Richard Carpiano, a professor of sociology and public policy as well as a representative for the SPP on UCR’s Academic Senate… feels as if the BAC’s recommendation makes it appear that the SPP, “is a financial burden to the campus which is not the case.” Carpiano noted that the SPP is relatively new. In 2018, UCR transferred the undergraduate program in public policy from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences to the SPP. Carpiano noted that “it doesn’t make sense to eliminate a college that is only a couple of years old, thriving and plays a tremendous role to the campus.”
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by Amani Mahmoud, The Highlander.
Posted: September 18th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Trump announced almost two weeks ago that he was unilaterally providing student loan relief under a package of executive actions as cross-party negotiations over additional coronavirus aid fell apart. But the president’s Aug. 8 memorandum on student loans did not stipulate how the program would work, nor dictate how the Education Department would execute the order. The department will take a relatively broad interpretation of Trump’s directive, effectively extending the student loan benefits provided under the CARES Act until the end of the year. That relief was set to expire on Sept. 30, just weeks before the presidential election. DeVos’ department said it plans to continue the automatic suspension of monthly payments on all federally held student loans and will keep the interest rate on those loans set to zero through Dec. 31.
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by Michael Stratford, Politico.
Posted: August 21st, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
On Saturday, President Trump signed an executive memorandum that purports to extend student loan relief for millions of Americans. But the memorandum is vague, and it provides borrowers with little insight about borrowers’ rights, options, or obligations… Key questions remain unanswered about the latest presidential memorandum, including how the order will impact borrowers in default, whether the extension of relief would be automatic, and whether borrowers on track for loan forgiveness programs will still get credit. The U.S. Department of Education has not responded to a request for comment, and the Department’s Student Aid Coronavirus website has not been updated.
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by Adam S. Minsky, Esq., Forbes.
Posted: August 17th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Potentially, the most important part of the Justice Department letter is that it objects to the fact that: “Yale admits that it intends to continue its race-based admissions process for the ‘foreseeable future’.” Seventeen years ago, the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action plan but said: “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” No one knows how literally to take that sentence. The Justice Department obviously intends to ask the courts to give it real bite and demand that Yale and other colleges demonstrate that they have a plan to wind down their affirmative action programs over the next several years.
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by Evan Gerstmann, Forbes.
Posted: August 14th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
A two-year investigation into the Ivy League school found that “race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year,” in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the DOJ said in a press release. The department said Yale must agree not to use race or national origin as criteria in its next admissions cycle, and that if it plans to consider race in the future, “it must first submit to the Department of Justice a plan demonstrating its proposal is narrowly tailored as required by law, including by identifying a date for the end of race discrimination.” Yale denied the allegation. Karen Peart, a spokeswoman for the university, said in a statement to CNBC that the Justice Department made its conclusions before Yale had provided enough information to show that its practices “absolutely comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent.”
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by Kevin Breuninger, CNBC.
Posted: August 13th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The system’s deeper concerns are over ongoing state support and tuition revenues, which form the lion’s share of funding for system’s educational mission. UC Berkeley’s chancellor, Carol Christ, said she expects to experience “serious financial challenges” for the next three years. Already, the state budget has cut its support for UC’s core operations by 8 percent, or $301 million. If Congress approves another round of federal stimulus by Oct. 15, the state will rescind a portion or all of those cuts.
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by Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters.
Posted: August 3rd, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Over the past several years, the state has required the UC system to increase undergraduate enrollments markedly, but it has not provided sufficient monies to cover the true cost of students’ education. The mandate for growth is clearly independent of strategies to accommodate it, and each campus has developed its own strategy… We submit that the campus’ deficits could be better met by reconsidering the nature of campus growth. We believe that protecting the central mission of the University requires avoiding cuts to the academic core.
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by UCSD Faculty, Faculty Workgroup on Budget Priorities.
Posted: August 3rd, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
While our immediate economic woes arise from the consequences of justified public health measures, this conceals a more somber truth: The problem of declining funds has deep policy and institutional roots at least two decades in the making. If we are forced to make another round of cuts to core instructional resources, the quality of education that we can guarantee our students will plummet. There are alternatives to steep cuts, and we must find them.
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by Charles Hale, Katharyne Mitchell and Bill Maurer, CalMatters.
Posted: July 31st, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
In a highly unusual protest, University of California faculty leaders are collectively opposing a proposal to alter the search process for campus chancellors, which they believe will significantly reduce their role and potentially affect the quality of the UC system. Twenty past Academic Senate chairs, who have served since 1994, have signed a letter asking UC Board of Regents members to reject the proposal… the clash underscores concerns among some faculty over whether the board’s newer members respect their century-long tradition of unique authority to help govern the UC system. That system of “shared governance,” many say, has made UC faculty the most powerful in the nation and is key to the university system’s excellence. Park said UC traditions are important, but evolution is as well.
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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: July 29th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
College students within California’s premier research university system are wondering if their privacy is safe after learning that the University of California (UC) made a commitment to invest $200 million in an investment firm that has access to vast troves of student data through a subsidiary. The private equity investment firm, Thoma Bravo, announcing that it was purchasing the educational software firm Instructure Inc. in December in an all-cash deal for roughly $2 billion, an acquisition that was completed in March. Instructure Inc. owns Canvas, a popular virtual classroom platform. Given the platform’s popularity within higher education institutions, Instructure has data on grades, lectures, tests, papers and more from tens of thousands of students.
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by Matthew Rozsa, Salon.
Posted: July 28th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
