While our immediate economic woes arise from the consequences of justified public health measures, this conceals a more somber truth: The problem of declining funds has deep policy and institutional roots at least two decades in the making. If we are forced to make another round of cuts to core instructional resources, the quality of education that we can guarantee our students will plummet. There are alternatives to steep cuts, and we must find them.

Read full article [here].
by Charles Hale, Katharyne Mitchell and Bill Maurer, CalMatters.

Posted: July 31st, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In a highly unusual protest, University of California faculty leaders are collectively opposing a proposal to alter the search process for campus chancellors, which they believe will significantly reduce their role and potentially affect the quality of the UC system. Twenty past Academic Senate chairs, who have served since 1994, have signed a letter asking UC Board of Regents members to reject the proposal… the clash underscores concerns among some faculty over whether the board’s newer members respect their century-long tradition of unique authority to help govern the UC system. That system of “shared governance,” many say, has made UC faculty the most powerful in the nation and is key to the university system’s excellence. Park said UC traditions are important, but evolution is as well.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: July 29th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

College students within California’s premier research university system are wondering if their privacy is safe after learning that the University of California (UC) made a commitment to invest $200 million in an investment firm that has access to vast troves of student data through a subsidiary. The private equity investment firm, Thoma Bravo, announcing that it was purchasing the educational software firm Instructure Inc. in December in an all-cash deal for roughly $2 billion, an acquisition that was completed in March. Instructure Inc. owns Canvas, a popular virtual classroom platform. Given the platform’s popularity within higher education institutions, Instructure has data on grades, lectures, tests, papers and more from tens of thousands of students.

Read full article [here].
by Matthew Rozsa, Salon.

Posted: July 28th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Senator Warren is in the minority in the Senate but is influential in both the Senate and with many in the House. In fact, Warren got a number of Senate Democrats on board with the proposal, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate education committee ranking member Patty Murray (D-WA). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrats also supported the idea. Warren also persuaded former Vice President Joe Biden to back the $10,000 student loan forgiveness proposal. The CARES Act didn’t include student debt cancellation, but instead suspended payments for six months, interest-free. Now, Congress is considering another round of coronavirus relief and Warren and others are pushing for student debt cancellation to be included.

Read full article [here].
by Wesley Whistle, Forbes.

Posted: July 19th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The closure of campuses over the past few months has forced us to confront what is most valuable about a college experience, and it would be a missed opportunity if the greatest thing we learned in this pandemic is how to better wash our hands. To the extent we can profit from this dismal experience, we should use it to build greater access to a broad, pragmatic education in which students learn deeply not only from the delivery of course material but from one another as well.

Read full article [here].
by Michael S. Roth, Politico.

Posted: July 18th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Many young people were duped by student loan programs, and it seems highly unfair to burden them with a lifetime of debt. Consequently, I am in favor of aggressive debt forgiveness for those graduates struggling in low and moderate wage employment. But without compelling universities to cut costs and faculty to teach more and be more relevant about what they teach, free tuition schemes will leave higher education a terrible burden to the federal government when rising deficits are already stressing the budget.

Posted: July 9th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Both the California State and University of California systems said that they don’t favor legacy or donor children in any way. Both systems said their policies are consistent with their values as public institutions. Nationally, more private than public institutions have legacy admissions, but preferences are not unheard-of. Some highly competitive private colleges also said they don’t consider alumni or donor ties in admissions. The California Institute of Technology and Pomona College are among them. But Stanford University, which admitted less than 5 percent of the 47,498 students who applied last year, does.

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by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: July 6th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A leading medical-research institution working on a cure for Covid-19 has admitted it paid hackers a $1.14m (£910,000) ransom after a covert negotiation witnessed by BBC News. The Netwalker criminal gang attacked University of California San Francisco (UCSF) on 1 June. IT staff unplugged computers in a race to stop the malware spreading… UCSF is now assisting the FBI with its investigations, while working to restore all affected systems. It told BBC News: “The data that was encrypted is important to some of the academic work we pursue as a university serving the public good. “We therefore made the difficult decision to pay some portion of the ransom, approximately $1.14 million, to the individuals behind the malware attack in exchange for a tool to unlock the encrypted data and the return of the data they obtained.

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by Joe Tidy, BBC.

Posted: June 29th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Biden reaffirmed his support for student loan forgiveness and debt free college during an appearance on The Daily Show earlier this month. “Well, you know, things are beginning to change, and people are realizing, and I have changed. I have. I believe there has to be more debt forgiveness for college loans, I think, more opportunity to go to college for free. For free,” Biden said in the interview with host Trevor Noah.

Read full article [here].
by Adam S. Minsky, Esq., Forbes.

Posted: June 22nd, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

New research suggests grocery stores, banks, dentists, universities and big box stores like Walmart should reopen earlier and face fewer restrictions as communities open up after pandemic lockdowns. The study, released on Tuesday, also determined that cafes, gyms, sporting goods stores, bookstores, tobacco and liquor stores should be kept closed until later. The researchers who took part in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-led initiative did a cost benefit analysis of 26 different location types to determine what the tradeoff would be between someone’s relative risk of getting infected during a visit and the importance of that establishment in that person’s life and to the economy.

Read full article [here].
by Jen Christensen, CNN.

Posted: June 11th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.