May 04, 2005
BLOG MOVING
We've moved to a new server for more disk space.
The new address is http://polycrit.com/time
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May 02, 2005
UC Merced - If You Build It, Will They Come?
I've been concerned about the sustainability of government funding higher education for some time. Now with the upcoming opening a new University of California campus at Merced, we have before us a concrete embodiment of some of the challenges facing public higher education. Stated briefly, my current feelings are that the UC Merced campus will eventually be recognized as a costly boondoggle.
The new UC Merced wants to be a research university, following the model of other UC campuses, as opposed to the California State University system, which is focused primarily on undergraduate instruction and where professors typically carry a much heavier teaching load. But would top researchers and their spouses (who likely would be career-minded professionals themselves) be willing to move Merced, whose claim to fame is that it's just one hour away from both Fresno and Yosemite National Park. All the other existing UC campuses are closer to larger metropolitan areas with less dependence on the agricultural economy, where professional jobs for faculty spouses would be much more plentiful.
As of 2005, the state of California has spent $427 million on building the Merced campus. See the UC Merced 2005 Budget Report.
For the academic year of 2005-2006, the school has allotted $8.5 million to recruit 30 new faculty members, which comes out to $285,000 per position. That amount does not cover regular faculty salary, but is meant to cover interview and marketing costs, as well "equipment to support academic and research programs, initial summer salary and support for graduate students until grant funds materialize (usually in the first or second year), and relocation costs." (See the 2005 Budget Report).
For 2004-2005, the campus had an operating budget of $23 million. For 2005-2006, its first year of actual instruction, the school has proposed an operating budget of $48 million. Almost all the funding will come from the state government. Since it hopes to enroll only 800-1000 students for its inaugural class, that works out to $48,000-60,000 per student. Once it atracts more students, that per-student cost should come down with the economy of scale, but by how much? According to the LA Times article below, the school "is expected to grow by about 800 students a year, reaching its planned capacity of about 25,000 students by 2035."
California's current Lieutenant Governor, Cruz Bustamante, who used to represent Fresno and Tulare counties in the state assembly, headed a state task force under then-Gov. Gray Davis for the UC Merced project and was instrumental in getting the campus approved.
October 24, 2002 Lieutenant Governor Cruz M. Bustamante Praises UC Merced SupportersThe rationale given by California state officials for building this new research university in rural San Joaquin Valley is that:One of Bustamante's first acts as Assembly speaker was to create a Select Committee on the Development of a 10th University of California campus. In addition, along with the assistance of Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced), Bustamante was able to successfully double state budget funding for UC Merced-from $5 million to $10 million annually-in order to expedite the advancement of the campus.
"UC Merced will be an incredible asset to the long underserved Central Valley-both in expanding educational opportunities and spurring economic development," Bustamante stated. "I'm so proud to be associated with this project."
Bustamante was appointed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999 to serve on the UC Merced "Red Team," a committee charged with coordinating and helping to expedite the development of the campus.
As part of its strategy to increase capacity, the University identified the San Joaquin Valley as the region in which a new campus should be located, because it is the only major region of substantial population without a University of California campus. There is an important statewide interest in increasing the educational attainment and diversity of the economy of this part of the State. At the same time, a tenth campus located in the Valley would bring with it the benefits of economic development that accompany a public graduate education and research university. Finally, the tenth campus would fulfill the University's public service mission under the Master Plan by adding to and building on public service activities already located in the Valley.
And this from a UC spokesperson:
http://www.facilitiesnet.com/bom/Aug03/Aug03construction.shtml
The site was favored for a number of reasons, says James Grant, director of communications for the University of California. California’s Central Valley, which extends from Stockton in the north to Bakersfield in the south, has a population of 3.5 million and is growing 60 percent faster than the state average. The population is expected to surge to 10 million by 2020. What’s more, the Central Valley was the largest population not serviced by a University of California campus. Finally, the campus is being viewed as an economic hook to draw business to the area.While the San Joaquin Valley enjoys agricultural riches, Grant says, it doesn’t now attract the high-tech businesses where young, educated people want to work. As a result, the area has been experiencing a “brain drain” in which educated residents move to work in San Diego or Silicon Valley.
Grant says there’s evidence that the Merced campus will be able to attract business and the talented workforce needed to give the area an economic boost. San Diego County, home of a University of California campus, experienced an influx of biotech firms when the campus started focusing academic programs in that area. Now, approximately one of every four biotech firms in the world is located in San Diego.
A Degree of Isolation at New UC Merced
By Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times
MERCED, Calif. — Renata Santillan looked out across a broad expanse of pasture, dotted with flowering mustard and more than a dozen cows, toward the construction site several hundred yards away.
"Is it going to be ready in time?" Santillan, a 17-year-old high school senior from San Bruno, asked, sounding doubtful. "It's kind of cool, but what would it really be like to go here?"
Less than five months from its opening day, the newest University of California campus is rising from the gently rolling grasslands near this farming town in the San Joaquin Valley. Construction crews are toiling nearly around the clock to complete its first three academic buildings and put the finishing touches on a cluster of low-slung student residence halls.
At the same time, leaders of the first new UC campus in four decades also are working to attract about 1,000 students to fill those classrooms and dormitories for the inaugural year. Using tours, outreach efforts and personal enthusiasm, they are wooing prospective students with the seemingly boundless promise of a brand-new campus.
Yet they also acknowledge the fears of some students, like Santillan, that the campus may be too new, too isolated and too risky.
"Not everyone wants this sort of experience," said engineering professor Christopher Viney, who at a recent open house demonstrated his own pioneering spirit by donning face paint and a hat with the fuzzy ears of the school's bobcat mascot. "But remember, such a chance comes along once in a generation."
Scheduled to open in September with about 60 faculty and 350 staff members alongside its initial students, UC Merced is the first major American research university to be built this century.
The campus, the 10th in the UC system, will open nearly two decades after the university's regents first authorized it to help cope with an expected boom in the state's college-age population. It also will be the first UC campus in the San Joaquin Valley, where college attendance rates have traditionally lagged behind those of the state's other regions.
Aniket Sharma, 17, had traveled to the open house from his home in Diamond Bar. His father, Surya Sharma, spoke positively of the opportunities at UC Merced, theorizing that membership in its inaugural class might look good on a medical school application. Aniket sat silent, looking glum.
Pressed for an opinion, the teenager finally spoke. "It's too isolated," he said.
The campus is five miles from downtown Merced, a city of about 70,000 an hour north of Fresno. It is surrounded by houses and farms, with cattle grazing on much of the site, which is within view of the Sierra Nevada. Yosemite National Park is about an hour away.
Tomlinson-Keasey, a former UC Riverside psychology professor and an administrator there and at UC Davis, was named chancellor of UC Merced in 1999. Since then, she and the campus have weathered a string of setbacks, including environmental concerns that required a change of site and state fiscal problems that caused a one-year delay.
It remains controversial in some quarters. Patrick M. Callan, president of the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, criticizes the campus as a costly mismatch with the state's higher-education needs.
"It's going to happen at this point," Callan said. "But it still comes down to whether we need a highly expensive research university in a rural community."
Tomlinson-Keasey said she never feared the campus would be scrapped altogether but did worry that continuing budget woes could push it back by as much as a decade, past the expected peak in California's college-going population.
"But you look at high school enrollment numbers and you know that we need it now, for these next few years," she said at the open house. "This will be a real safety valve for all our other campuses."
Yet as with many new enterprises, much about the campus' initial days is still uncertain.
"We don't really know how many students we'll have, whether the classrooms will be ready or whether the infrastructure will be ready," said Shawn Kantor, an economics professor who is also the head of its faculty senate. "Once we know all that, we'll feel better."
By today prospective students must notify UC Merced and other UC campuses that they are accepting or denying their offers of admission.
The Merced campus extended such offers this year to about 6,000 students, for an initial freshman class of 800 to 1,000. The campus also expects to enroll about 100 transfer students in its first year.
By late last week, admissions officials said about 500 students had committed to the campus, with many others considered likely to turn in their acceptances by mail or e-mail in the final hours before the deadline.
Administrators said they were somewhat disappointed that only about 12% of admitted freshmen came from the San Joaquin Valley; they hope eventually to draw about half the university's students from the area.
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The Future of Newspapers and Magazines
Some arguments for the continuing viability of newspapers and magazines in the electronic age.
Print Insists It's Here to Stay
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, New York Times
Published: May 2, 2005
Newspapers are generally profitable but they leave Wall Street unenthusiastic. A Goldman, Sachs report last week warned investors that "lackluster ad revenue growth, weak circulation revenues" and "a downward trend in earnings estimates" reinforced its "negative view" of the newspaper industry. And recent disclosures of inflated circulation figures have soured the climate for some advertisers.
Earl C. Cox, who is the Martin Agency's chief executive and is leading the newspapers' public relations campaign, told newspaper executives at a recent conference that the current perception of newspapers among advertisers was that they were "static, inflexible and hard to buy." And, he added, "It doesn't help any that media buyers are under 30 and their focus is elsewhere," mostly on the Internet.
He said newspapers needed to retell their story to remind advertisers that their readers are highly engaged and influential and that they are paying attention, unlike some of the "eyeballs" darting around the Internet.
Magazines are in a somewhat different position. They appear to have recovered from the advertising slump of a few years ago. Ad pages for the industry in March were up 1.2 percent from March 2004. In the first quarter of this year, 76 new magazines appeared.
"The magazine industry is extremely healthy," said Jay Kirsch, vice president of AdMedia Partners, financial advisers to magazines. "The newsweeklies are in tough shape, but the monthlies and lifestyle and enthusiast magazines are doing fabulously."
Of the $141 billion spent on all forms of advertising in 2004, about 17 percent went to magazines, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Newspapers captured 20 percent of that, network television 18 percent, cable television 12 percent and the Internet 6 percent. But the newspaper share was down, the magazine share was flat and the Internet was growing fast. Advertising Age predicted last week that the combined advertising revenue of Google and Yahoo this year would rival those of the big three television networks, marking what it called a "watershed moment" in the evolution of the Internet....
"We're really good at putting out products that consumers love, value and trust, and trust is very hard to find these days," said Jack Kliger, president and chief executive of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., which publishes Elle, Woman's Day and Car and Driver, among others. "We've not been good at marketing our medium."
Readers of magazines, like readers of newspapers, are highly engaged.
Mr. Kliger said research showed that when people are reading magazines, they are unlikely to be using any other form of media. But when they watch television, listen to the radio or wait to download something from the Internet, they are more likely to be listening, watching or reading something else at the same time. They are also likely to be fast-forwarding through commercials or deleting pop-up ads that they see as intrusions. But, he said, magazine readers often see ads as helpful and as part of the magazine experience.
"Engagement improves return on investment," he said.
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