The regents establish university policy; make decisions that determine student cost of attendance, admissions, employee compensation, and land management; and perform long-range planning for all UC campuses and locations.
The constitution grants the regents broad institutional autonomy,[6][7] giving them "full powers of organization and government.
"[8] According to article IX, section 9, subsection (a), "the regents are "subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure the security of its funds and compliance with the terms of the endowments of the university".
[10] To expedite the formation of the university, the Organic Act authorized the governor to unilaterally select the eight appointed regents after the end of the current legislative session and allowed them to assume office immediately without the consent of the state senate.
In an 1894 wrongful death case, the plaintiffs did not understand this; they sued 16 regents individually, which forced the Supreme Court of California to analyze Section 11 and the June 18, 1868 certificate to hold that the original members of the Board of Regents had properly formed a corporation as a legal entity distinct from themselves.
[16] At Kerr's encouragement, the Board of Regents cut down on the number of meetings, delegated powers and responsibilities to the university president and the campus chancellors, delegated more power to the Academic Senate, simplified the UC budget, and greatly reduced the amount of detail that flowed upwards to the regents.
Although the board also passed a resolution that same month prohibiting self-dealing with respect to construction of campus buildings, the winning bid was ultimately submitted by Merritt's preferred contractor, Power and Ough, "and much of the lumber and cement for the building came from Merritt's own lumber company.
"[25] The San Francisco Evening Post broke the story on January 6, 1874, and two days later, the California State Assembly's public building committee launched an investigation which held hearings through March 3 of that year.
[26] The committee concluded that Merritt had profited financially from providing an inferior building to the university at an exorbitant cost: $24,000 over its reasonable value.
[26] In 1965, free-speech movement activist Marvin Garson responded to a call by the California Federation of Teachers to "investigate the composition and operation of the Board of Regents."
He produced a 19-page report documenting prior cases of corruption, concluding that, "taken as a group, the Regents are representatives of only one thing—corporate wealth.
[31] Before the signing of the contract, a number of environmental organizations, including Greenpeace penned a letter to the regents, which was read during the regents meeting on November 2, 2007, which stated "The prospect of giant carbon polluters directing research related to and gaining control of key energy technologies is very troubling – especially when the research is conducted at, and the technologies are developed in collaboration with, public institutions.
[33] Opponents have also argued this and other privatization contracts are a way to replace middle class engineering jobs with cheap graduate student labor.
[35] According to an investigation by the Sacramento News & Review, conflict-of-interest dealings by the UC Board of Regents accelerated in the years prior to the 2008 recession.
In May 2017, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Regents had been hosting costly dinner parties using university funds.