The $1.4-billion in budget cuts proposed this week for California’s public colleges could prompt a new year of protests that decry higher tuition, stagnant employee salaries, and the growing inability of Californians to afford college. But as a barrier to student access, rising tuition may ultimately pale in comparison with a more fundamental shift: The state’s colleges have started to shrink. California’s public-college enrollment declined by 165,000 during the past academic year, even as the number of people trying to get into college grew… The cuts that Gov. Jerry Brown, a newly elected Democrat, has proposed would ensure that the nation’s largest set of public colleges — comprising three systems — would continue downsizing well into 2012.

Read full article [here].
by Josh Keller, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: January 13th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.