By better than a two-to-one margin, the UC Davis Academic Senate voted down a statement of no-confidence in Chancellor Linda Katehi following the November pepper-spraying of protesters on campus. The two-week online vote ended Friday, with 312 backing the statement of no-confidence and 697 opposed. A total of 2,693 active and emeritus faculty were eligible to vote… Katehi isn’t the only UC leader who has taken fire for the handling of Occupy protests. The UC Berkeley Academic Senate voted to condemn Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s administration after police there used batons while removing an encampment Nov. 9, but stopped short of a no-confidence vote.
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by Cory Golden, The Davis Enterprise.
Posted: February 17th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
UCSF has the second highest income in the system, following UCLA. Almost 80 percent of UCSF’s revenue comes from its medical center and research grants; student tuition makes up a miniscule 1 percent in UCSF’s budget. Each UC campus currently pays 1.6 percent of its revenue to UC headquarters. The money is used for system-wide services, such as pension payments, legal and other shared services offered by the Office of the President, said UC spokesman Steve Montiel… With the trend of state cuts, the UC has hiked student tuition to make up for the losses. Most recently, tuition increased 9.6 percent in July 2011 to counter $650 million in cuts from the state. But because tuition makes up so little of UCSF’s revenue, the increases themselves have had little impact on the campus.
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by Emily Suh, The Daily Bruin.
Posted: February 17th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Though nonbinding, the vote on competing motions before the Academic Senate is a rare judgment by faculty on a chancellor’s ability to lead and could influence decisions on Katehi’s future by University of California leaders. The crisis was sparked by the Nov. 18 pepper-spraying, in which campus police doused seated protesters with the orange irritant, and a viral video of the episode prompted international outrage. But for some professors, the confidence/no-confidence vote on Katehi transcends the actual incident. Instead, it represents a vote of approval or disapproval on the direction Katehi, 57, is taking UC Davis 2 1/2 years into her tenure. More broadly, faculty members say, the vote is a commentary on the direction the University of California system is moving as state funding is cut and UC Davis, like other UC campuses, pursues higher tuition from out-of-state students, private donations, and federal and corporate research grants.
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by Hudson Sangree, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: February 17th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
“Calling an organisation with no meaningful scholarship a university is a bit like calling a muddy path through a forest a motorway.” …Howard Hotson, professor of early modern intellectual history at the University of Oxford, agreed with Dr Hanley that “essentially research-inactive institutions” should not be called universities. He argued that the “dismal” research performance of for-profits was directly linked to their business model, which relies on driving down teaching costs. “Low teaching costs mean low levels of remuneration and poor working conditions. Few research-active staff are attracted by such poor conditions, and even fewer can remain research-active without the necessary time and facilities.”
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by Paul Jump, Times Higher Education.
Posted: February 16th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
A task force examining the pepper-spraying of unarmed protesters by UC Davis police has again delayed the release of its findings. The task force is now looking at “early March” for the unveiling of its recommendations, according to a letter from its chair, former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, to UC President Mark Yudof released to the media on Thursday… To date, none of about a half-dozen investigations into the pepper-spray incident, including a criminal investigation by the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department, has come to a resolution.
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by Cory Golden, The Davis Enterprise.
Posted: February 16th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Tuition rates can be prohibitive. Prospective students know this and plan their academic careers accordingly. What students may not consider, however, are the costs that can keep them from graduating once they’re enrolled: tuition increases. The costs seem to keep rising every semester for students like Rebekah Phillips, a sophomore at San Francisco State University. “My brain didn’t even go there,” Rebekah said as she recalled her college-application experience. “Honestly, the only thing I thought about was getting in.” Now, Rebekah is working two jobs to keep pace with her expenses. She’s not sure how she’ll survive in the fall, when tuition may rise again, by 9.3 percent.
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by Tanya Caldwell, The New York Times.
Posted: February 15th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The latest annual college fundraising figures out Wednesday show donations to colleges and universities rose 8.2 percent in fiscal 2011, crossing back over the $30 billion mark for just the second time ever, and improving many schools’ financial footing after several lean years due to the economic downturn. But the very richest universities accounted for nearly half the growth: Of the $30.3 billion collected by colleges and universities nationwide, $8.2 billion – or 27 percent – was raised by just the top 20 institutions. At those universities, fundraising was 15.3 percent higher than the year before, widening an already yawning wealth gap at the top of higher education.
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by Justin Pope, The Associated Press.
Posted: February 15th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Last year UCSF was the first school to get a partnership with Pfizer Inc.—worth up to $85 million over five years. Faculty and students will work alongside Pfizer’s top scientists and use the company’s resources. Pfizer gets access to any breakthroughs that come from the shared research. UCSF’s Susan Desmond-Hellmann has encouraged the university to forge relationships with the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. But potential conflicts of interest are a growing concern at many schools, as shrinking state and federal funding makes them more dependent on pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to fund research. Some schools are forcing staff to be more transparent about their industry ties, while some academics are trying to cut ties altogether to keep their research pure.
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by Hannah Karp, The Wall Street Journal.
Posted: February 14th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Dickinson State University in North Dakota granted hundreds of degrees to Chinese transfer students who didn’t complete the required class work, according to a state report… Dickinson’s practices may fuel the growing debate about the recruiting and exploitation of Chinese students increasingly sought by U.S. colleges. About 57,000 Chinese undergraduates attended American colleges in 2010-2011, six times as many as in 2005-2006, according to the Institute of International Education. At public universities, they pay two or three times as much in tuition as in-state students.
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by Oliver Staley, Bloomberg Businessweek.
Posted: February 11th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking aim at the governor’s proposed cuts to higher education, calling on lawmakers to reject them as unfair and shortsighted… “If we keep cutting higher education funding and increasing the cost of getting a degree, that student is guaranteed not to complete a degree because we have priced them out of public education and told them they are not worth our support,” he wrote.
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by Chris Megerian, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: February 9th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
