Academic Senate Puts Brakes on UCLA Business School’s Bid to Opt Out of Public Support

A bid by the University of California at Los Angeles to convert its full-time M.B.A. program in the Anderson Graduate School of Management to self-supporting status has been put on hold by the University of California Academic Senate. The senate’s Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs said in a letter to the Anderson school’s dean last week that the panel was suspending its review of the proposal because the M.B.A. program was not eligible for self-supporting status under the terms of a policy statement approved by the university’s president a year ago. The committee went on to raise several specific concerns about the proposal itself, including how it would affect educational quality, access, and affordability, for the M.B.A. program and for other graduate and undergraduate programs within the Anderson school. The committee also said it was “very troubled by the systemwide implications of the proposal,” and it called for the development of a systemwide policy regarding the conversion to self-supporting status of programs that were started and maintained for many years with public support.