University of California Berkeley (Cal) Chancellor’s huge
mistakes: recruits (using California tax $) out of state $50,000 tuition
students that displace qualified Californians from public university; spends $7,000,000
+ for consultants to do his & many vice chancellors jobs (prominent East Coast university
accomplishing same at 0 cost); pays ex Michigan governor $300,000 for
lectures; Latino enrollment drops while out of state jumps 2010; tuition to
Return on Investment (ROI) drops below top 10; NCAA places basketball program
on probation: absence institutional control.

Chancellor Birgeneau’s
($500,000 salary) fiscal track record is dismal indeed.  He would like to blame the politicians, since
they stopped giving him every dollar asked for, & the state legislators do
share some responsibility for the financial crisis.  But not in the sense he means.

A competent
chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies & then
crafting a plan to fix them. Able oversight by the UC Board of Regents &
the legislature would have required him to provide data on inefficiencies &
on what steps he was taking to solve them during his 8 year reign.  Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a
budget increase, the timid president, regents would agree to it, and the legislature
would provide.  The hard questions were
avoided by all concerned, & the problems just piled up to $150 million of
inefficiencies….until there was no money left.

It’s not
that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste & inefficiencies
during his 8 year reign. Faculty & staff raised issues with Birgeneau &
Provost Breslauer ($400,000 salary), but when they failed to see relevant
action taken, they stopped.  Finally,
Birgeneau engaged expensive ($7,000,000 +) consultants to tell him & the
Provost what they should have known as leaders or been able to find out from
the bright, engaged people. (Prominent east-coast University accomplishing same
at 0 costs)

We are sympathetic
to the frustration of UC Chancellors running their campuses with declining
support from the state. Cal.
has been badly damaged by Birgeneau. Good people are loosing their jobs. Cal’s leadership is
either incompetent or culpable. Merely cutting out inefficiencies does not have
the effect desired.

 But you never want a crisis to go to waste. Increasing Cal’s budget is not enough; we
believe the best course of action for UC is to honorably replace Cal. Chancellor
Birgeneau