The administrator in charge of policing the state’s for-profit schools at the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education is stepping down next month. Karen Newquist, the bureau’s chief of enforcement since November 2010, intends to leave her post in March. Her replacement has not been named. Newquist’s departure comes after The Bay Citizen revealed that the bureau had not fulfilled many of its fundamental oversight responsibilities, including aggressively investigating complaints, monitoring the quality of educational programs and rooting out unlicensed schools and diploma mills.

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by Jennifer Gollan, The Bay Citizen.

Posted: February 27th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California community colleges were struggling Tuesday to absorb an unexpected $149-million budget shortfall that will mean more class cuts, layoffs, borrowing and probable elimination of summer programs affecting thousands of students. In the latest fallout from California’s ongoing fiscal crisis, the state’s 112 community colleges reported that revenues from students’ fees are $107 million below projections for the current fiscal year as more economically strapped students seek and receive fee waivers. In addition, property tax revenues also fell short of estimates by about $41 million. The news has caused more angst and numbers-crunching in a system that has seen its budget slashed by $809 million since 2008. The new cuts pose a particular challenge because most colleges have begun spring session and have little flexibility to change course offerings or make other adjustments that could minimize the effects.

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by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Recently released correspondence involving UC Berkeley administrators indicates that Chancellor Robert Birgeneau approved of — or at least did not question — the police use of batons at the Nov. 9 Occupy Cal protest… the ACLU sent a letter to the board on Tuesday stating that evidence shows that the campus’s conduct on Nov. 9 was “fundamentally inconsistent with the values of a public university which purports to be a community dedicated to the free and robust exchange of ideas.”

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by Jordan Bach-Lombardo and J.D. Morris, The Daily Californian.

Posted: February 21st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

E-mails have surfaced that for the first time reveal UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau was informed on Nov. 9 while traveling that police used batons to forcibly remove an encampment involving hundreds of student Occupy protesters, yet did not call a halt to their use… At their November meeting, the Faculty Senate passed four resolutions disapproving of Birgeneau’s handling of the Nov. 9 protest. Yet Bob Jacobson, Faculty Senate chairman, said the e-mails by themselves fail to indict the chancellor because they don’t indicate who first authorized police to hit the nonviolent students with batons. “I hope that the entire set of statements is going to come out at some point, and we’ll have this entire history,” Jacobson said.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: February 21st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The Community College League of California said Tuesday that plummeting revenue from student fees and a dip in property tax revenue has created a $149-million deficit. The bad news comes as the colleges are coping with $415 million in state budget cuts this year… the drop in student fee revenue is about 10 times worse than usual, coming in at around $106 million. Lay said state budget cuts have reduced enrollment and fee increases have driven other students away. He also said an increasing number of students are qualifying for fee waivers, putting another dent in revenue. More than 60% of students are receiving fee waivers now, according to the Department of Finance, That’s an increase from about 45% in the 2008-09 school year.

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by Chris Megerian, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: February 21st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

UC Davis faculty voted by a large margin to support the continued leadership of Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, who has faced criticism about the Nov. 18 pepper-spraying of peaceful student demonstrators by campus police, officials said Friday evening. In an online referendum, professors voted 697 to 312 to defeat a no-confidence measure that censured Katehi’s handling of the controversial police action, according to an announcement by the campus Academic Senate. The motion sought to link her directly to the pepper-spraying and contended that she had failed “to act effectively to resolve the resulting crisis.” … Meanwhile, UC officials announced this week that an investigation into the pepper-spraying was taking longer than expected and that a resulting report would be not be finished until early next month.

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by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: February 18th, 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.

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.

The governor wants to pay for the funding increases in part by reducing state financial aid, known as Cal Grants, to students at private colleges. But that could backfire financially at UC and CSU, Boilard said, if many private college students transferred to public campuses so that they could keep a Cal Grant. Or, if the public campuses had no room, then students might avoid college altogether… Brown is proposing to allocate $9.4 billion to higher education, which would be 21 percent less than it got five years earlier, when the state provided $11.9 billion, the report says. As part of the plan, colleges and universities would get hammered unless voters approve Brown’s ballot initiative to raise revenue: a five-year income tax hike of up to 2 percent on people earning more than $250,000, and a half-cent sales tax increase. Failure to pass it would trigger cuts of $200 million each to UC and CSU, and nearly $300 million to community colleges.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: February 9th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.