At USC, a majority of the 2,500 adjunct, part-time and full-time non-tenure track faculty last week said they had signed union authorization cards and filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board for an election, with hopes that votes will be certified before Inauguration Day. In Burbank, nearly 200 faculty members at the New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus voted this month to form a union. At the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, a majority of the more than 600 full-time and part-time faculty and staff have signed union authorization cards, though there has not yet been an election. “We don’t know what Trump is going to do,” said Nadia Suryawinata, a union leader at Caltech in Pasadena, where 2,000 graduate student workers and postdoctoral scholars formed a union in February and overwhelmingly voted this month to authorize their leadership to call a strike — a tactic to speed up negotiations to secure a contract.
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by Jaweed Kaleem, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: December 16th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Nearly half of Muslim students in 87 colleges and universities across California experienced harassment or discrimination at school, according to a new report… “Rather than feeling safe and supported, many have faced suppression of their free speech and have been penalized for opposing Israel’s actions and advocating for Palestinian rights,” officials said. “Unfortunately, this issue is not new, and many universities, administrators, and law enforcement have failed to offer the necessary support, leaving students feeling targeted and isolated.”
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by Victoria Ivie and Allyson Vergara , The Orange County Register.
Posted: November 19th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
McMahon is a professional wrestling magnate who ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. She was selected by Trump to lead the SBA during his first presidency. During her two years in that role, McMahon stayed out of the headlines, steering clear of the churn of controversies that were a feature of Trump’s first term in office. She stepped down in 2019 to run the Trump-aligned super PAC America First Action and has remained in Trump’s close orbit.
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by Cory Turner and Jonaki Mehta, NPR.
Posted: November 19th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Donald Trump hates the state of higher education in the US so much that he wants to start a new online university that will dole out bachelor’s degrees free of charge to challenge existing colleges. Trump has also vowed to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again”. He wants to dramatically alter the accreditation process that ensures colleges meet set standards, opening the door for programs that currently do not. These are just a few of Trump’s ideas for overhauling colleges and universities – frequent targets of rightwing campaigns that view them as incubators for leftist ideology. Many of Trump’s higher ed proposals involve driving out these perceived ideas.
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by Rachel Leingang, The Guardian.
Posted: November 18th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The data from the Institute of International Education said that more than 1.1 million foreign students — over half of whom are Chinese or Indian nationals — were in the U.S. for undergraduate, graduate or post-graduation work training programs in 2023-24, a 7% year-to-year increase.
The largest share of international students attended institutions in California, the report said, where USC, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and UCLA were the biggest draws…
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by Jaweed Kaleem, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: November 17th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
UC’s operating revenue is estimated to be about $53 billion in 2024-25. Most of that is from the system’s medical services work, including hospitals. Its core mission of educating students, largely faculty salary and benefits as well as financial aid, makes up about $11 billion of the system’s budget. That amount is almost evenly paid for with state dollars and a combination of tuition revenue and other university funds. It’s among the numerous fiscal details that emerged at the regents’ regularly scheduled November meeting, including the revelation that the UC plans to spend $30 billion to repair or replace its increasingly aging stock of academic buildings, medical centers and dorms by decade’s end. And yet, that massive sum falls far short of the 10-campus system’s stated construction needs — a total of $53 billion in projects without a funding source. The building spree is occurring as UC trundles toward a goal of adding 23,000 new California students by 2030 — fueled in part by lawmaker demands that the vaunted system make space for more California high schoolers.
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by Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters.
Posted: November 14th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
UC officials told regents Wednesday that the 10-campus university system could face a $504.7-million financial shortfall in 2025-26 if the state makes good on warnings earlier this year to reduce higher education funding as it grapples with a budget deficit… In the last several years, UC has been pummeled by demands to open more seats for Californians — including pressure by lawmakers — and has enrolled about 7,800 more California undergraduates between 2022-23 and 2023-24. Preliminary estimates for this academic year indicate campuses enrolled an additional 3,000 students, boosting the total number of California undergraduates to more than 206,000, the most in UC history.
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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: November 14th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Nearly 60 percent of the roughly 1,100 respondents to an Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research survey—conducted in the lead-up to last week’s election—strongly agreed that academic freedom in higher education is under threat. Throw in those who say they somewhat agree it’s under threat, and the share grows to 91 percent… Inside Higher Ed and Hanover asked the faculty who had said their sense of academic freedom declined in teaching, research or extramural speech which particular topics they felt less free to discuss. The top three responses, out of roughly a dozen options, were the Israel-Palestine conflict; diversity, equity and inclusion; and federal politics writ large.
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by Ryan Quinn , Inside Higher Ed.
Posted: November 13th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
n contrast to its outspoken advocacy and commitment of resources to Ukraine, UCSF, whose stated mission is to “advanc[e] health worldwide,” has erected a formidable wall of silence around Israel’s genocide. It has ruthlessly policed and punished its own employees, including those who spoke out at the press conference nearly a year ago, who have dared to criticize Israel and to assert the right of Palestinians to exist. “At UCSF we have demanded that our leadership take a principled moral stand and condemn the atrocities in Gaza,” stated Dr. Jess Ghannam, a Palestinian American professor of psychology and global health sciences. “They have refused and instead created an oppressive environment that has targeted Palestinian solidarity communities. We have tried everything to engage the leadership at UCSF but have been met with a stunning silence.”
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by UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine, Mondoweiss.
Posted: November 10th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Trump has indicated one of his most controversial proposals — eliminating the Education Department — may also be one of his urgent priorities. “I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said during a campaign rally in September. Congress would need to approve eliminating the agency. But it’s unclear if there is enough political will among lawmakers to do so. “So far, it hasn’t looked like even a lot of Republicans in Congress want to do that,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, the higher education sector’s top lobby. Sweeping regulatory changes, meanwhile, are all but certain.
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by Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive.
Posted: November 6th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
