UCLA Inappropriately Spent Fee Revenues, Auditor Says

July 28, 2011, 1:53 pm

Students at the University of California at Los Angeles voted in 2000 to approve new fees to help renovate a gym, a recreational center, tennis courts, and a track-and-field facility on the campus. But UCLA inappropriately spent $5.2-million of the new fees to help build a new student center, the California State Auditor concluded in a report issued on Thursday. The university system’s Board of Regents also inappropriately designated, but did not spend, $15-million of the money to renovate a basketball arena. Mark G. Yudof, the system’s president, disagreed with the finding, saying that the Board of Regents has the power to modify the language of a student-fee referendum after it has been approved.

Correction (4:55 p.m.): The original post incorrectly referred in its headline to “Tuition Revenues.” As a commenter has noted, they are more correctly described as “Fee Revenues.” The post has been updated to reflect this correction.

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Guest

I told you so. I have been contesting, for years, the perennial claim that these prestige projects come from “other sources” and don’t affect revenue.
22280998

If the regents can “modify” a proposal after its approved by the students, the students should vote “no” on everything from now on.
livcon1

Note to writer: The headline is seriously misleading. The story is about use of student fees which are not the same as tuition — higher education finance 101.
josh7855

Please see the correction above.

Best,
Josh Keller
CHE
commentarius

So students voted to fund one set of country-club amenities and the regents decided to spend it on another country-club amenity. So what? If any of the fees were intended for actual academic facilities this would be a scandal. But nobody seems interested in academics anymore, as long as the pampered kids have their food courts and sports facilities and gold-plated lounges.
old nassau’67

From the Auditor’s report: “Although the university believes it has the authority to use these
revenues for the two capital projects we examined, our legal counsel
stated that neither the policies in place when students approved the
referendum nor the regents’ approval of the referendum’s results provide
a sufficient basis for expanding the uses of the revenue beyond the
purposes stated in the original referendum. Despite designating a total
of $23 million in referendum funds for these two projects, the
university has spent only $5.2 million to date on one of the projects
and has dropped its intention to spend $15 million on the other project.”
1. If Yudoff disagreed, then why “drop its intention”?
2. I wonder if the President or the Board told the students that their money was not going to build recreational facilities for them, but for the fabled UCLA basketball program.
3. “modify”: an excellent euphemism for “misuse”.
4. Now, if that $15 million were used to upgrade the Powell Library Building, I would applaud.
perspective2

University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau ($500,000 salary)
has forgotten that he is a public servant, steward of the public money, not
overseer of his own fiefdom. These are not isolated examples: recruits (uses
California tax $) out of state $50,000 tuition students that displace qualified
Californians from public university education; spends $7,000,000 + for
consultants to do his & many vice chancellors jobs (prominent East Coast university accomplishing same 0 cost); pays
ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures; in procuring a $3,000,000 consulting firm he failed to receive
proposals from other firms; Latino enrollment drops while out of state
jumps 2010; tuition to Return on Investment drops below top 10; QS academic
ranking falls below top 10; only 50 attend Birgeneau all employees meeting;
visits down 20%; NCAA places basketball program on probation, absence
institutional control.

It’s all shameful. There is no justification for such violations
by a steward of the public trust. Absolutely none.

Birgeneau’s violations continue. Governor Brown, UC Board of
Regents Chair Lansing must do a better job of vigorously enforcing stringent oversight
than has been done in the past over Chancellor Birgeneau who uses the campus as
his fiefdom.