Senate Standing Committee on Rules

Okay, let me go ahead and call the Rules Committee to order. Let me say good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for your timeliness and your patience to those in the audience. We are continuing to conduct public, in-person and also via the teleconference service for the public's benefit. We're holding our Committee hearing in the O Street building in Room 2200.

And for individuals that wish to provide public comment via the teleconference service, the participant toll-free number and access code are posted on our Committee website, and it will be displayed as it is right now on our screen a couple of times today. The participant number is 877-226-8163. The access code is 694-8930 and also, on behalf and for the benefit of our court reporter, Ina, I would ask that all speakers, colleagues and witnesses alike, speak slowly and clearly.

I'll say that again as we get to the teleconference line. That becomes a different kind of dilemma occasionally. So before we begin the actual hearing, we need to establish a quorum. Again, to my colleagues, you have to turn your microphone on each and every time for roll call and when we vote. Madam Secretary, will you please call the roll?

Laird? Laird here. Ochoa Bogh? Ochoa Bogh here. Smallwood-Cuevas? Smallwood-Cuevas here. Grove? Grove here. Atkins? Atkins here. Quorum.

A quorum is present. We're going to go ahead and dispense with some items that do not require, or appointees not required to appear, and some other items. If we could, on item number two, Governor's appointee not required to appear. José Cisneros, Member of the State Bar Board of Trustees. A motion. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, call the roll.

Laird? Laird aye. Ochoa Bogh? Ochoa Bogh aye. Smallwood-Cuevas? Smallwood-Cuevas aye. Grove? Grove aye. Atkins? Atkins aye.

Five to zero. Thank you. Colleagues, Item 3: Bill Referrals.

So moved.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Call the roll, please.

Laird? Laird aye. Ochoa Bogh? Ochoa Bogh aye. Smallwood-Cuevas? Smallwood-Cuevas aye. Grove? Grove aye. Atkins? Atkins aye. Five to zero.

Five to zero. Thank you. And the last would be items 4 through 9. These are floor acknowledgments by Members for various dates in May.

So moved.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary.

Laird? Laird aye. Ochoa Bogh? Ochoa Bogh aye. Smallwood-Cuevas? Smallwood-Cuevas aye. Grove? Grove aye. Atkins? Atkins aye. Five to zero.

Great. Five to zero. So now we'll go ahead and move to governor's appointees required to appear. Welcome, everyone. We have four individuals. We have Dr. Elaine Batchlor, we have Ms. Carmen Chu, Ms. Ana Matosantos, and Mr. Mark J. Robinson. Who are, you can come on forward. I think we have your name tags up here. And as you come forward for the public's benefit, these are Members to the Regents of the University of California. I'm going to welcome each and every one.

And what we will do is start with your introductions and opening comments. Each of you will get a chance to make opening comments, acknowledge or thank anyone you would like to. We will go down the row and then bring it to Members of the Committee for questions and/or comments. And Dr. Batchlor, I will start with you. Then we'll just go down the row with Ms. Chu, Ms. Matosantos, and Mr. Robinson. Welcome.

Thank you so much. I want to first start by thanking the Members of the Committee for considering my appointment and for spending this time chatting with me. I'd also like to thank the Governor for nominating me for this position, and I'd like to share a little bit about myself and why I am interested in being in this role. I could begin with my professional credentials that qualify me for service on the Board of Regents of one of our country's most esteemed public universities, but instead I'd like to find start in a more personal place. It was not Harvard or medical school, but UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health that enabled me to complete a vision for myself as a healer, not just of individuals, but of communities. Growing up, my parents made sacrifices to move to an all-white suburb to ensure the best public education for my brothers and me. Both of my grandparents, with whom I lived while my parents were securing a home for us, were educators.

A book about St. Luke, a physician, inspired me to build a life based on healing and addressing the social conditions that contribute to poor health. I was moved to purpose at the Poor People's March on Washington. As a child, even then, standing on my father's shoulders, I knew what was expected of me. Today, I'm married to a public defender with undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California.

Our twin boys participated in UCLA enrichment programs from elementary school through high school, and I've served as an advisor to a UCLA program that mentors and supports low-income, first generation, and underrepresented undergraduate students. In short, the values of the University of California match my own: a belief in affordable, high quality education, a conviction that all young people deserve the opportunity to have the life shaping experiences offered to my family and me, and a certainty that our state benefits from a diverse and educated workforce as we address the challenges ahead. My professional credentials complement these shared values and offer practical experience for a large and critical component of the University's work. I stand as the only Regent who's both a physician and a senior healthcare administrator. As CEO of MLK Community Healthcare, I led the opening of a state-of-the-art hospital in an underserved community of South Los Angeles, an accomplishment that many deemed impossible.

The University of California was a key partner in contributing to the birth of the hospital in 2015. We've since grown to become an integrated system of care that includes multiple outpatient centers and community-based health education and screening. MLK Community Healthcare's mission is to provide quality care, services and education to a diverse and vibrant community. Like the University of California, we aim to attract the best and the brightest to serve our community.

We want to train the workforce of the future, including our first class of internal medicine residents in 2022. We aim to make an impact not just on patients lives, but on the policies and social conditions that support better health in California. Service, education and addressing social conditions are the passions from my youth. These three desires to be of service, to help educate, and to foster positive social impact bring me here today. I look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you very much. Ms. Chu?

Thank you, President Pro Tem Atkins. Senators, thank you so much for your time. And also I want to make mention of your staff and say thank you to all of them also for taking the time to meet with us and getting to know all of us better. The University of California is an important institution for our students, for our communities, and for our state, and I am very honored to be before you today as you consider my appointment to the UC Board of Regents.

I especially want to thank, of course, Governor Newsom for his appointment and his confidence and trust. By way of introduction, I am a mother to a strong and a very determined three year old daughter. She's very creative. A wife to an amazing firefighter. Sister, and a daughter of immigrants who came to this country over 40 years ago. I want to share a little bit about my parents because they had such a strong hand in shaping the person that I am today.

My parents were immigrants who had very little when they first arrived. They had no friends, no family here, and they spoke very, very little English. Like many immigrants, my parents settled in Los Angeles, Chinatown. I was born in the old French hospital in Chinatown. My mother started off sewing clothes in garment factories. My dad worked in kitchens as a cook.

I grew up in East Los Angeles, attended the Los Angeles Unified School District, and my parents spent all they had to open a small mom and pop restaurant in Inglewood, California, across what used to be the Great Western Forum. I learned a lot growing up, how hard it was to communicate how you were perceived and treated when you spoke with an accent. More importantly, how hard my parents worked, how brave they were, and how important it is to persevere.

I also remember the first day of the Los Angeles riots. On that first night, my parents had their car stolen at gunpoint on Century Boulevard as they tried to make their way home. I remember lying in bed waiting and waiting for my parents to come home. At that time, no one had cell phones really, and we were very lucky that they made it home safely that night.

But I'll never forget the fear of wondering if your parents would come home and then later worrying about whether there would be anything left to support your family. For a long time, we smelled smoke. Fires were set across the city, and it was also around this time that even in our schools, we started to talk more about the role of government, the role of education to uplift communities and to help, to open and to create opportunities.

I'm a first generation student, first in our family to be able to go to college, luckily, on a scholarship that was created for inner city youth coming out of the aftermath of the riots. All of these experience I share with you because they inform how I serve as a public servant. As an adult, I've dedicated almost my entire professional life to public service. I've served on pension and health service boards.

I've worked in bond financing for municipal projects, budget and finance as an elected Legislator to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing the people of District Four as an elected assessor handling complex tax matters and now as city administrator of San Francisco, overseeing 25 departments, including infrastructure, planning, real estate, IT investments for the city. Maybe more relevant, I also serve as room parent for my three year old's classroom, which is a whole other skill set in and itself.

I hope to bring all of these experience, my curiosity, willingness to work hard, openness and systems implementation mind to the University of California as a Regent. I believe that the impact of UC is significant. It improves lives. It has a profound impact, as you heard from Regent Batchlor, on students and their families, especially first generation students. It makes a difference for the patients we serve, the communities we are in, and for the innovation and economic growth and competitiveness of our state.

So I want to just say thank you again for your consideration, and I'll close by thanking my brave parents who are my inspiration, my husband Scott, who makes it all possible, and of course, my sisters, who I love but who are likely watching and trading notes on how to give me a hard time the next time I see them. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Matosantos.

Hi, Madam Chair and Members, thank you so much for your consideration and for the time you've spent with us before. Now. It's a privilege to be here.

I am humbled by being here along my colleagues and look forward to the work that we will hopefully continue to do together with your support. I want to start by thanking Sally Espinosa, my better half, and the person who not only has made everything possible, but makes my life so much better and who has made so many sacrifices to support my ability and privilege to be able to be in public service. I'm very excited about this opportunity.

When I think about the things that make California strong and when we think about our culture of innovation, our role in figuring out how to always be at the forefront, and the critical role of providing expanded access to opportunity for Californians now and into the future, I see the role that our University and our University system plays with our students, with the communities where we are, as well as with our role as academic centers.

And I'm hopeful that I can bring my commitment to public service, my interest in solving problems, and just willingness to serve and get in and do whatever it is that can be done to expand the impact and expand the positive outcomes that we can achieve for California, for our students, for our patients, and for the communities in which we are. So thanks again for your consideration.

Thank you very much, Mr. Robinson.

Thank you and good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity to be with this Committee this afternoon and want to thank Governor Newsom for the opportunity to serve as a Regent to the University of California. In my eight months in the role, I have focused on listening, observing, and engaging in conversation with my fellow regents. I enter my service as a Regent with profound sense of both humility and responsibility.

I believe that UC is truly one of the great institutions in the world and its importance to all Californians cannot be overemphasized. I don't know of any other entity that does more for the common good or has the ability to unite us and not divide us, as well as provide every individual that attends UC the opportunity to become their best self. That was what it was for me. I'm a product of California.

I was born in the Central Valley and grew there until I was 18 years old and when I attended UC Berkeley. And ever since my days as a student, I've been involved in campus life. I've worked to increase the level of engagement with students throughout those many years. I first served on a board of the College of Letters and Science where we increased support for counseling for students and for student orientation.

Both of those initiatives were very targeted to increase the graduation rates of students, particularly first gen students. I've been proud to be involved in the creation of academic programs and to increase the opportunity of students in life sciences and provide critical scholarships for underrepresented students.

Entrepreneurship has also been a focus of my efforts and have worked to improve the practical application of the intellectual ingenuity of our leading professors to project their ideas beyond the walls of the University, in order, again, to serve them greater good. Professionally. I've worked in the cross section of Finance and Science and I bring these experiences to offer for these past 30 years as part of my education now to serve the entire UC system.

The issues facing the University that we may discuss together today are countless and complex and I look forward to engaging with you not just this afternoon, but all times, to continue to make the University of California the best it can be. I testify in front of you today, while there's neither a tradition or it's required, but I think about coming back 11 years from now to your successors and really holding myself accountable to my service over these last 11 years and being able to report back.

Because that's how I think about this. I think about every decision I'm going to face is one is how I will be measured over the course of the next 10, 11 years in the service on this port. I wanted to close by once again acknowledging we face many issues. There's three that I'm the most focused on. The first is housing, and affordable housing is a crisis in America.

I want to acknowledge the great support the past couple of years the Legislature has gone to fund in the creation of more affordable housing on many of our campuses. But having said that, housing insecurity is still projected to be a major issue facing many of our students and I want to continue to work hard to develop solutions to make that better. Secondly, affordability continues to be a big issue for all of our students.

Half of our students graduate with debt and so we need to continue to find debt free pathways to support those who attend the UC. And lastly, I'm very focused on the faculty. We need to continue to attract the higher-than-the-best faculty in order that they most closely mirror the diversity of our great student body population. These are the issues I'm most focused on.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, and I look forward to our discussion and most importantly, the potential of working together for the years ahead.

Thank you. Thank you all so much for sharing your stories and your expertise. We're going to start. Let me turn to the budget sub of education, but I'm looking at the Vice Chair, and she wants to make sure we say he's the former Secretary of Natural Resources. Go ahead, Senator Laird.

I'm trying to figure out how to be able to say that if Kern county works on state, it'd be the fourth largest oil producer in the United States. Okay, thank you. And thank you all for willing to serve and for being here. This is not a paid position, and I am sure there are certain times, if you're running a hospital or running a city or somebody that's run everything else in the universe, wondering why you agreed to spend so much time on this.

And I thought maybe, Mr. Robinson, maybe. Madam Chair, is it okay to ask one person a question?

Yes.

And then the rest respond.

I should have said that in advance. Usually when we have one person, it's a lot easier. When we have multiple, you can direct your question to someone if you want everyone else to answer it as well. Just indicate that.

I will direct my question to Mr. Robinson and ask everybody if they have something to add. And you mentioned housing, and three of the five of us sit on the Education Budget Subcommitee, and we have had our hearings on community colleges, a separate hearing on CSU, and a separate hearing last week on UC. And housing was at the center of every hearing in the discussion, both of money and what's going on.

And as I said in the community college, one, as a community college trustee over 20 years ago, I never heard of an unhoused student. And now I ask every time I go, and it's between 1% and 4%. And it is a real issue at UC, at my home campus, I'm hearing about it other places, and I think it ties to one other issue. And this is a way to just maybe get you to comment on both.

UC has to grow, and there's at least two campuses that have said that they will not grow unless they're providing housing at the same time. So with your commitment to housing, what do you actually do to implement it? How do you, as a Regent, influence and push that? And what do you see as the major elements of the lack of housing or the need for housing?

Well, certain areas are obviously more impacted than others. Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara are the most challenged areas as far as the areas around those, particularly UCs. Right. And so it's hard to talk broadly because some of them are much more acute and much more easier and much more challenged. And yes, while we want to grow, we've grown 25% of our student body over the last 10 years. There is a catch up time that has to clearly go on.

Clearly there's local issues that have to be thought about as far as the impact on the local services that are being provided, on the local populations that are in place today. So I don't have an answer for you today on what is the magic bullet? If it was, I would hope that someone would have addressed it. I think it really requires a lot of resources.

I think our CIO on the investment side has wanted to partner with us and think about bringing solutions and actually the University of California's pension and endowment funds in order to invest alongside private public partnerships in order to create, again, an affordable solution to some of these challenges that we face. So I'm hoping that that resource is going to be an important one that's going to solve a lot of the issues. But I don't claim to have a magic bullet for you this afternoon.

Why don't we just go down from him, if that's okay?

Perfect.

Thank you for the question. And I think it's a really critical one when we look at our initial numbers right now. We have housing capacity for about 38% of our students. When we think about the things that are necessary to be able to get to expand our debt free pathways, having affordable housing is a critical element.

We also know that when we don't have University affordable housing, the impact that we have on housing costs in that community and the impact, particularly on low-wage workers, is quite significant. Was pleased to see that with your support, there are about 38,000 additional beds in some form of development, 22,000 further along than the other 16,000. I think there's some things that are important.

I think efforts that you've made to be able to help move faster are really critical, and we need to avail ourselves of those options. We need to engage communities and engage communities early. I think we have an opportunity when we look at our broader infrastructure needs around space that is being made available at the University and elsewhere in terms of office space that is no longer going to be used as office space.

And how do we use some of those facilities for both classrooms and potentially for housing and for overall repurposing? As Mark talked about, the challenges in Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara are quite different than the experience that we have in Merced and Riverside. So part of this is we need to be looking at what are the solutions that make sense and work for our different campuses.

The investment of an additional about $2 billion from the investment funds to be able to help support this area is an important one. I think we need to figure out how can we repurpose existing buildings, how can we figure out how to move faster. But I think making progress in this space is going to be critical to be able to accomplish some of the debt free pathways that you see as part of the compact.

So those are some things that I'm interested in looking at and definitely open and interested in hearing others and wanting to partner with you to move the needle in this space.

Thank you.

Thank you for the question. I do want to also emphasize Regent Matosanto's comments about making sure that we're also engaging community as we go in this process. I think that's very important. I think as regents, you asked the question about what is our role?

And I think a big part of our role is to really make sure that we're understanding what is the pipeline of both enrollment growth that we're expecting in different parts of our system and what the facilities that includes instruction, research, and housing that come along with that growth will look like.

I think our job is to make sure that we're looking ahead for the big picture and planning for what are those, again, investments that we need to be making in housing and in all of those facilities. We've heard a lot about the need from our students to meet basic needs. So many of our students who are coming to our campus are struggling to have good outcomes when it comes to either staying and graduating within a four year period. Many of them cannot do that anymore.

Where it's taking a longer period of time to graduate, many of them are facing struggles where they may drop out or have to have challenges, where they're finding other jobs to make basic needs of housing and food.

And I think as regents, our job, if we want to improve student outcomes and we want to continue to grow the University to meet the state's needs, is to take a look at the whole picture about where our facilities are either meeting and keeping pace with where our enrollment growth is and where our need is or not, and really trying to figure out ways to meet those gaps where they can. For funding on affordable housing and for housing for students, I think part of the big picture is really working with the state to ensure that we continue to have the support that you have already provided generously for us to be able to continue to build housing. I think other creative ways, other financing structures are things that we should also be looking at in addition, as well as collaboration with other systems, there are a few of our UC campuses that are looking with community colleges to do collaborations and to build housing that are mixed.

That I think not only potentially create a better bottom line in terms of the financial picture, but also creates a better and smoother transition for students who are trying to transition from community college to UC as well.

And so I think some of these creative ways of thinking about how we partner continuing to work with all of you on funding strategies to meet the needs of affordable housing and for us as regions to push the picture and understand where our long term planning is, is going to be an important part of our job.

Thank you very much.

So I'm not an expert on expanding housing either, but as a healthcare provider, I'm very used to caring for people who have housing insecurity, and I understand the impact that has on people's lives. I'm deeply concerned about students being unhoused because I understand that housing is fundamental. It's a foundation for well being and for their academic success.

I am learning about the unique needs of each of the UC campuses, and I understand the importance of balancing the needs of those campuses and students and the impacts that housing projects have on the surrounding communities. And I commit to you that I will be extremely supportive of whatever ideas emerge for expanding housing on the UC campuses so that we can support growth of the University's ability to educate the students.

Thank you very much. And let me just make a comment on some of that, because I love the fact that you touched some of the right buttons, because on the joint projects we just heard them and we had this concern because they're clearly funded, the half in one segment, but not clearly funded in the other segment. And we were worried about them going ahead and kept asking, what do we have to do?

We have to do budget control language, but it also sounds like there's one where it's qualified in one and we're not sure it's qualified in the other pot. And it might take some oversight from the regents to do that kind of coordination to make sure those projects move ahead. And the growth over time.

I really appreciate that that was a more nuanced response than I've gotten from a lot of my close personal friends that are already on the Board of Regents, because I think part of our issue, and it just came up in our hearing, is that with the exception of Merced being added. We have just been adding enrollment to existing footprints. And that is, in part, what some of the problems are, is I don't know that Berkeley's fixed footprint was ever designed for 48,000 students or that expectation.

And in Santa Cruz, it was very disconcerting to be the first former undergraduate ever to be elected mayor. And then one of my first actions was to sue the University. And people think it is a NIMBY thing.

But if you plop a City of 25,000 people, faculty, staff and students in the middle of a town of 60,000, and you are completely exempt from taxation and local land use, then the city is expected to pick up the cost of a lot of this and absorb a lot of the things. And that is the heart of the issue. It is not necessarily the NIMBY thing. And.

So it really takes some kind of conciliation to work through those. And we in our hearing talked about what's the plan for five or 10 or 15 years out for growth, because if it is to put it in the existing footprint, these problems in certain places will only be more exacerbated. And it's just something that you set policy and you're at the high level and you're going to have to be asking questions and doing that.

Then the other issue I was going to ask about, and I was remiss in not thanking all four of you for meeting, really appreciated that, even though one of the meetings, I think was too quick for all of us to be as thoughtful as we would have liked to have been, is on the issue of student aid. And I'm just coming from lunch with Public Policy Institute, where they wanted to talk about higher education in part.

And I think that UC has not done as good a job in explaining to the public, because if you have Cal Grants and you have the middle class scholarship, you are actually providing student aid for families up to a certain level. And whenever there's a tuition increase, even though now there's the new tuition system, everybody screams. But it was really falling on the more upper income people, and UC could never explain that.

And so the real question is how to make sure that student aid system is enhanced and is defended. So how as Regents, would you work on that? You've indicated it as priorities. How would you work on it? And I don't know if somebody wants to start and let anybody else fill.

Would someone like to start with that?

I can start.

Okay, go right ahead, Ms. Chu.

Well, first off, I think the question about affordability is an important one. One of the statistics that I've learned since coming on board is just the extent of Pell Grant students and first generation students that are part of our UC campus footprint. And we have about 40% of our students who are first generation students. We have about 30 plus percent who are Pell Grant students. And so when we talk about affordability, it's a really big deal and is a big issue.

Your question explicitly is about how do we do a better job as a system to communicate what opportunities are available for our UC students? I think we can always do a better job, and I look forward to hearing ways and places in which we need to do that better.

But I think a fundamental way in which we might want to approach this from a Regent's perspective is understanding how do we institutionalize knowledge transfer and information to our student. For every incoming student that comes through, we should always be running processes to understand and share pictures of, share information about the financial aid that is available.

Some of our campuses have been very innovative in terms of being able to integrate within their existing processes, the ability to apply for CalFresh applications, to be able to support our students, especially when it comes to food security. So I think part of thinking about how we can make the system a stronger one is figuring out ways to institutionalize that knowledge transfer to students from the very get go.

So really, trying to make sure that we're providing information about all the financial aid packages that are available, assisting students through that application process, educating parents and families, especially first generation families in language and in the community about how to access those services, and then making sure that we're integrating other avenues and other resources that are available in the state, including, like I said, CalFresh, into the process. So I think that's just one way to start.

And then I think as the Senators hear from your constituents about better ways for us to be integrating and connecting with community, I think those are all things that we should be exploring.

Thank you.

Thank you. One thing I'm going to ask all four of you are so knowledgeable about the topic, and you get excited and you want to share as much as you can. We need to slow down just a bit for the court reporter. Trust me, I know the difference between having so much to share that you want to get out versus searching for an answer. Clearly you are four very informed people. And so I just want to put in a plug for the court reporter.

I was just going to ask if anybody else, it's not mandatory. Does anybody else wish to add to that?

And you can. I just thought it was a good chance to let on.

And actually you were doing it before Ana talked because I've been in a lot of hearings with her and she gets excited and moves quickly.

And I'm a faster talker in Spanish than in English.

I think one piece that is helpful that I see that the UC has been starting to work on is when students are coming in, being able to show the entire package, both in terms of both on the cost side, so that students are clear around non-tuition, other costs that they're facing, as well as what's available on the assistance side in terms of Pell grants, Cal Grants, middle class scholarships and return to aid, perhaps increasing the extent to which we make that available to students when they're applying and with cohort tuition, being able to show this is what your package looks like for a four year period.

We can do more to make it clear. And I think one of the things we sometimes struggle with is how to make sure that it's 100% accurate for all of the different types of financial situations versus how to make sure that we provide the information in a simple enough format that people can understand. Here's where I go for support, and here's what my family's obligation will be at the back end.

And I think there are some improvements, but we can do more of that earlier in the process so folks have the information they need as they're considering their options.

Thank you. Anybody else have anything to add? Then we are trying to limit ourselves on questions. So let me just make two very brief statements of things to be concerned with, and I hope we will continue to work over time. And your doors are open and we can do this. And one is in our hearing last week, we had a lot of public testimony about the implementation of the graduate student agreement.

And it's been my experience in both my legislative runs that if there's a labor problem that festers and goes on for a long time, it comes to the legislature. So in any way that you can force a fair outcome, we don't want to get involved, but it lands in our doorstep if it is unresolved over a period of time.

And people were claiming in the testimony last week that that is not being implemented in the way that it was intended and that there are some consequences that are different. We'll talk about that. The president addressed them in the hearing, but just on labor. And secondly, over 20 years, until two years ago, cooperative agricultural extension was not given an inflationary increase. It was cut by way over 50% just by never getting an inflationary increase.

And if some of you that are urban might not be fully familiar with it, it is really farm advisors all across the state for small farmers that can't afford their own irrigation person or their own pest person or propagation person. And so two years ago we added 58% to that part of the budget to restore it to where it had been 20 years ago. And it is being felt all around the state in a good way.

And then the Finance Department for the last two years, and I don't know, I'm looking at a city administrator, has not recommended an inflationary increase, and I am screaming about the fact that we'll be back to where we were--don't do this. But I just would ask that you be conscious of the fact that that is a very popular program throughout the agricultural areas of California. It allows UC to put its best foot forward, and it is truly service to people that use it.

And so when you are out to a campus that's near an agricultural area, you might go visit one and see. I went out to see a farm outside of Watsonville where this young guy who had just graduated, Latino from Watsonville, helped them reduce their water usage by 15%. And I sort of said to the farmers, you're going to have a job for a long time. They said, yes.

And it was just a good cyclical thing and those things might not happen if there isn't that kind of stuff. So just be aware of that program, which probably is something you haven't come across yet. So thank you again for your willingness to serve, and I look forward to working with you over time.

Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair, thank you for having the opportunity to meet with you. I'm sorry I couldn't meet with all of you. I do apologize. Again, echo my colleagues comments about thanking you for taking on this role in this position. It's a challenging role, and you don't get paid for it. So I appreciate your true public service heart. Ms. Matosantos, I had the opportunity working with you when I was in leadership and you were in charge of the governor's office.

Well, not in charge, but you were like second in command under him, in the governor's office. And you always impressed me with all the data and information and new stuff coming in with COVID and how we navigated through the system of COVID, and then again today, recalling data and numbers, 16,000, 22,000 here, everything that you recall. I do have a question. I think we talked a little bit about it yesterday.

What can we do in our K through 12 education to strengthen STEM programs, so that more students in our K through 12 system are on a pathway to the UC system with STEM, with all this new technology coming out, technology changing as fast as it does every single day, there's a new update on an iPhone or there's just new things going on.

What can we do, and new science that is available, what can we do or what can you do, as Regents, to make sure that there's some type of pathway, or a greater pathway for our K through 12 students to achieve STEM education in the UC systems?

Are you starting with--

Ms. Matosantos.

Thank you very much. I was just at Merced and I was very excited to learn that they had just extended the offer for the first 15 students who are all from the Valley, who are going to come to Merced to start their Bachelor of Science program and have a promise of enrollment into UCSF Medical School when they graduate.

And looking at the level of interest in STEM graduate degrees for all of our campuses, it's the kind of thing that is going to be good for our future and good for our continued focus on innovation and economic growth. In Merced, it was interesting also to look at the work that the Chancellor does and the work that the Merced team is doing with community colleges, with CSU, as well as with K-12 districts.

And when we look at these questions and we look at these issues, there is our piece of it. But as you mentioned, it's what do we do from a pipeline standpoint?

How do we, particularly with students who don't have exposure, who don't have parents who are going to be or relatives who are going to guide them through this process, how to make sure that they have the offerings of A through G classes that are going to prepare them to be able to come and meet the requirements to come to the University? How do we make sure that we have the enrichment programs?

I was talking to my colleague who was talking about her sons participating in a program at UCLA. What are the opportunities? Talking to Chancellor of San Diego about looking at how can we expand some of our offerings, particularly in some cases with the opportunity of some online and some on campus, to expand the extent to which our K-12 districts have the ability to access some dual enrollment? There are a lot of different kinds of things that we can do.

There are some ways in which we can benefit from some of the positive in COVID to look at different ways in which we deliver services and how we think about it from the continuum, from the overall pipeline, and perhaps also getting students into these fields with a variety of ways, because it may be that some students are going to initially think that they're going to be going the career technical education pathway, and then they become our students and our future graduates. So I think we have new ways of being able to access these students.

We have the opportunity to work together with other higher ed segments, as well as work with our K-12 schools. And I have seen some interesting things that Edmar said at San Diego and at other places, and think that the focus of the compacts on how we expand access to high demand careers, many of which are STEM careers, is an opportunity for us to get specific on approaches that then we can scale broader than the targets that have been established there. But I'm sure my colleagues have other thoughts on this, but those are some things I've been thinking about in that space.

Thank you.

I mean, I'll just add, finding teachers seems to be one of the biggest challenges. We have nurses and teachers in our society. Right. And while the students. How do we attract more teachers to do STEM? It's incredibly challenging to do that. And I would think that there'd be some ideas that we could generate out of the graduate schools, in the undergraduate schools, right?

In our various campuses in some sort of way of some temporary, again giving back, whether it be one or two year type of stints in the various schools throughout the state where they could come and be more proactive and be real leaders in that area and give that opportunity communities for the kids to learn from them and to do them more than STEM. So you would think there'd be all kinds of opportunities.

You could think about doing that, but I would focus very much on the teachers. Now we can increase the body of teachers because that's what we're really suffering from, I think.

What's your deficit in teachers in that? Do you have an idea about that when you talk about needing those teachers for those programs?

I just know firsthand for my own children's high school, keeping a STEM teacher on a faculty is nearly impossible because the private sector is constantly trying to track them away. And so again, I think the best solution is some sort of almost a revolving temporary, but at least the students then are getting the exposure from knowledgeable folks in the teaching profession to do that.

Thank you. Dr. Batchlor, you wanted to comment?

I was going to share my personal experience. I have two boys that are now college juniors and they came to me when they were in elementary school and know we really like math, but we're not getting challenging enough math in school. So I looked around for a math enrichment program, and I was fortunate to find one at UCLA called UCLA Math Circle, where they went every Sunday. My husband and I took them there and they learned math concepts that they weren't taught in school.

They did problem solving. They were prepared to participate in math competitions. And over the years we watched it really reinforce their love of math and inspire them to continue studying math and science. And today one of my sons is pre-med and the other one is studying engineering. So I really believe in the power of these enrichment programs. I also believe that mentoring is extremely important. Our kids need to see role models and they need to understand how they can get to where these role models are.

And I think for a lot of kids, they're not exposed to that at home. So I think the UC can play a role in both the enrichment, the mentoring programs, other programs like robotics, those are great programs for getting kids interested in STEM as well and sharing content across campuses. So if one campus has a program like UCLA Math Circle that's working really well, sharing that content and seeding it at other campuses.

But I agree with the comments that my fellow Regents made as well, and including giving access to advanced classes to students at schools where they don't have access to those classes.

Thank you.

The only thing I would add to this is also I think much of what was covered about the partnerships with the K through 12 educational institutions in local communities is important. But I think the other piece that we need to be thinking about as a state as a whole is also connectivity to internet and especially in locations and places that are harder to reach.

Many of our UCs are in certain locations that are close to urban centers, but I would say even in know we over COVID, we really saw the big disparity and gap for places that didn't have high speed internet connection and what it meant for lack of access to information, health information, amongst other opportunities.

So I really think as a state, if we're able to also broaden access to the internet, especially in hard to reach places that will also go a distance to helping to make sure that STEM technology is at the forefront for all communities.

I thank you. I ask that question on behalf of my friend Christina Lasseter, who Lasseter, whose children are very interested in coding, and they don't have it in the part of Los Angeles where she has, and so she, as a single mom, she saves every single dollar and does everything she can to get that additional tutoring and mentoring for coding.

I do understand that a lot of that resources was given by an endowment, but that still creates in the real world, I'm a business owner and I have six what I call team leaders or managers that work underneath Gloria Hernandez, who runs the company. And we try to keep things based on performance and based on like quality and years service, that kind of thing. And I guess my question is that I know it's different than a business.

And you do have an endowment that covered a large portion of that in San Diego. But $1.1 million, I don't have an endowment provider in Merced that's going to create that same opportunity for my Merced Chancellor or my Bakersfield. How do you balance that? How do you balance the fact that one UC Chancellor makes $1.1 million and there's a compensation and taxpayer dollars as well funded for that wage as well?

I will let someone start, but, Madam Vice Chair, I will let them answer that question. And then as an aside, I will have this conversation with you afterwards or are on the record as well. UC San Diego, we work very hard to pull this off, but I want to hear what you have to say.

I'm happy to start. And I'd say I think it is a significant increase. It's a significantly lower compensation than the compensation of the chancellor turned out in another location. And as I think about it, it's a really significant, important investment. I did not know the chancellor until I had the opportunity to serve, and I have been really impressed with his work and with his vision, with his commitment to the community outside of UCSD.

Immediately the interest and the innovation that I see in that campus in terms of ensuring that students have access to that there's industry coming to campus, and that there's an opportunity for students to get practical experience along with their degrees, the ability to attract investment into the University, and what the vision and the work that has been achieved there in terms of broader compensation for our chancellors, it is something that I think we have to continue to look at, and we have to continue to look at what do we do with our chancellors?

What do we do with our top talent, but also how are we making sure that we have fair compensation with our lowest paid employees within the University? So I see it as an investment. I see it as an investment that I support. I see it as something that is strong for not only San Diego, but for us as a system.

And I think we need to look at what are other things that we need to do in other areas to ensure that we retain and we support our Chancellors that are doing really hard jobs and doing really important work for us. The increase was funded with an endowment. The endowment was funded over time. So it is provided and it is available to support the increase for the duration and ensure that this is not happening at the expense of anything else.

And as I mentioned, I think it's something that is a net ad for the campus, a net ad for the University. And we need to look at issues of compensation more broadly and whether we need to be doing more.

And what is the, in areas where perhaps we don't have the same ability to be able to raise outside funds, how do we move forward on that to make sure that we have the leaders that we need to be able to do the work that leads to a stronger university? So thank you for the question.

Thank you very much. I knew you would jump in and answer that.

If I may, senator, just one additional point. And because I agree with everything she said, the additional point is that the Chancellor's salaries historically lagged national averages for other public university leaders across the country. We were in the bottom 25% when we compared these salaries just a couple of years ago when I think they gave everyone a modest amount of raise.

And so we have been playing catch up as a system versus our peers in much more lower cost communities and lower cost of living places to compete against this talent on nationwide.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. And my final question actually goes to Dr. Batchlor. With your medical background, and you're the only one with the medical background. I wasn't looking at hospital legislation when I got here this year. We had our ledge package all out, and then Madeira Hospital closed. During the conversations we had working with the governor's office, he's rescuing the other hospitals that are in a catastrophic situation.

But part of the conversation that we had was possibly turning Madeira Hospital into a teaching hospital and partnering with Merced. What are your thoughts about that?

Well, I can tell you that the reopening of MLK Community Hospital in South LA was a partnership between the University of California and the county in bringing back a hospital that had closed in 2007. So I think that there is a model for how to do something like that, and I think it should be looked at closely.

Thank you. For anyone who cares, I really would like to see that happen. I think we need a good teaching hospital where individuals from the Central Valley will have an opportunity to expand their residency and their training programs.

And then I really do believe that when you come from the Central Valley, if you're educated there and you go to school there and you go to college there or the UC system there, then you stay there and you benefit the people in the Central Valley that are often overlooked. So, like I said, I'd like to see that happen if there's a way to make that happen. Thank you for letting me ask you a few questions.

Thank you. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much for being here. I enjoyed our time together. It was a group chat, so we didn't get a lot of time together. But I want to say, having worked in the UC system for many years, and it's good to see California reflected in our nominees, both in the communities and backgrounds that you're coming from, but also certainly the passion for making sure that our system is better than when you found it.

And I really appreciated that 12 year evaluation. How is this different than when I arrived? So I want to say thank you all for that. And my good colleague from Santa Cruz lifted up a number of things from our budget sub-one hearing.

But I just wanted to just do on this UAW conversation and I think we talked about it in our group where we have heard from our constituents in our district about how graduate students are not being hired at the level that the agreement has put forth.

And in some instances we're told that there are campuses that are only allowing discretionary funding to higher grad students or to hire minority faculty members, and that these two pots of funding are being pitted against each other, which I think is really problematic as we are wanting to make sure that we are respecting our graduate students and making sure that we are bringing them into opportunity.

But we also need campuses that have faculty that reflects our community and the diversity of learning that we want to offer. So I just want to say how important it is, as my colleague mentioned, that these issues don't come back to us, but that UC figures out a way to do all of the things that we know this system is capable of doing in terms of equity and inclusion and economic equity for staff.

I really appreciated the conversation that was earlier where we talked about balancing the needs of our students and also the impact of surrounding communities. And I wanted to raise two questions, one to Regent Chu and to Regent Robinson about this question of investments. Housing is a crisis for so many, certainly for our students, and every dollar that we spend to build student housing is going to make a difference, not just for those students, but for the community.

And we talked about how we can think about a multiplier effect, how can we create policy system wide that really sees these investments as a multiplier? And so my follow up question for you, Ms. Chu, and I really am appreciating where you're coming from in terms of the city and County of San Francisco and some of the innovation around workforce development and capital projects.

I wanted to have you share your answer about ways we could think about creating construction careers, programs where we have targeted local hire that's tied to high road construction careers and really benefiting certainly the construction of housing and addressing that need, but also bringing surrounding communities into the opportunity. You had a really good answer about ways to think about this. I would love for you to share that with the rest of the dais.

Thank you very much, Senator, thank you again for having that conversation with us. We had a really great conversation about the impact of UC on our communities and in particular because of the buying power and the construction and work that happens at UC. We've got a $40 billion system that spends money on building projects in communities, does construction work, that procures millions and millions of dollars worth of commodities and goods and services across the state.

And one of the things that we've seen is the impact of investing some of those dollars in local communities and in California so that the benefits, the multiplying effect of being able to have people hire folks from the community, making sure that we continue to go to the restaurants of the community, shop in the community, all of that has a huge effect in our local areas. In San Francisco, we do some of this work both with local hiring, but also contracting opportunities.

And I think that one of the things I'll be interested in taking a look at are what are the current programs that we have to try to open up those opportunities. I do know UC has a goal of getting to 25% small business participation, but I think part of what we need to do is unpacking what that really means and how that actually gets implemented within our system.

Things like how do we not only outreach to our local businesses and small businesses to let them know of upcoming opportunities, I think is going to be very, very important because you can't possibly get your business ready to go to bid unless you know what's coming down the pipeline. You can't bid on something if it comes out tomorrow and you don't have the staffing to meet that need.

So I think part of what we need to be doing is thinking about how it is that we are letting our communities and our suppliers, local suppliers, know of opportunities in advance. That's something that is actually very important for businesses to be able to plan and prepare. I think being able to potentially take a look at construction projects and how you break up really large projects into smaller projects that actually can be bid and won by local businesses is something we should take a look at.

That is something that opens up opportunities and allows our local businesses to potentially have an opportunity to grow. Frankly, I think that's very important. And I know that there's a lot of conversation around how it is that we continue to employ the workforce in our communities. In and itself, UC hires and has close to 200,000 employees. And so in and itself, the operations at UC already is a huge economic engine in terms of being a big employer in the state.

But on top of that, all of our projects then also have the opportunity to hire more people in the state. And I think those are other opportunities that we can take a look at. So I appreciate the conversation that we had and try to think creatively in ways to figure out how UC meets our goals.

Thank you for that, and you know, just thinking about this idea of local higher provision and really seeing how it can be applied. And particularly those women-owned and minority-owned businesses, we know the challenges there. It's often the bonding, it's the capitalization. And when they're too large of a project, the opportunity to compete is just out of reach, right? So I really appreciated some of the innovation around breaking it up and trying to bring fellow Regents into this conversation about how we can have more access.

And, Mr. Robinson, I really appreciated our conversation about this question of investment, because you sit on the Investment and Finance Committee, and we talked about Blackstone now being heavily involved in the portfolio of UC investments. And I was really surprised to learn that the regions have no oversight of that. The staff can actually make those decisions without approval of the Board of Regents, which was really surprising to me.

But you did share what are the ways so we can hold this particular problematic real estate income trust, which has already been sued for massively evicting largely people of color during the pandemic from their homes and at the same time going in and buying whole neighborhoods, which is also adding to and fueling our housing crisis.

But you lifted up some ways that you are advocating for in terms of how the monitoring and oversight can be done and how to hold that company accountable, even though there's a public private partnership now with Blackstone and the University.

Thank you for the question. And I did follow up from our conversation yesterday and spoke to the Chief Investment Officer this morning about it to get some more granular on what I was able to say today. For the rest of the members of the committee, the investment in BlackRock has drawn a lot of attention.

It was an opportunistic investment that our Chief Investment Officer (CIO) made at the end of the year. He made it to rebalance the overall $160 billion portfolio that he manages for all the pension holders and for the University's endowment. He was underweight in real estate—and real estate, by any measure, is roughly 25% to 30% of the investable assets in the world. So you really need to invest in real estate. The question then is, what's the right real estate investment vehicle?

And this was an opportunistic vehicle, which, again, is 97% invested outside of California and mostly in Texas and Florida. And then in addition to that, two-thirds of that last 3% are actually in affordable housing. So, unfortunately, it's not a perfect world that we live in. There's always some projects that are not doing what you would want them to do on many different measurements.

And so he's very focused on that and has been focused on it since it's come to the attention, since he made the transaction, he has taken upon himself personally to be responsive and to hear directly from residents of the different projects what is going on at those locations and directly taking those reports to the management of BlackRock in order to have them amplified and to be addressed, or Blackstone, rather, to be addressed specifically by the senior management. And that's what he has committed to be doing.

And my understanding is he has been doing it, and it has been effective in solving some of the solutions and the complaints that are coming from that particular couple of properties that are in the portfolio.

And so, moving forward, you mentioned that what is in the purview of the board? Certainly the staff can take those steps, and we know staff come and go, but what is the purview of the board? You talked about the process by which you all can have some oversight of this, and I would love for you to share some of that in terms of.

Well, again, I think we lead with the top philosophically. Right? You don't see tobacco. You don't see guns being part of the UC portfolio. I made the point on the real estate. You can't really escape real estate. So the question you can, from our bully pulpit as Regents, is we wanted you to work with managers that we respect, that have good reputations, and do not have the type of track record that is controversial.

As you talk about lawsuits and things like that, I think in the world of business, there's always conflicts, and you want to be working with the folks who not have conflicts. Right. And conduct themselves well. And I think that's beholden to all of us on the board to make sure that is the influence that we're bringing to our CIO in how he's thinking about the investments he makes. He's an incredibly talented individual. I think he's made some great investments.

He's doing a great performance by many measures for both of our retirees and for our endowment. And so I think that's pretty much the attitude that we have to take with him. And he's been very responsive.

Well, I appreciate being able to hold that staff accountable and tracking on not just the performance because there's been a 37% loss in that stock just this year, right? But also tracking on how they're showing up in the communities and hearing directly from those communities and that you all will continue to track that closely and to look for those reports on how well Blackstone is responding to those residents.

We know this might be impacting other states and not necessarily as many residents and properties here in the State of California, but wherever we are investing our dollars, particularly where there's some state investment involved, we want to make sure that we are not creating more situation of families being destabilized, made homeless, wrongfully evicted because of our investment. So I really appreciate you lifting up the oversight in the conversation that you shared with me yesterday.

My last question is for Ms. Matosantos and Dr. Batchlor, and we talked a little bit about this role of procurement and particularly the oversight of Regents in this space. And Ms. Matosantos, you shared with me also some ways in which the University can do a better job of bringing community organizations in.

We talked about smaller nonprofits, for example, who are in the ecosystem of the University where these very small nonprofits are being asked to apply for Small Business Administration loans in order to be a partner with the University, a process that is months delayed and also not really adequately describing the expertise of those businesses. And you talked about ways that we might be able to think about opportunities to bring nonprofits more into partnership, into the partnership ecosystem for the UCs.

Can you share a little bit more about your thoughts on how we can streamline these opportunities, particularly for nonprofit, either research, training partners to be a part of the UC ecosystem?

Happy to. Senator, thank you for the question yesterday and had an opportunity to follow up a little bit more on some of the numbers. And as Carmen mentioned, this is an area where the University has a goal of establishing about 25% of our contracting dollars going to small businesses. There's a pretty significant difference across campuses in terms of where folks are in relationship to the current goal. And I think we step back.

Part of what I think what we need to do is we sometimes put in place a lot of rules. And I think about this more from some of the experience on the state side. And some of the things that we've needed to look at, and part of it is looking at rules that are established, often for good reasons, but they end up having disparate impacts on different types of providers. So I think it's kind of borrowing some of Mark's language from earlier.

Let's understand where we are, understand what are some of the structural gaps that we have, and how do we figure out where are the places where some of the rules that we have today are systematically keeping some of the partners that we want to be working with and that our work would be enriched by coming in.

And we probably need to look at adapting our overall rules so that the requirements that we have in place for community partners that can really help us do the work more effectively are different than the ones that are applying to multinational corporations that are in a different position to be able to assume a different level of risk.

So interested in working some more with both the UCOP and getting some specific examples of places where our campuses are doing a good job and then being able to lift that up and expand those models to other areas. So look forward to working in this area.

Appreciate that. Dr. Batchlor. I think along those lines, we talked about student enrollment and particularly how we haven't seen the needle really moved on Black student enrollment. And we talked about, for lack of a better term, sort of the supply chain, like, how do we actually create these partnerships sooner? And I think it speaks to who our partners are and how we're building those relationships. Can you talk a little bit more about your thoughts on how we more deeply engage with the K through 12 partnership?

And I'm particularly thinking about it in terms of moving the needle on Black student enrollment. We see, as other populations are growing, we see their enrollment numbers keeping pace, but we are not seeing that in the black community. So just wanted to hear you share a little bit more about that.

Sure. So I would focus in a couple of different areas. One is the area that you already mentioned, the K through 12 pipeline, and working with local schools to both improve how they are educating their students and providing those schools and students with resources like the enrichment programs we talked about earlier.

Another example is a program in my community that's a partnership between the local University there, Loyola Marymount University, and the public schools that are in the community where they work together to strengthen the education of students who are attending those schools. I think that UC could play roles like that by partnering with local schools, by partnering our education specialists with their teachers and academic program developers. So I think that is one way that we could really get into local communities to help strengthen those schools.

I also think that closing funding gaps for students who come from underprivileged backgrounds. And I believe that the UC is on the right path in terms of expanding financial aid and opportunities for students.

And then the last thing I would say is that, I also think we should pay attention to the support that students have once they get to the UC, and the climate on campuses, that students feel that they're welcomed on campus and that there's support for them, both culturally and academically, once they get to those campuses.

I want to say thank you so much for answering the questions, and I look forward to working with you all in your confirmation today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Senator Ochoa-Bogh.

It's quite the talent and all of your life experiences coming and bringing them to the table. So a couple of questions comments that I had have to do with one, the cost of college in California. I had the privilege of watching a documentary in which Mike Rowe, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, he does the History Channel show Dirty Jobs, I believe it's called.

He had a documentary in which we're talking about high paying jobs and that many of them don't require college degrees but do more skills training, and they do very, very well. I also note here that interestingly enough, as we're talking about STEM careers and pathways, half of Apple's U.S. workforce don't have a four-year degree.

In March of 2023, the Wall Street Journal poll found that 56% agreed that a college degree wasn't worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and a large amount of debt to pay off. The cost of college tuition has skyrocketed 213% over 30 years. And I have a couple of other details, such as back in 1987 to 88, school year students at a public four years institutions paid an average of almost $3,200.

In 2017 through 18, a school year, 30 years later, the average has risen to almost 10,000 on there. And this is adjusted to $2,017 per a CNBC article. By the way, since being in the Legislature, I have heard and we've seen resolutions and bills being proposed to forgive debt, student debt. So we had a couple of conversations with regards to having more informed students as they choose a career, a degree, a school that meets those needs, and a realization of what that debt is going to look like at the very end.

So just for the record, I just wanted to comment in your thoughts on it as members of the Board.

I've seen some universities have this, but I'm not sure if we do this as a system, but the importance of your thought, and I'll hear from any of you, it's addressed openly, but the importance of having the cost of going to the school, the University, having full disclosure of what the responsibilities are, what the cost will be, as well as the degrees and majors that we have, that you have at those particular universities, the potential starting salaries and ranges for those particular majors.

And then the end debt, what is it going to look like at the end? Because one of the hardest things, and we know this as adults because we're seeing those commentaries and in light of the awareness that people are coming and saying, is it worth spending this money at this University for this particular major? Your earning potential, especially beginning. What are we doing so that we can have better informed graduates from our UC system?

And that goes for any system for that matter, and what they're able to provide in the workforce. Would love to hear your comments on where we can do better, what we're doing now and where we should go moving forward, knowing what we'd know and especially the concerns that we have with our recent graduates.

Let me interject because I happen to know that Ms. Montesantos is used to answering questions with lots of components and parts, and that gives, I put you on the spot, but I also know that you rise to the occasion quite well and see if you can enlighten us a little bit on some of that.

Happy to, Senator, and thank you for the question. I think at the moment we have some information available. Generally, we do not provide students direct information on this piece.

And I think in some ways this follows on, on part of Senator Laird's question in terms of what do we do when students are applying and what do we do when students are coming to be able to tell them, here's the cost of attendance, here's the financial assistance that is available and the other supports to be able to cover those costs. And to your good point of and here's what your future earning potential looks like.

I think we've looked a little bit at some of this and it's available for students when they look at it at a kind of overall system standpoint, but there's not necessarily consistent sharing with our applicants and with our students so that they can, as they're thinking about these pieces, can ensure that they have a full sense of what they're taking on when they're making these decisions. And it is an area, part of the broader discussion of financial literacy.

And what do we do in the K-12 system and what do we do at the University and elsewhere to be able to support them? From one standpoint, I think in California we are an outlier in a positive way in this place because of the commitments to having lower tuition and having stable tuition where possible, because we are an outlier in a positive way in terms of our Cal Grant program, our Middle-Class Scholarship program, and the commitment into the University from return to aid.

So when we look at the debt for our students, we are in a better position than other states. We do have a higher amount of debt at kind of both ends. So a lot of our lower-income students end up with a higher amount of debt to pay for living expenses.

And some of our middle-class students who are not in a position who don't qualify for financial assistance but whose families don't have the resources do have a higher burden than, but generally we are in a better position than some other jurisdictions, but we definitely can do better of being able to provide that information, a lot of which already exists in figuring out how to make it more directly available to students and families before they come to us and when they are with us, when they're making these decisions.

So thanks for the question, and it spurred some follow up discussion on our end with UCOP team and amongst ourselves for how do we make sure that we improve people's access to information so they can make the best decisions for their future?

Yes.

May I add to that? I think as Regent Matosantos mentioned, about being transparent about the full cost of education, it's not just the tuition, but it really is. What does it cost to buy books, to actually pay for housing? All of those pieces. I remember it being a big shock for me that it actually cost more sometimes than the tuition itself.

And so I think transparency about what the full cost of education and attending a college would be, in addition to being able to be more proactive about sharing where the compensation levels of different majors are, I think could be really helpful to inform people about the decisions. The UC does gather that information even by campus and by different majors.

And so I think part of our challenge now is to try to get that information broadly to the students as they're making these decisions before they get to our campus as much as we can. And I think in addition to those transparency measures to provide information, I think the UC needs to continue to work on things like our debt-free pathways.

But not only that, but also figure out ways to reduce the time to getting a degree that makes a big difference to people being able to start having compensation and starting in the workforce and things like being able to offer summer programs that help people catch up when they fall behind. Those kinds of resources can really make a difference to getting people out into the workforce and not incurring more debt through education.

So I think those are some of the important things to pair with transparency of information.

Completely agree with all of that. Yes.

Just a quick add to my colleagues. Many people spend a lot of time on these college publications about what is the best college in America, right. And they've now changed the criteria and how they think about that. And so the most recent one was done by Forbes magazine, and it ranked all of them by return on investment, basically the cost.

And you will see the UCs have an outsized three or four of the top 10 schools, best schools, best colleges in America are now UC schools because of this ratio between investment and the education and what they get on the back end. And so again, that's what the beauty of the UC system is.

I think the other point I'd love to make is that we probably, as a system and as a campus and the individual campus, don't do enough on the career centers that I think as we've focused on the core mission of teaching and all the other costs, that's probably been a neglected part of our campuses because of just constrained budgets. And that could be one of the most attractive and most important places we can actually improve upon and probably invest in.

Because again, that first year out of college on an MPV basis is one of the most critical years in a college student's life. Right. And so that would be an area of, I think, of focus of ways that we could improve things.

Glad for pointing that out, because actually that makes me very excited. One of the things that I've also been privy to is the fact that we don't have a lot of our colleges or systems, our community colleges or our CSUs or UCs. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's my impression. They're not directly working with our state Legislature, for instance, and connect them directly in different capacities.

So that's another area that I think my colleague here, Smallwood-Cuevas, would probably agree with me that a better relationship with our school systems would really benefit. It's my understanding that we have openings that we don't have people applying for. And so there is a lot of, I just see it on the market area, whether it's private or public, a lot of openings. We have a lot of graduates. We have a lot of people with concerned debt.

And so I'm thinking, where are we missing the boat as far as connecting our students, our graduates, with the workforce? So I'm actually very excited that you mentioned that. That's something to look forward to, and I look forward to see how you folks work within that space. The other comments, I think my colleagues actually touched upon. Let me see if there's anything else on here that was not touched upon. I think. One last comment, if I may just plant the seed.

As you know, I represent the Inland Empire area, but this is not unique to my area. It's across the state. I'm very intrigued and willing to work with our UC system, especially when it comes to the medical centers and healthcare, in trying to figure out how do we combine more partnerships to have our medical students stay within the State of California, the Inland Empire, in attracting them and be able to compensate our students so that they can actually be incentivized to stay in the area.

So I am I think, along with Senator Roth, I would love to work and hear your ideas on how we can partner with the Legislature, private and public partnerships, to be able to make sure that we have the healthcare training and workforce, because I know we all acknowledge that there's been a case in the State of California, more so in my area, in the Inland Empire. And I'm pretty sure the L.A. probably has the same situation that we do with workforce, but also in education and working on that.

So just wanted to thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. Benefit to going last. There is one I am very pleased about your desire and willingness to serve, especially given your resumes, your work experience, and of course your stories. Really thrilled as someone who represents an area with a UC and a hospital, your expertise. I know we've had conversations before. I've heard some of the challenges that you face as CEO, the finance background collectively and over time that each of you have is really important.

And I just think we are going to be well served. To that end, the one question I would have in terms of the compact, the annual compact related to the percentage and the budget that the UC system gets, obviously that in line with the policy, the UC policy on tuition increases, have you seen an impact yet? And what are you thinking going forward in terms of additional budget needs? I mean, from your end, there's the state contribution, obviously there's a contribution through Pell Grant.

Well, not the Pell Grant that's federal, but Cal Grants, et cetera, et cetera. I'm just interested in your preliminary thoughts of how you pull that together and what you're thinking in terms of long term for economic. How does UC raise money? Mr. Robinson, you want to start? Any thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, I'll start with a couple thoughts. I mean, one of the areas of most unmet need has been the capital infrastructure of the campuses. Right. We have, a couple of the campuses are in major seismic faults. They have a number of buildings that are at risk if we have a catastrophic earthquake and we haven't been able to replace and build adequately to replace those buildings. And so we're vulnerable there. Right.

And so that, combined with the deferred maintenance budget at all the campuses, has been a source of capital for all the campuses to balance their budgets over the last 10 or 15 years. And so again, the campuses, system-wide are suffering from a positive support and financial support for those. So those were all kind of one time needs and continued to be big needs to keep the health and vibrancy of the individual campuses going.

So I focus a lot on those capital needs as we think about our long range plan. But I'll turn it over to my colleagues.

Two things, if I may, Senator. The first piece is thank you for your support, because I think that there are a couple of things that are important. One is the increase is significant and we understand how hard it is to fund it in light of all of the other priorities that you have with the balance of the budget. So we appreciate, and we appreciate that the level of increase is greater than what revenue growth is sometimes.

And we know that that means less resources in other areas. A really important element of the compact is just the ability to plan. So knowing if the support is there. I think President Drake has talked about how he sees how having this support and having this longer term commitment and having the commitments that go along with that in terms of the outcomes of the University is saying we are going to achieve and what expectations we're going to deliver for the people if this funding is provided.

It helps the Chancellor focus longer term on issues like partnerships with K-12, or like what we're doing on high demand, or like the importance of the role of diversifying our faculty for improving our outcomes and improving our time to degree, and improving the extent to which we retain our students outside of the increase, the knowing and the commitments and the focus on what are we here to do and what do we have to commit to is really helpful from a management standpoint and from an operational standpoint of keeping us focused and keeping us accountable.

In terms of other resources, I think Chair Leib and Regent Park have spent a lot of time with University leadership on questions of innovations and can we do a better job? Which we know we can, on capturing revenue from intellectual property. We can also do a better job of seeding more of this work so that the University is both capitalizing on our research from an invention standpoint, and in turn, a portion of those returns are coming back to the campus.

And we know that relatively modest investments in intellectual property work that help us to be able to ensure that we file patents that have UC get the benefit for UC research is something that can help us. There are a lot of work that is going on at different campuses around how do we raise other revenues.

And I'm looking forward to working with my regent colleagues at answering the request of Chair Leib to make sure that we have a Committee that is focused on we sometimes are really good at identifying the money that has our name on it, but not necessarily looking at the other opportunities for where can we work with counties, where can we work with? And we're good at identifying the research dollars and things that are natural for hours.

But some of the work that we see in San Diego around how to make sure that we're working with regional transportation on securing the resources and the investments that are helpful to the campus and are helpful to the community. So looking at some of those other opportunities that are not direct University of California, direct higher education funding, but help us be able to better support our services is another area that we're interested in looking at.

So I think if the compact is to be funded and supported and included in the final budget, it's an investment that we welcome, appreciate, and that we're committed to getting the outcomes done. And yes, 5% in today's environment of inflation and higher demands. And as Mark has mentioned, where some of our compensation in some areas is lagging with competitors will require that we do the hard work of identifying savings to make sure that we live within available resources.

But being able to know what our future looks like allows everybody to focus on how are we going to manage over time and how are we going to deliver the outcomes that are totally reasonable, appropriate and on us to deliver that you would expect with this level of investment. So thank you for that.

Anything further?

I know I don't know how you can find.

That's why I went first.

That's very wise.

I want to just underscore the facilities renewal question. I think that's a huge unmet need for us, and I think that we do need to be focusing on what those long-term facility needs are to meet both enrollment and education.

Ana mentioned about patents and innovation, and I think one of the things that we've heard, at least in our first eight months on our listening tours with different campuses is about the importance of also investing in research facilities, which also helps us to be able to compete for federal grants and other types of resources to help augment our mission so I think we need to be taking a look at the things that we can fund through different ways.

I think the other piece that also came forward, in addition to the research component, is also taking a look at what we're leaving on the table and making sure we leave nothing on the table. I think this comes in every single place, whether it's the emergency funding that came from the Federal Government over COVID, but it also relates to reimbursements for hospitals as well.

When we're thinking about how do we make things whole, how do we make things work with our research mission, but also the provision of healthcare in many parts of our state. So I think in addition to the stability that Ana mentioned, which is really helpful and we're really thankful for, it's also making sure that we continue to invest in the facilities that help us to drive additional revenues. But not only that, making sure we don't leave anything on the table from a federal reimbursement perspective.

Thank you.

Well, I think my colleagues have covered this really well. The two notes that I wrote down in response to the question were whether we've optimized federal dollars. Because I know in healthcare, the Federal Government is a huge supporter of health care, and we really couldn't carry out our mission without that federal support. And just the fact that I think the compact provides a really helpful framework for collaboration and sharing priorities between the Legislature, the Administration, and the University, and appreciating that.

Thank you. I would say these are important conversations. UC, I had the opportunity to serve briefly as a Regent when I was the speaker, and to serve on the Board of the Trustees for CSU. And I have to say the collective abilities here, and I know that the Board also has a number of people with such expertise. We are very fortunate. The role that UC plays in California is one of an economic engine for many communities. That's true for us in San Diego.

You have the flexibility and the ability to be more innovative because of your structure and your mission. And I think that's critically important when you talk about healthcare. I'm happy to see someone with Dr. Batchlor's experience, in addition to some other folks that are on the Board or that are regents. The Board of Regents. So I'm really heartened by this. I will thank you to follow up from my colleague from Central Valley, our vice chair.

I want to thank you for being flexible and open to the possibilities for UCSD when we faced the fact that someone tried to cherry pick one of the best and brightest that we have, the economic engine that UCSD is for San Diego. I cannot overstate, life sciences, just in so many ways.

And what that chancellor has done to attract dollars to be able to expand and do that work, not just for UCSD but for California, and that you would be that open and willing to give the community the opportunity to create an endowment. And I would say that these are all San Diegans. But the thing is, that's taken money that would have gone elsewhere in San Diego County to deal with a myriad of issues that we deal with there. So I appreciate your willingness.

Obviously, there is an issue in terms of how, as a public institution, how we look at compensation and are not able to compete with private universities and others across the country where there's only one. And they focus everything on that one chancellor. We have a number of institutions in addition to the hospitals and the laboratories. So I just hope you heard the words of my colleague.

I couldn't agree more that equity and fairness, I mean, you figured out a way decades ago to do that at UCSF. UC Davis has had to. It's not a model that we should hope to always have to use, but the fact that you allowed the opportunity for us to do that in San Diego, we appreciate, because public dollars should be used wisely and understand that when you start looking at salaries that high with public dollars, it becomes a real discussion, community by community.

So I want to thank you for that. Before we go to the public, because this has been an important dialogue and the role each of you plays as part of the regents. We really wanted to ask. I'm sure we wanted to ask many more questions. I'm just glad that all the education people were here from the budget and from the policy Committee that could weigh in.

But I want to ask if we need to take a five minute break before we go to Members of the public. And with your indulgence, we'll take just a five minute break and come right back and go right to Members of the public and then wrap up. Thank you. Five minutes. Everyone, to get resettled. Thank you. Thank you for allowing for a little bit of a break. So we're going to go ahead and take public comment on these appointments.

And as a reminder for witnesses that wish to do comment via phone, the teleconference, that participant number is going to be put up there again, toll free number 877-226-8163 the access code is 694-8930 we're going to start right here in room 2200 on anyone who wishes to testify in support, please come on and approach the microphone. And I would ask for your name, your organization, if any, and brief comments.

Great. Thank you. Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, Amy Brown, on behalf of the California Charter Schools Association, here to lend our support for the confirmation of Regent Matosantos. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next witness.

Good afternoon. David Creager. Today, on behalf of the California Hospital Association. Here today in support of Ms. Matosantos and Dr. Batchlor. Really privileged to have worked with both, especially Ms. Matosantos, over the course of the COVID pandemic and all the work that she did working with hospitals and the General healthcare system to protect Californians. And Dr. Batchlor, for her many years of work down at MOK. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Other witnesses in support in room 2200. Okay, we're going to stay here in 2200 and ask if there's anyone in opposition. Okay, we're going to go to the teleconference line. And this will be individuals who wish to speak in support or opposition. You just need to indicate support or opposition to any individual. All four, you can make your comments very brief, and I will go to the moderator right now. Moderator, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

For support or opposition.

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

That's okay. You may press one and then zero for support or opposition. Again, that is one and then zero for support or opposition. And, Madam Chair, we have no one in queue at this time.

Okay, well, let me thank you for your brief but very important service helping us out today. We always appreciate your role in our hearings. We really do. So thank you. With that, I'm going to come back to Members of this body and ask if you want to split motions or can we do one motion? It sounds like we can do one motion. Okay.

I would move the confirmation of the four regents in front of us.

Senator Laird, thank you so much.

I would second it if the Senate allowed seconds.

Noted. The Vice Chair. You see the dilemma I have as chair, it's which one to call on. I have a Vice Chair, and then I have all these other great senators. But that is not a bad problem to have in your seat. So I have a motion for sure with random comments as asides, but we'll go ahead and ask Madam Secretary if she will please call the role.

[Roll call]. Five to zero.

Five to zero. With my congratulations to each of you, we will move these on to the Senate, full Senate, for approval. And I would just say, as a few of you know, these don't always go so flow so easily, I would say. But I think it really speaks to the experience and what you bring to the table. And we are grateful for your public service. Thank you. Congratulations. Okay, that concludes today's agenda. So I want to thank everyone who participated today.

If you weren't able to testify, you can still submit your comments or suggestions in writing to the Rules Committee. You can visit our website for instructions. Your comments and your suggestions are really important to us. We want to include your testimony in the official hearing records. And with that, thank everyone for your patience, your cooperation. The Senate Committee on Rules is now adjourned.