The committee approved the bonuses despite a decline in the value of higher education endowments overseen by UTIMCO. The bonuses are warranted because the employees’ investment acumen kept losses from being as great as those of market benchmarks for the year ending June 30, said Erle Nye, the company’s chairman.

UTIMCO officials were sharply criticized in February for last year’s bonuses, which also totaled $3.4 million at a time when the markets were falling. The criticism was leveled by Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and members of the state Senate Finance Committee.

Robert Rowling, who was chairman of UTIMCO at that time and also a UT System regent, abruptly resigned both posts during a Finance Committee grilling.

Nye and other officials of UTIMCO noted then that those bonuses covered a period when investment performance was quite good.

J. Philip Ferguson, vice chairman of UTIMCO, said today that six senior staff members, including CEO Bruce Zimmerman, had agreed to defer the latest proposed bonus payments. Zimmerman’s bonus would total $576,234.

It was pretty obvious, even before he took the job, that California’s fiscal problems were likely to force a tuition increase. But the size of the increase — 32 percent, approved today by the UC Board of Regents — makes UT-Austin’s recent 4.95 percent increase look like a bargain.

Hundreds of students protested outside as the UC regents met today. Other students took over a classroom, chaining the doors shut and forcing the cancellation of some classes.

This story by The Associated Press gives additional details.

“The secretary will communicate the administration priorities as they relate to public higher education and encourage presidents and chancellors to engage in a dialogue regarding policy issues of mutual interest,” says the association’s Web site.

Duncan, at right, is expected to touch on the $4 billion in stimulus funding for education as well as legislation moving through Congress concerning student loans and grants.

A political Web site and blog called gregsopinion.com has crunched the numbers and displayed them in a way that makes county-by-county comparisons easy.

One thing that jumps out is the sizable number of counties favoring the amendment in the Panhandle, South Texas and the Houston area. All of those regions have universities aspiring to become major national research institutions: Texas Tech University, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Houston.

All of the other counties with tier-one aspirants also voted in favor of the amendment: El Paso (UT-El Paso), Denton (the University of North Texas), Dallas (UT-Dallas) and Tarrant (UT-Arlington). But much of the state’s midsection, pretty much running from west to east, voted against the measure, although there were exceptions such as Travis County.

Juliet Garcia, president of the University of Texas at Brownsville, was singled out for breaking down barriers for first-generation college students. Mark Yudof, president of the University of California system and former chancellor of the UT System, was cited for pushing through a tuition increase as well as a boost in financial aid in a state that is nearly bankrupt.

Garcia and Yudof were among “nine to watch.”

E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, was deemed “the big man on campus.”

The addition of his papers will expand an already sizable journalism collection that includes materials from Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Newsweek magazine’s research archives and the “morgue” files of the New York Herald Tribune.

“It is especially appropriate that the Safer archive will be joining the papers of Walter Cronkite for whose ‘Evening News’ broadcast Morley filed his reports from Vietnam,” said Don Carleton, executive director of the Briscoe Center. “Cronkite deeply admired Safer as one of the very best correspondents in the history of CBS News.”

The photo is of Safer in Saigon in 1965.

To which Shine, the executive vice chancellor for health affairs, offered this deadpan reply: “Thank you, David. Remember, salaries are frozen this year.”

After the chuckles subsided, Callender replied: “Well, it was a try.”

“We are making up ground, but we have more ground to make up.”

The main endowment, the Permanent University Fund, which benefits the UT System and the Texas A&M University System, stood at $9.7 billion on Aug. 31, the end of the fiscal year. That’s down about 15 percent from the $11.4 billion balance a year earlier, but the net investment return — which excludes distributions and certain other factors — was down 13 percent.

The PUF has ticked north in the past couple of months and totaled about $10 billion at the end of October, Zimmerman said. When other endowments and operating funds are added, UTIMCO’s assets under management total about $21 billion.

Distance learning, simply put, is education that takes place when the instructor is in one location and the student in another. For instance, students in a remote location might gather in a classroom to observe a professor’s lecture via closed-circuit TV, while other students observe the professor in the flesh. Online learning is just that: learning that takes place via computer.

Both distance and online learning are increasingly common and are likely to become even more prevalent, according to several UT System campus presidents who participated in the briefing. They cautioned, however, that such learning is a better fit for some disciplines than others.

Software management and some business courses can be a good fit, said UT-Dallas President David Daniel. Physics or engineering with a laboratory component? Not so much. And by the way, Daniel said, online delivery of courses isn’t likely to save money, especially if the course goes national or global, with 24-hour chat requirements, teaching assistants and other measures.

Online learning seems to be working well for a Ph.D. program in nursing launched in that format last year, said UT-Tyler President Rodney Mabry. Seventy-two students have signed up this year for a new master’s program in educational leadership, he said.

UT-Austin President William Powers Jr. sounded a warning note. Technology, he said, can be a terrific supplement to the regular classroom experience, but it’s important to maintain the “learning communities” that develop when people study together on a campus.

“We would be reluctant to grant a degree to somebody who had not been on our campus,” Powers said.

Not that crime is funny. Here’s the latest example of his deft touch in appropriate circumstances. I especially liked his interjection of the laws of physics.

ERNEST COCKRELL JR. HALL, 301 East Keeton

Criminal Mischief: An unknown subject(s) hoisted an unknown number of pumpkins over the retaining wall located on the east side of the 2nd floor patio of the building. Gravity took control of the pumpkins and caused them to plummet to the parking lot below. Gourd debris removal cost: $20.00. Discovered on 10/31/09 at 9:04 AM.

Here’s the full list of the incidents posted today.

John Maher, a sharp-eyed sportswriting colleague, alerted me to one passage in the report that is especially candid. Although I’m not big on anonymous quotes, I found the comments telling:

Presidents believe they have limited power to effect change on their own campuses regarding athletics financing and the larger problems it has created. A number of presidential comments suggest the nature of this problem. One comment captured the challenge succinctly: “Presidents of big schools aren’t listening and don’t want to. There are lots of fans and lots of dough working against that. They don’t want to push back against these interests.”

One president observed that “no one can or will stick his neck out”:

The real power doesn’t lie with the presidents; presidents have lost their jobs over athletics. Presidents and chancellors are afraid to rock the boat with boards, benefactors, and political supporters who want to win, so they turn their focus elsewhere.

A more lengthy response came from a non-equity president:

I’ve only been a president of the university for two and a half years, but I’ve observed other presidents close-up. There are schools that have much larger athletics budgets and are selling out their games. That empowers athletics in ways that are hard to resist.

Presidents do find the athletic program provides the opportunity to sell the institution to the larger community and they want to preserve that. Presidents are also expected to raise a lot of money from the private sector and they are trying not to alienate their major donors. Even if major athletic donors are not giving to the rest of the university they can make your life miserable. If you have a lucrative TV contract you want to protect that. Frankly, I would love to have twice the problems I have if it came with twice the revenue.

The “executive summary” containing this passage, as well as an appendix, a news release and other documents, can be viewed at this link to the Knight Commission’s Web site.

As my able sportswriting colleague, Kevin Robbins, reports in today’s paper, officials dedicated the marker noting the 1951 racial integration of Lions as the first known desegregation of a municipal golf course in the South.

It was placed in a temporary hole on the first tee and will be moved later to the right-of-way along a street adjacent to Muny.

University of Texas System regents are considering recommendations by a consultant to eliminate the course after a lease with the City of Austin expires in 2019 and replace it with a major residential and commercial district.

I stumbled across something I hadn’t noticed in previous visits: a letter to LBJ from the comedians Tom and Dick Smothers apologizing for their harsh criticism of him and his conduct of the Vietnam war in the late 1960s on their TV show, the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. They even said they would vote for him again. But the left-leaning show was too political for CBS’s taste and the network soon canceled it.

Coincidentally, my wife and I had purchased tickets to the Smothers Brothers appearance with the Austin Symphony Orchestra on Friday. At a reception following their hilarious performance, I had a chance to ask them about the letter to LBJ. They remembered it well.

“We received a very nice letter in return,” Tom Smothers said.

President Theodore Roosevelt summoned the presidents and coaches of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to express his outrage.

That led to the formation of what is now the National Collegiate Athletic Association, charged with improving safety and making sure athletic programs were consistent with “the dignity and high purpose of education.”

More than 100 years later, the question still stands: Is college football a positive influence in American universities?

Two professors at the University of Texas will debate the point next week. Thomas Palaima, left,

a professor of classics, will answer the question in the affirmative; Lino Graglia, a law professor, will take the opposite position. Emma Tran, a student majoring in rhetoric and writing, will moderate. The debate, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday in Room 2.112 of the Recreational Sports Center.

A posting on the College of Liberal Arts’ Web site notes that a 2006 study found that a substantial proportion of the American public believes a university’s athletic success and academic success are connected. Many members of university faculties disagree.

The posting adds: “Palaima, the University of Texas’ representative on the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, has been critical of money’s influence on NCAA football while upholding the concept of ‘amateur sports within a true educational context.’ Graglia, an outspoken opponent of large college football programs, has called big-time college football a ‘fraudulent enterprise.’ “

As previously released documents indicated, McKinney said Murano failed to keep her promise to hire the candidate favored by him and the system’s Board of Regents.

Jeffrey Seemann, a dean at the University of Rhode Island, was hired instead. In the meantime, McKinney and the regents brought their favored candidate, Brett Giroir, aboard as the system’s vice chancellor for research.

It was no secret that McKinney and the regents wanted Giroir, formerly with the federal government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for the research slot at the system’s flagship campus. But this is the first time that McKinney has suggested Murano’s search was just for show.

“She told me ‘I feel like I need to appoint a search committee for the VPR’s office, but I’m still going to get Brett,’ ” McKinney is quoted as telling the publication. “I went ‘Elsa, this is me and I stand up and swear on the Bible, that’s not a search, that’s manipulation.’ I think the only thing worse than not being inclusive is to act like you are and you’re not. That’s manipulation.”

The article says McKinney conceded that he advised Murano on conducting a search with a pre-determined outcome.

“Don’t appoint a big committee,” he told her. Murano has not responded to interview requests.

Here’s what Rod Davis, a spokesman for the A&M System, said when I asked him about the article:

“The quotes are accurate but selective. The spin is often out of context, and reflects the biases of the reporter. It is an op-ed, not a news report, and basically re-hashes long dormant material… We’re not going to comment on this matter anymore.

“I can say that more than once during the interview, Dr. McKinney said that in recounting once again the sequence of events, he did not in any way wish to say anything bad about Dr. Murano, and to stress that he looked forward to working with her.”