Replying to the OC Register on the UC Regents, the UCI Law School, and the Cost of UC Irvine Housing

The OC Register had an article by a Contributing Writer, California Assemblyman Tom Lackey, on Sunday, March 15, 2015.  The article was titled “UC system disconnect”, and contained misrepresentations about the UC Regents.   I also wanted to discuss the importance of the UC Irvine Law School to the completeness of the Universities’ engagement with Society.  In addition I will show that there are much lower cost housing units on the UC Irvine campus, than the newest housing cited in the article.

The UC Regents are called “accountable to no one” in the Register article.  Wikipedia has an excellent article describing who the UC Regents are.  First of all, most (18) are nominated by California’s governors to serve 12 year terms.   This means that they are both Republican and Democrat, and are the business and public leaders of the state. Their nominations have to be confirmed by the California State Senate.  There are 26 voting members.  Seven Regents are ex officio members, including the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the State Assembly, who are elected, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction and President of the University of California, who are confirmed, and the president and vice president of the Alumni Associations of UC, who are probably elected by those associations.  The non-voting members of the Regents are two faculty members and one student member (for a year).  Most Regents have been lawyers, politicians, public servants, and businessmen.

When you read the remarkable people who are the regents, and their multiple connections to California businesses, social movements, and publications, you find that their description in the article as “out-of-touch” is just the opposite of who they really are.  They are on the boards of many of California’s largest businesses, and are answerable to the people that they serve for the guidance of the University.

The legislatures’ proposal to bring the Regents under control is in fact just the reason that the Regents have twelve year terms, which is to make them and the University independent of political influence.  The University of California has been a great success because of its self governance over a century, and strongly defends this principle.

While saying that the UC should not pursue “rankings and prestige”, part of those rankings are in fact based on undergraduate education, including timely completion, which saves students extra years and costs.  They are also based on keeping the student to faculty ratio down.  The rankings for research represent Federal government funding, which brings money back into the state, which left as federal taxes.  It also represents the new knowledge and advanced graduate student training that creates new innovative businesses in the state, which add to state income through taxes.  I know that all members of the state legislature are concerned about new jobs for the state and for the UC graduates, and these new and expanded businesses are where they come from.  (By coincidence, this blog article follows one showing the UC’s outstanding ratings in The Times World Reputation Rankings of 2015.)

The article criticizes the new UC Irvine School of Law as not needed since there is a surplus of lawyers.  This really overlooks the extraordinary start-up success of the Law School under Dean Chemerinsky, the integration of teaching and expertise across the campus in law that was previously uncoordinated, the importance of the law in society and the need to study its effects, and the creation of new academic areas of campus involvement in society and training students in these areas.  In fact, the School of Law just received its first rating by US News & World Report, and was ranked 30th overall.  This is the highest rating of any new law school.  It was also ranked 11th in clinical training, and tied for 10th in student diversity.

I will just add that in my area of Energy and Environment, I have been attending all of their international meetings and lectures on Arctic law, Law of the Seas and its effects on the oceans, China’s environmental laws, and laws concerning environmental pollution and catastrophes in the US.  They have created several funded entities in adding these and other fields to the expertise of the UC Irvine campus.

The article also says that new apartments were built that will cost their student residents $10,000 or more for their one year lease.  There are many other on campus housing locations that are more reasonable.  On the UCI housing website, I found that Campus Village apartments for one year, furnished, will cost $7,745.  But the nine month academic year cost is only $5,615. A double room in a theme house will cost $6,038, and a double suite, $7,550. If you want full meals for the academic year, that cost looks quite a bit more, but not considering the number of meals and even the cheap cost of fast food at the student center. The cheapest cost with meals is a triple dorm room for $11,702 a year.

It might be a good point to say that with 30,000 students, UC Irvine is the second largest employer in Orange County (first is The Walt Disney Company), and has an economic effect of $4.8 billion dollars.  The University of California as a whole generates $46 billion in economic activity for the state, and contributes $33 billion to the gross state product.  That is a great return for the $3.35 billion that the state contributes to the University System.  The UC brings in about $8.5 billion in funding from out of state, including $7.2 billion in Federal funding.

While everybody would like to avoid further tuition increases to students, the way to do that is not to tear down every aspect of the University of California’s contributions and success story, and then deny more funding, but for the Legislature to provide the needed funding to support our own students, in this era of new economic growth.

 

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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