I'd never heard of Bob Meister

Now he's my hero. He's the Presiddant ot the Council of UC Faculty Associations & did an analysis of the University of California systems bond issues. Turns out, they built a lot of expensive stuff, pledged tuition reveue to cover it, and then started hiking tuition.

So now we finally have open warfare between faculty & Regents. Part 3 gets downright mean;

On October 20, UC issued a press release[1] (10/20/09) in which VP’s Taylor and Lenz respond to my Open Letter to Students: “They Pledged Your Tuition.” The UC press release confirms two major points I made:
1. It admits that all student tuition (including the education fee) is now pledged as part of the collateral for UC construction bonds.
2. It assumes that it would be wrong to use the Education Fee to pay for construction, or to service construction debt.
I say it assumes this because VP Taylor did not in any way qualify his categorical statement to the press on 10/20 that “educational fees are not used to pay debt service.”

I think I've mentioned that out of state tuition at USC is higher than tuition at Harvard. One problem about overbuilding? Tuition gets so high, enrollment declines, buildings go unused.

And the battle goes on.   Bady & Konczal in Dissent have a lot of history, & some rather damning info on the Regents:

UC Regent Richard Blum, for example, is not only the largest shareholder in two for-profit universities, Career Education Corporation and ITT Educational Services, but also, as Peter Byrne reported in a 2010 exposé, oversaw investments for the UC’s $63 billion portfolio at a time when the UC invested in the very same two for-profits.
 

 (found via a somewhat disappointing Crooked Timber post)