Given the toll the recession has taken on state and local governments, policy makers face “unprecedented challenges” and say they “have no other choice” but to make cuts in education. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, borrowing a now-ubiquitous phrase, has called the necessity to do more with less “the new normal.” I don’t dispute the difficulty of budgeting in the recession, nor the fact that education spending includes waste that should be cut. But we need to resist the framing of our situation as inevitable and normal. This framing makes the recession a catastrophe without culpability, neutralizing the civic and moral dimensions of both the causes of the recession and the way policy makers respond to it. The civic and moral dimensions also are diminished by the powerful market-based orientation to economic and social problems. Antigovernment, anti-welfare-state, antitax—this ideology undercuts broad-scale public responses to inequality.
Read full article [here].
by Mike Rose, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: September 11th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
According to the Brookings report, nearly 25% of the jobs in the Fresno area demand a bachelor’s degree while only 20% of the workforce has one. The benefit of the degree is evident in the low 3.4% unemployment rate among college grads in the Fresno area, as of 2009, compared to the 16.1% unemployment rate among those with a high school diploma or less. Fresno’s disparity among education groups was the fourth greatest among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, according to the report. Modesto, Bakersfield and Stockton were also in the top 10.
Read full article [here].
by Kurtis Alexander, The Fresno Bee.
Posted: September 8th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Adjusted for inflation, public colleges and universities in 1985 received about $7,479 per student from their states, with about $2,274 per student coming from tuition. The group says the amount coming from state budgets dropped to an average of $6,451 in 2010, while the tuition portion rose to $4,321. Mike McNeil, who was helping his freshman daughter move into her dorm at Colorado State, shook his head at the tuition hike and the bind it places on middle-class families… “Back then, I worked at Arby’s, had a summer job to pay for school,” said McNeil, a manager from the Denver suburbs. “A kid working today, no way they could work enough to raise the kind of money you’d need.”
Read full article [here].
by Kristen Wyatt, The Woodland Daily Democrat.
Posted: September 8th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The governor’s budget cut $650 million from the CSU system this school year, but left a “trigger” mechanism in place to automatically make deeper midyear cuts if projected state revenues did not materialize. The budget assumed an additional $4 billion in revenues, primarily from sales and personal income taxes. If the estimate is short by $1 billion or more, an additional $100 million will be cut from the CSU system by Jan. 1. The budget would also cut $100 million from the UC system, $30 million from community colleges, $248 million from various health and human services programs, and $115 million from certain public safety programs… Lawmakers did not specify if the $100 million cut would be a one-time or permanent cut to the CSU budget.
Read full article [here].
by Sam Pearson, The State Hornet.
Posted: September 7th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Boychuk: Bureaucracy and “diversity” are pricing out the middle class from a University of California education. The third annual UC Accountability Report, published in July, found that some 3,000 fewer undergraduate students from families with incomes between $99,000 and $149,000 a year enrolled in between 2004 and 2010… As I’ve argued over and over in these columns, there need to be limits on what the state does and does not do. But as a product of the University of California, it’s impossible not to lament what has become of the crown jewel of the state’s university system… Lopez: in 2004, the state still was at the top of the funding hierarchy ($450 million). Next came federal funding ($350 million, primarily research and grants to students), student fees ($150 million), philanthropy ($150 million) and endowment income ($120 million). Now, the state has dropped to fourth in the funding hierarchy… Yes, management bloat is an issue. The UC today has nearly as many senior administrators as full-time, tenure-track faculty – 8,600 vs. 8,700 in October 2010. In contrast, in the mid-1990s, UC had two times as many faculty as senior administrators. Two decades ago, UC had nearly three times as many faculty as senior administrators. The Board of Regents has been utterly tone-deaf and ineffective in bringing administrative positions and salaries in line with a public service ethos.
Read full article [here].
by Ben Boychuk and Pia Lopez, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: September 7th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
A recent study by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at California State University, Sacramento finds that California is at or near the bottom in affording university opportunities to its high school graduates. According to the study, the state now ranks dead last in total funding per college student. That speaks volumes about the willingness of elected officials–and by extension voters–to support higher education. There’s more. California isn’t producing college graduates very quickly. The study found that California ranks 41st in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded per every hundred high school graduates. In other words, we’re not building an educated workforce for the future.
Read full article [here].
by Larry Gerston, NBC San Diego.
Posted: September 1st, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
California’s community colleges are the workhorse of higher education. Spread across 112 campuses, they are open to nearly anyone who walks in the door. You need not be a student council president, a legacy or even in the top 12 percent of your class. Just finish high school and pay a nominal fee to enroll. They dwarf the UC and Cal State systems in student enrollment (2.75 million to 750,000) and in community outreach. They not only prepare underclassmen for transfer but provide career technical training, workforce development, lifelong learning programs and English as a second language. That makes them a remarkable asset, but it doesn’t shield them from state budget cuts. The latest drop of the guillotine, announced last week, slashed $400 million from statewide funding.
Read full article [here].
by Tom Barnidge, The Contra Costa Times.
Posted: August 31st, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The root problem of public universities is not that they keep losing public funds, although this is a destructive symptom. The root problem is that voters don’t know why public universities need public money. Legislators, business executives, and most public-university officials, too, either don’t know or aren’t saying. Why are public universities resting on public funds? Because only this combination supports the mass creativity on which a successful “innovation economy” depends. Although nearly all policy makers say they want an innovation economy, they are trying to get it in the wrong way… We should support a version of the innovation economy that is egalitarian and democratic—that develops craft and skill widely in the population, then puts it to use via mass employment. We need to side with the broad majority that has been damaged by economic concentration, and help solve, rather than perpetuate, the problems of our current plutocratic version of the innovation economy. Finally, we must explain clearly and constantly why only broad public financial support can create such broad public educational benefits.
Read full article [here].
by Christopher Newfield, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: August 28th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The state’s colleges and universities are preparing for more budget cuts and that means so should students and their families. If the economy remains soft and state revenue sluggish it will trigger mid-year funding reductions for the University of California and California State University systems as well as the state’s community colleges… why do we have free, public education for children through the 12th grade? And we do this regardless of the income of the child’s family. We do it because, sure the child benefits, but society benefits too by nurturing educated, productive citizens. Higher education does that in spades with the ancillary benefit of being the seedbed of the next generation of leaders in business and science and technology.
Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Stockton Record.
Posted: August 26th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
But Malik, a senior who needs physiology to finish her major and graduate this year, won’t be allowed to stay in the class unless she wins the lottery. Literally. “I only have three or four extra seats, so I’ll have a lottery on Thursday,” Professor Jennifer Breckler announced at the end of the class as dozens of students, including Malik, surged to her desk in hopes of being allowed to enroll. Disappointed, Malik turned away. “There’s a good chance I’m not going to get in,” she said. A guy standing nearby said simply, “This is cutthroat.” … Roughly the same number of students are being taught by 16 percent fewer instructors than five years ago, and with fewer courses. The campus has eliminated more than 300 courses in that period, a decline of 8 percent. Gone are 61 tenured or tenure-track faculty members and 216 lecturers. The number of students remains just under 30,000.
Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: August 24th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
