Mark Yudof joked that he tried, unsuccessfully, to get University of California headquarters moved from Oakland to Santa Barbara.
Such moments of levity were frequent in a group interview last week between the UC president-designate and faculty/staff newspaper editors and reporters from UC campuses.
Yudof, 63, head of the University of Texas system, will succeed President Robert C. Dynes, who announced last August that he would step down by June 2008 after nearly five years as president.
The newly appointed UC leader, who starts work June 16, was visiting the Bay Area as part of his transition to the presidency, and he made himself available at UC Office of the President by conference call to address questions from the internal editors and reporters.
Yudof previously was president of the University of Minnesota and a longtime faculty member, dean and provost at the University of Texas at Austin. He began his academic career at UT Austin in 1971 as an assistant professor of law and later became dean of the School of Law from 1984 to 1994 and executive vice president and provost from 1994 to 1997, when he left for the University of Minnesota.
He's recently been meeting with policy-makers in Sacramento, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as he prepares to take office at UC. But he cautioned campus editors last week that he might not have all the answers just yet.
"Remember, I'm still the pretender," Yudof said. "I don't have the complete information, and I'm still learning about UC."
Editors then questioned Yudof on topics including his plans for fixing UC's budget, which areas will receive his immediate attention, and his experience at the University of Texas that could help him tackle UC challenges.
"The first priority for me is to get some things done in the Office of the President," Yudof said. "It's clear that by national and any other standards we're overstaffed, and I need to look at that." A UCOP restructuring plan, begun last year, seeks to reduce the Office of the President's budget by 20 percent.
The "real action" is on the campuses, Yudof said. "I'm not planning on a major initiative--I want to save money [at UCOP] and get out of the way," he said. "Frankly, I want to save money and put it on the campuses. We have a lot of good places to put the money."
He plans to visit the campuses shortly after he starts work. "I don't want to be too elaborate, but I would like to visit them all," he said.
On the topic of tree-sitters, Yudof said there's no universal answer, but "being a lawyer, my feeling is you enforce the law. Frankly, I don't understand the property rights of the tree-sitters and in some cases why it takes so much time to get them out of the trees."
He supports academic discourse and freedom, he said. "People certainly have a right to protest, but if you're holding up university business, that's another issue."
As for tuition increases--Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts, which would slash UC funding by $332 million, once again have raised the specter of increased student fees--Yudof said, "That is a very difficult issue."
The UC system faces a shortfall of $417 million--the difference between the governor's plan and the Regents' budget request for 2008-09.
"When the price goes up, you have to think very creatively about how we maintain access," he said.
Yudof has voiced concern over the rising cost of public higher education and the national dwindling of state support for these institutions.
"If I had my way, the closer tuition is to zero, the happier I am," he told a UCOP publication in April. "I don't want a person to be precluded from coming to the University of California because they can't afford it."
Contact the author at gwenm@ucsc.edu.
