At the persuasion of Senator Grassley of Illinois, the UC system has asked PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an audit of UCSF’s finances, according to the Chron. The audit stems from the 2007 dismissal of Professor David Kessler, Dean of the UCSF school of medicine, who alleges that he was fired for raising questions about “financial irregularities” to the tune of an 18 million dollar annual budgetary discrepancy. UCSF did two internal reviews, neither of which turned up anything unusual, and then hired a private accounting firm to confirm the results. The firm could not confirm, and now the UC has to run an external audit with Pricewaterhouse. Glass half full: maybe the UCSF audit will expose some problems with the way the UC institutions spend money, and prod the university system towards transparency. Glass half empty: if the allegations are true, 18 million dollars is an awful lot of money to “lose”. That’s (very roughly) full ride scholarships for 84 medical students.
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