Cal. 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; Breslauer all employees meeting – only 50 attend; visits to Cal down 20%; NCAA places basketball program on probation,
absence institutional control.
It’s all shameful. There is no justification for such
practices by a steward of the public trust. Absolutely none.
Birgeneau’s practices will not change. UC Board of Regents
Chair Sherry Lansing and President Yudof must do a better job of vigorously enforcing oversight than has been done in the past over Chancellors who, like Birgeneau, see the campus as their fiefdom.
Moravecglobal's Blog 
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; Birgeneau’s will continue huge mistakes; we believe the best course is to honorably replace Cal. Chancellor Birgeneau