Finally, some good news. Originally one of five sports dumped due to budget cuts, UC Berekely announced today that baseball will be back this spring, making it just in time to be included when the Pac-12 begins making its 2012 schedule. The university tasked the baseball program with raising $10 million to allow it to keep functioning, and on Thursday the Save Cal Baseball fundraising group presented more then $9 million in pledged donations. The university said that formal reinstatement will be announced once the full figure is reached.
Last September, Cal officials announced that, due to pressure on the school’s budget as a result of dwindling state support for higher education, four sports — baseball, men’s gymnastics, women’s gymnastics and women’s lacrosse — would be eliminated, and rugby would be reassigned to a newly created sports tier at the end of the 2010-11 academic year. In February, the campus reported that separate fundraising efforts had ensured the continued intercollegiate status of rugby, women’s gymnastics and women’s lacrosse.
Great news, especially considering the fact that Cal is taking steps to ensure that the sports don’t go on the chopping block again, and are planning to cap institutional support for athletics at $5 million per year by 2014. Men’s gymnastics is also close to becoming reinstated.
“I’m especially happy for our players who have endured a difficult six months of uncertainty,” Cal coach David Esquer told the San Jose Mercury. “They have shown an absolute resolve to focus on their season and have demonstrated a tremendous amount of character throughout this process.”
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Cal reinstates baseball [Baseball America, via Daily Californian]
Save Cal Baseball [Official Site]
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- moravecglobal - Apr 10, 2011 at 1:27 AM
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University of California Berkeley Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau and Provost Breslauer need to go.
(The author who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way senior management work.) Recently: Chancellor pays ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures; NCAA places men’s basketball program on probationChancellor Robert J Birgeneau’s ($500,000 salary) eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians, since they stopped giving him every dollar asked for, and 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 and then crafting a plan to fix them. Able oversight by the UC Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on inefficiencies and on what steps he was taking to solve them during his 8 year reign. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and 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 and inefficiencies. Faculty and staff raised issues with Birgeneau and Provost Breslauer ($400,000 salary), but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3,000,000) consultants to tell him and Provost Breslauer what they should have known as leaders or been able to find out from the bright, engaged Cal. people. (A prominent east coast university is accomplishing the same without consultants)
But you never want a crisis to go to waste. Merely cutting out inefficiencies does not have the effect desired. Cal has been badly damaged. Good people are loosing their jobs. Cal’s leadership is either incompetent or culpable.
Increasing the budget is not enough. Take aim at the real source of Cal’s crisis by honorably retiring Chancellor Birgeneau and Provost Breslauer.
We heartily agree.
