Berkeley Daily Planet
Public Comment
UCB - a public university or a corporate innovation center?
Bernard Marszalek
Monday September 02, 2024 - 01:00:00 PM
A recent Chronicle article featuring Richard Lyons (class of '79), the university’s 12th chancellor depicts the university as a study in juxtapositions, or maybe, better, to use that antiquarian notion, contradictions.
On the one hand we have the former "chief innovation officer in 2020" at UCB, who banks almost a million dollar paycheck for his services, who, before his academic career with the Haas Business School is 1993, was the “chief learning officer” at Goldman Sachs for a few years. And in contrast to this pedigreed innovator, we have an institution that "faces an extraordinary $79 million budget deficit that threatens to exhaust its central reserves by spring" according to the Chron article.
What we have here, I believe, is the replication on UCB's campus of the general society with its collapsing bridges and utility failures, and, in contrast to this decay, high rise luxury residences, super yachts, and Michelin star restaurants. A polarization of private wealth and public poverty. Nothing better symbolizes this UCB polarization, what, in fact, is a total failure of the vision of a public serving university, than the transfer students leaving their luxury Anchor House apartments to sit on the steps of a lecture hall filled to beyond capacity, or venturing into a filthy restroom, or an understaffed library, or confronting a prof office hours wait list?
To quote again from the Chron:
Lyons said the group [the Berkeley Faculty Association] doesn’t represent all faculty, as does the Academic Senate. But it’s correct, he said, that the “core of the university” — including libraries and
labs — is deteriorating.
The BFA's Open Letter to the Chancellor is at the link below:
https://ucbfa.org/2024/04/an-open-letter-to-the-new-chancellor-of-ucb/
Further in the article, Lyons says, "We need to fund deferred maintenance in our research facilities."
Some of those research facilities are the promising financial rewards UCB hopes to harvest from biomedical labs. The campus houses many such labs. Most are classified as Biosafety Lab class 2 (BSL-2) - which require a series of safety protocols to protect the lab workers and prevent toxic material from escaping the labs. Three of those labs are the much more restricted BSL-3 labs that are currently prevented from occupying buildings in close proximity to residences and retail in the City of Berkeley. These labs deal with highly communicable viruses and are housed within specially built labs.
It is not very encouraging to read that the chancellor says labs are "deteriorating."
BUT, this may not be the most revealing fact is in this article. According to UCB's Budget Office ". . . just 14% of its funding now comes from the state, versus 50% in the mid-1990s."
This fact raises an interesting question. When does a public institution cease to be PUBLIC? If the operating budget of a so-called 'public institution' is mainly supported by private funds, in this case 86% (!), when do the benefits of public financing become a boondoggle for private interests?
Of course, the land is public, but why should a ostensible private institution, defined by its overwhelming private financing, benefit? What's so crazy about suggesting that UCB Inc should lease the land from the public and be considered just another big corporation that as a minor feature offer job training?