Nearly all University of California employees will be eligible for raises this year after UC leaders on Wednesday lifted a pay freeze that lasted almost four years. In a letter to UC employees, President Mark Yudof said all but the newest and highest-paid employees would be eligible. Union members already were entitled to raises under their contracts, but nonunion workers have not received bumps since October 2007. Faculty members, who previously were eligible for merit bumps only once every four years, will all receive performance reviews in the coming year. Any professor receiving a positive review will get a 3-percent raise. The university set aside $140 million in this year’s budget for the raises, a UC spokeswoman said.

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by Matt Krupnick, The Contra Costa Times.

Posted: August 17th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The next subprime crisis will come from defaults on student debts, starting with for-profit colleges and rising to the Ivy League. The parallels with housing are striking. In both, the written warnings aren’t understood, especially on penalties and interest rates. And in both, it’s assumed that what’s being bought will rise in value, in one case the real estate, in the other the salaries which will accrue with a degree. One bubble has burst; the second is already losing air. Still, there’s a difference. With mortgage defaults, banks seize and resell the home. But if a degree can’t be sold, that doesn’t deter the banks. They essentially wrote the student loan law, in which the fine-print says they aren’t “dischargable.” So even if you file for bankruptcy, the payments continue due.

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by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, The Atlantic.

Posted: August 17th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

As California’s college students prepare to start classes again at University of California campuses, the sticker shock from fees and living expenses is likely fresh on their minds. How rough is it? Well, thanks to rising fees and falling home prices, parents can now get a typical house in Sacramento for less than the cost of a UC education for their children. The median home price in the city of Sacramento is about now about $150,000, according to tracking firm Zillow.com. The estimated cost of five years at a University of California college for new students who live on campus is about $154,000 – and that’s assuming fees don’t continue to rise.

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by Phillip Reese, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: August 17th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Student loan debt has increased 25 percent since 2008, according to new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Wall Street Journal reports that student debt totaled $550 billion in this year’s second quarter. Outstanding student debt stood at $440 billion in 2008. Last year, student loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time in history. According to the Project on Student Debt, the average student debt for a member of the class of 2009 was $24,000

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by Leah Finnegan, The Huffington Post.

Posted: August 16th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

New-student enrollment declined an average of 14.1 percent this quarter at 10 of the biggest for-profit educators, according to company financial disclosures and analysts’ reports. The slide has come as some of those institutions curbed their aggressive recruiting practices amid growing pressure from federal and state lawmakers. Total enrollments are also dropping as students and families weigh the value of for-profit degrees. A surge in lawsuits against companies in the sector has created negative publicity that has made consumers wary. For-profits have been criticized for not adequately preparing students for jobs that will allow them to repay their loans at a time when the affordability of college is being questioned more generally.

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by Rachel Wiseman, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: August 16th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Meeting President Obama’s goal of making the United States the nation with the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020 will be difficult for colleges but possible. The greater challenge for higher education might be keeping up with the nation’s shifting political and economic landscape. To reach the president’s goal will require 3 percent to 4 percent annual growth in the number of degrees that colleges award… While researchers found a particular set of problems for each state considered in the study, a common theme was that in most cases there was little coordination among institutions, higher-education agencies, and elected officials. Washington State, for example, has a well-developed master plan, but the Higher Education Coordinating Board was dismantled by the governor this year and institutions were given greater authority to set tuition. Without coordination, the researchers conclude, the number of baccalaureate degrees is unlikely to improve, and institutional financial aid is likely to decline. That situation is similar to that of California, where Gov. Jerry Brown used a line-item veto to eliminate the state’s Postsecondary Education Commission, raising concerns that more than 30 years of data on student performance could be lost.

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by Eric Kelderman, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: August 14th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A new committee of California State University’s governing board said Monday that it will consider such options as a state-funded salary cap in response to recent criticism of the hiring and compensation of campus presidents. “It wouldn’t preclude the system from alternatives such as foundation funding and grants to supplement compensation,” said Cal State Trustee Steven Glazer, a member of the panel. “There are pros and cons of establishing a maximum ceiling but it would allow us to report to our big bosses — the taxpayers — that only a certain amount would be provided from state coffers.”

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by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: August 9th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Across the country, flagship public universities are trying to disentangle themselves from their obligations to the states that created them. In New York, the research campuses want more flexibility to set (that is, raise) tuition. In Michigan, lawmakers have floated the idea of privatizing the Ann Arbor campus. University of California campuses, and particularly Berkeley, are enrolling more students from out of state. The University of Virginia went semiprivate years ago… flagship universities aren’t owned by faculty, administrators, or alumni. They’re owned by the generations of citizens who built the universities with their tax dollars and hard work, even though most of them had little hope of going there themselves. It was an act of generosity and faith in the future good will of their descendants. Betraying that trust would be an act of the least forgivable sort.

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by Kevin Carey, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: August 7th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A recent survey of UC Davis undergrads found almost 25 percent "somewhat to very often" skipped meals to save money, and another 25 percent "occasionally" skipped meals for the same reason… California’s higher education system is under siege with the recession and state budget deficit tearing into services and sending tuition and fees skyrocketing at an alarming rate. The trend is eating away at California’s branding of affordable, quality, public education and its legacy of a highly trained work force. At the ground level, the classroom cuts and fee increases mean financial hardship for students: taking on more debt, dropping majors and minors, delaying graduations or spiking dreams of college education altogether. While college diplomas are deferred or dashed, students take longer to become workers and pay less in taxes if they get a lower-paying job.

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by Anne Gonzales, Comstock's Magazine.

Posted: August 2nd, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Some students will start owing more on their loans while they’re in school under a last-minute debt ceiling deal to keep the country out of default and reduce deficits by at least $2.1 trillion over a decade… The changes would take place July 1, 2012. For taxpayers, the savings taken from the pockets of students will total $21.6 billion over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. For graduate students who qualify for the maximum amount of subsidized loans, it could tack several thousand dollars to the cost of going to school.

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by Jennifer Liberto, CNN Money.

Posted: August 2nd, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.