higher return.

The program saved the UC system about $157 million between fiscal years 2010 and 2011 and $132 million between fiscal years 2011 and 2012, according to the regents’ agenda. The $461 million accrued through the initiative in the past three years will be funneled directly to campuses to support the university’s core academic and research missions.

In 2009, UC Berkeley launched a separate initiative called Operational Excellence, a cost-cutting measure to streamline campus operations. While the these two projects share several similarities, Operational Excellence was not involved in the Working Smarter Initiative project proposal, said Caryl Miller, communications manager for the UC Berkeley Operational Excellence office.

“It’s important to remember this is a systemwide initiative,” Converse said. “These projects affect students heavily, but it might be harder for students on a specific campus to see on a daily basis.”

J. Hannah Lee covers higher education. Contact her at jhlee@dailycal.org.

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At the meeting, both sides discussed an AFSCME offer to increase employee pension payments in exchange for a focus on more staffing at UC medical centers. AFSCME has said that more staff members are needed to improve safety in the medical centers following negative ratings and a higher incidence of patient injury.

The university rejected the offer because the cost was higher than it was willing to accept, and the offer was not presented as a formal proposal, according to UC officials. The university, which criticized AFSCME’s strikes in May, has focused on pension reform in the negotiations.

“Pension reform has been the primary sticking point in these
negotiations,” said UC spokesperson Dianne Klein in an email. “UC is engaged in reasonable pension reform to protect the long-term viability of retirement plans so it can continue to provide quality pension benefits to all employees.”

Pension reform has been at the center of negotiations since they started in June 2012, as unions fought to keep their members’ pensions after the university did not pay into the fund for more than 20 years, leading to a shortage of available money for retirees and forcing employees to pay increased dues into the pension fund.

Representatives from AFSCME also say a central issue of Thursday’s offer is protecting patient safety.

“This proposed compromise was about protecting patients,” said AFSCME 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger in a press release Friday. “In rejecting our good faith offer, UC Administrators have not only shown contempt for the workers at the backbone of the UC medical system, but also a shocking disregard for the safety of the patients they serve.”

But AFSCME’s May strike put patients and their families unnecessarily at risk, said UC spokesperson Shelly Meron.

Disagreements over executive compensation have also arisen. AFSCME alleges that the university has diverged from providing affordable care and that policies cutting expenses burdened UC employees.

“UC is demanding that its lowest paid workers agree to pay more and work longer in order to subsidize the six figure annual pensions that UC routinely shells out to its highest paid executives,” Lybarger said in the release.

AFSCME advocates a cap on executive pensions similar to caps instated by Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this year.

But the university said that executive compensation is necessary for UC medical centers to offer top-tier services.

“We have to compete in a very competitive marketplace,” Meron said. “We have to offer compensation that will attract the best candidates to these jobs.”

Contact Simon Greenhill and Sohan Shah at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Gabrianna Dumaguin/File

The University of California system saw an increase of about 1,263 in undergraduate students accepting admission offers in this year’s freshman class, with proportions of out-of-state and international students planning to enroll also increasing.

The total number of admitted freshman students stating intent to register in the UC system was 44,016 this year. Of those students, the percentage who are California residents dropped by 2.8 percent from last year’s freshman class, while SIRs from international and out-of-state students increased from 15.5 percent of all students planning to enroll to 18.3 percent for fall 2013.

“The admissions department plans for these things, and our hope was to increase our enrollment this year,” said Dianne Klein, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, about the total increase of SIRs. Klein said that enrollment data will change by fall and that SIR data is only a “snapshot” of the final numbers. “For now, the SIR statistics are preliminary, so our results aren’t concrete enough to determine what effect the (statistics) will have on the UC system,” she said.

The universitywide SIR statistics include guaranteed offers from UC Merced, which were offered to freshmen who met admissions requirements but were not originally admitted to the campus of their choice.

The percentage of out-of-state and international admitted freshmen planning to enroll at UC Santa Cruz more than doubled compared to last year — the biggest change in this statistic across the UC campuses. UC Santa Cruz also had the largest percent decrease in California resident SIRs over last year, with 6.6 percent fewer California resident students submitting SIRs.

The trend of a decreasing percentage of in-state SIRs follows the long debate about the increasing number of international and out-of-state students within the UC system. However, a summary released by the university, along with the data, supports this increase in nonresident enrollment, citing that “nonresidents pay higher tuition, thus self-funding the cost of their education, and helping support increases in course offerings and faculty hiring, which benefit all students.”

UC Berkeley SIRs totaled 5,979 students this year, an increase of 614 students from the campus’s 2012 numbers. The raw number of admitted freshmen planning to enroll at UC Berkeley in all residential categories increased, including California residents, with 115 more state residents planning to enroll than last year.

However, despite this increase in raw numbers, the percentage of admitted freshmen planning to enroll at UC Berkeley who are California residents decreased by 5.9 percent from last year. The percentage of out-of-state admitted freshmen planning to enroll at UC Berkeley increased by 1.6 percent, and international students planning to enroll went up by 4.3 percent from the year before.

Contact Dennis Vidal at dvidal@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that percentage of California residents who are planning enroll as freshmen at the UC this fall dropped by 2.8 percent from last year’s freshman class. In fact, the percentage dropped by 2.8 percentage points.

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Below is a sample of some of the items that will be discussed at the meeting:

Tuesday: Capital Projects

The Committee on Grounds and Buildings will review a plan to repair defects on 17 residential buildings at UC Santa Cruz.

Wednesday: Student regent and finance

The regents’ Special Committee on Selection of a Student Regent will recommend for approval UC Berkeley undergraduate and ASUC Senator Sadia Saifuddin as student regent.

If approved, Saifuddin will serve as regent-designate before becoming student regent from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

Also, the Committee on Finance will discuss updates on the university’s 2013-14 budget. This coming year, the state portion of the budget will increase from roughly $2.4 billion in 2012-13 to $2.8 billion. $125 million will come from a tuition buyout promised by the state in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

The budget also includes $10 million in funds previously allocated by Gov. Jerry Brown for online education in an earlier budget proposal. Brown later vetoed provisions in the budget that would have mandated the University of California spend the funds on online course development.

The university will still use the funds to offer about 150 online courses over the next three years, facilitating cross-campus coordination of academic programs and frameworks for evaluation and accountability within the programs, according to the regents’ agenda item.

The regents will also preliminarily discuss the 2014-15 budget. The UC Office of the President raised concerns over Brown’s call for a continued general tuition freeze without any promise to buy out an increase in tuition, according to the agenda item.

Issues concerning the 2014-15 budget will also be discussed in the regents’ September meeting prior to their  final adoption of the budget at their November meeting.

Thursday: Long-range planning

The Committee on Long Range Planning will review the annual University of California Accountability Report.

The report found that since 1990-91, average inflation-adjusted expenditures for educating UC students have declined 25 percent. However, the share of expenditures borne by students in the form of fees has more than tripled from 13 percent to 49 percent.

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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At the conference, UC Berkeley was recognized for its exemplary work in developing sustainable practices. The conference aims to bring together all the higher education systems in California so that they can share sustainable ideas and encourage other campuses to implement similar programs.

“Best of Practice awards are opportunities for us to recognize and bring light to the projects that are the most innovative,” said Katie Maynard, event manager for the California Higher Education Sustainability Conference.

The Best of Practice winners are chosen by a panel including members of the UC Office of the President, the CSU Chancellor’s Office, utilities partners and sustainability-focused nonprofit organizations. Factors considered when choosing winners include cost and energy savings, design and user satisfaction.

 UC Berkeley won the Overall Sustainable Design award for the second year in a row with its housing complex Maximino Martinez Commons. Some of the space’s most sustainable innovations include drought-resistant plants and a solar hot-water system.

“In terms of the awards, it’s one of the top ones that they hand out,” said UC Berkeley Director of Sustainability Lisa McNeilly. “Almost half of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) projects have been in campus housing. This is just another example of Cal Housing being a leader in this area.”

Staff members from UC Berkeley PowerSave, a program that implements energy-efficient projects, were also recognized for their work on the Fight the Flow campaign with the Student Energy Efficiency award. The campaign led to reduced water usage in the residence hall showers by installing valves that allow students to decrease water pressure.

The conference also presented Cal Dining with the Sustainable Foods Service award.

“The award was given to Cal Dining and represents the success of our team as a whole — cooks, chefs, our student workers as well as administrative support,” said Director of Residential Dining and Catering Operations Chuck Davies. “I think the entire team felt proud that we had accomplished something which helps save money and reduces waste.”

By using a LeanPath system to quantify waste in the kitchen, Cal Dining has been able to reduce food waste by 19 percent, according to Davies. Cal Dining’s adoption of the LeanPath system includes scales that collect information on food waste that can be analyzed by staff members at weekly meetings. Maynard said that she thought this approach to reducing waste was unique.

“Many schools just look at ways to compost,” Maynard said. “UC Berkeley is going further than that and really looking at ways to reduce waste through measurement and tracking.”

Contact Elise Aliotti at ealiotti@dailycal.org.

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Bowen Xiao/Staff

More than 50 students, faculty and community members gathered at Oakland’s Frank H. Ogawa Plaza at noon on Thursday.

The protest was in response to the UC administration’s decision to reschedule with short notice a public comment meeting regarding the impending negotiations over its contract with UAW 2865 — the union representing graduate student instructors, readers and other UC employees.

The “people’s public forum” lasted nearly three hours and included a march from the plaza to the nearby Marriott Hotel, where the UC Office of the President was hosting its annual Risk Summit. Protesters made a failed attempt to enter both locations, but no violence ensued. The march culminated at the Kaiser Center, where members of the department of employee and labor relations for the UC Office of the President listened as the protesters voiced their concerns.

According to Munira Lokhandwala, a UC Berkeley graduate student in film and media studies, the union had been organizing for weeks to get people to attend the originally scheduled meeting when the university announced last Thursday that it would reschedule. Lokhandwala says she was one of only two public commenters in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting.

“(The UC administration) was very disingenuous about actually wanting people to come,” Lokhandwala said. “Seeing that people were coming made them anxious.”

Shelly Meron, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, said that the meeting was rescheduled in consultation with UAW 2865 and that there would be a second public comment meeting on June 19. Meron said the university is “looking forward to collaborative and productive” negotiations.

In attendance were union members from other UC campuses who intended to go to the originally scheduled meeting. Protester demands included smaller class sizes, quality health care and affordable university housing.

“As future teachers, we are all concerned about the UC promoting excellent, accessible education,” said protester Michelle Glowa, a UC Santa Cruz graduate student in environmental studies. She also added that as a parent of a 3-year-old, she was “committed to him receiving a real education rather than just being a pump in a mill that churns out profit.”

Zoya Street, the spouse of a university employee and the co-chair of the Affordability Committee for the Village Residents Association, was also in attendance. Street said the university provides subsidizing housing for its employees, but she claims it is “failing to live up to its promise of affordability.” The union plans to address this issues in the upcoming negotiations, Street said.

Contact Sam Strimling at sstrimling@dailycal.org.

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The results come from the systemwide 2012 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, with questions on academic engagement, community involvement and financial background.

According to the survey results, 82 percent of UC students responding said they were content with their overall education. Despite more than $900 million in state funding cuts to the university over the last five years, this percentage has remained relatively constant since 2006.

“I think that shows that despite the economic recession and the decreased funding to UC in recent years, we’ve been able to continue serving our students really well,” said Shelly Meron, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, in an email.

But while academic approval has remained relatively constant, students are increasingly unhappy with the cost of getting a degree. The survey found that student satisfaction with the value of a UC education is now at 60 percent, down from 71 percent in 2006. The percent of students worried about the cost of tuition has increased from 64 to 71 percent over the last two years alone.

“Obviously we’re concerned about tuition increases, and we’re continuing to work with state legislators and the governor to resolve UC’s funding issues,” Meron said in the email.

Sereeta Alexander, research analyst at the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis, said that the campus’s own survey of new students has found similar results — that students are concerned about financing their education in the next few years.

“(The results) show that we should be thinking about how we should support students more with financial aid and scholarships — even if tuition and fees are rising,” Alexander said.

CalSERVE Senator and Executive Vice President-elect Nolan Pack said that higher student costs may reduce campus involvement, another issue studied in the survey.

“The more a college education costs, the more students have to work while they’re in school and the less time they have to do other things like public service or civic engagement,” Pack said. “The more we increase tuition, the more we’re chipping away at the holistic college experience.”

Pack also criticized possible plans to make tuition more affordable through online education, pointing out that the high academic satisfaction rates show that students value a classroom education.

“It’s clear that the quality of a UC education remains very high, but the state’s continued divestment from higher education puts that at risk,” Pack said. “The fact that students are overwhelmingly satisfied with faculty and instruction should say something. Online education … contradicts the experience of being in the classroom.”

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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The vote to strike — which passed with more than 97 percent support — comes after the university and the union failed to come to an agreement during ongoing contract negotiations, which began last June. The union alleges that the university’s prioritization of profits reduces patient-care quality, while the university argues that the strike is an attempt to gain bargaining leverage and divert attention from the union’s refusal of pension reforms during negotiations.

The suggested pension reforms include an increased contribution from both the university and employees toward the costs of pension benefits as well as revised eligibility rules for retirement health benefits, according to Shelly Meron, a media specialist with the UC Office of the President.

However, AFSCME, which represents nearly 13,000 patient-care workers from medical centers and student health centers across all 10 UC campuses, said the union is striking because the suggested pension reforms are another attempt by the university to maintain high-paying executive pensions. Representatives from AFSCME say those funds should instead be used for patient care.

“At this point, (the university has) certainly made clear they will not negotiate until we agree to protect their entitlements,” said AFSCME 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger. “Pension reform subsidizes their massive benefits. We are not going to stand for that.”

Such pensions and high-paying executive salaries have caused understaffing and cost-cutting in the UC medical system that is impacting the quality of patient care, said union spokesperson Todd Stenhouse.

The union says these new cuts and financial decisions have left the medical centers unable to provide the care patients deserve due to unnecessary stress and inadequate training on the use of hazardous materials in patient-care areas.

“The (university) needs to get its priorities straight,” Stenhouse said. “They need to stop this idea that executive salaries are their top fiscal priority … These are publicly funded hospitals that are here to serve California, and we are here to make sure they stay the crown jewels of the state.”

However, Meron asserts that the pension reforms are needed to ensure the university’s pension programs are financially sustainable.

“We are dealing with a $24 billion unfunded liability,” she said. “We want to make sure the (pension programs are) sustainable over time.”

In a press release from April, the university stated that AFSCME is trying to use patient care as a tool in contract negotiations, which can endanger the patients’ health. Meron said the university will prepare contingency plans for medical center operations — which include patient care — in case of a strike.

But a report published by AFSCME last month alleged that the UC hospitals have increased executive payroll by $100 million since 2009 and are the ones endangering patients by cutting care jobs and outsourcing them to less experienced workers.

The union is also preparing to take patient protection measures, including a 10-day notice of a strike and the formation of a Patient Protection Task Force in the event of an emergency.

The dates and duration of the union strike have not yet been finalized.

Alyssa Neumann covers city government. Contact her at aneumann@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @AlyNeumann.

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article may have implied that the University of California will prepare contingency plans for patients. In fact, the university will prepare contingency plans for medical center operations, which include patient care.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the vote to strike came after the University of California and the union failed to come to an agreement during contract negotiations last June. In fact, the vote to strike comes after the university and union failed to come to an agreement during ongoing contract negotiations, which began last June.

A previous version of this article also incorrectly quoted Meron as saying that pension that the UC wants to make sure the UC medical centers are sustainable over time. In fact, she said that the university wanted to make sure that pension programs are sustainable over time.

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Andrew Kuo/File

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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