A walk down State Street, which leads from the state’s flagship university here to the steps of the Capitol, illustrates the passions ignited by a controversial piece of legislation that would end collective-bargaining rights for Wisconsin faculty and staff members, rights they won just two years ago. It would also almost eliminate those rights for nearly all other state workers, including graduate students… The measure that has created such controversy is a "budget repair" bill that the state’s newly elected governor, Scott Walker, a Republican, says is crucial to curing Wisconsin’s fiscal ills. But many see the governor’s proposal as a political move, and one that fans ideological divides. Apart from reducing the state’s obligations to pensions and health-care benefits for university employees and other state workers, Mr. Walker’s plan takes direct aim at the very idea of collective bargaining.

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by Jack Stripling, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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

In the 18th century, the American statesman Benjamin Franklin once said, "The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance." In the 21st century, this observation is especially pertinent as more and more jobs require some level of college study. The high school diploma is no longer the gateway to gainful employment. In well-paying fields from nursing to radiologic technology to engineering to a host of professions, successful job applicants must have an associate degree, a community college certificate or a baccalaureate degree. The community college is a key element in this equation. California’s 112 community colleges educate more than 1.4 million students each semester in programs leading to university transfer, careers and the improvement of on-the-job skills.

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by Constance M. Carroll, Sign On San Diego.

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

Brown’s $1.4 billion in additional cuts will dramatically accelerate this process. To maintain the existing compromised quality by reducing enrollment would mean shrinking UC by 17 percent (36,000 students), CSU by 19 percent (65,000 students) and the community colleges by 10 percent (119,000 students). That’s like suspending admissions for a year… In 2010 we could have pushed the "reset" button on California’s entire higher education system and restored UC, CSU and the community college fees and per student funding to where it was in 2000

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by Stanton A. Glantz, The Sacramento Bee.

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

That’s $1 million down, $31 million to go. The campus expects to have to cut that much from its budget as the entire California State University system prepares to lose at least $500 million in state funding for next year. "This is not fun. This is not the way anyone wants to spend their time," said San Francisco State Provost Sue Rosser. Reducing the number of colleges from eight to six "is an attempt to prevent layoffs and to be more efficient," Rosser said, noting that the proposal preserves all academic departments, from accounting to urban studies. But keeping them all may not be possible going forward, Rosser said.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

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

"Hanging By A Thread" chronicles a day in the life of a cook on the UC Santa Cruz campus who struggles to make ends meet. The film examines how the UC system has responded to state budget cuts and tells the story "of students being priced out of public education, low wage workers who are teetering on the brink of poverty, and executives’ lifestyles (growing) more lavish," according to a press release about the film.

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by Laurel Rosenhall, The Sacramento Bee.

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

Behind closed doors, Scott Walker, the Republican who has been Wisconsin’s governor for about six weeks, calmly described his intent to forge ahead with plans to cut benefits to public workers and to sharply curtail collective bargaining rights in the state… "I’m sure we’re going to hear more from other states where Republican governors are trying to heap the entire burden of the financial crisis on public employees and public employees unions," said William B. Gould IV, a labor law professor at Stanford University and former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. "I think it’s quite possible that if they’re successful in doing this a lot of other Republican governors will emulate this."

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by Monica Davey, The New York Times.

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

Students applying to jam-packed California State University don’t always get into their campus of choice, but they’ve always been able to count on priority admission to their local CSU. Until now. San Diego State University became the first of 22 CSU campuses to turn away qualified local students this school year, eliminating the priority treatment locals had long enjoyed and instead taking the most qualified applicants from across California. Concerned that San Diego State’s action will lead to similar access problems across the cash-strapped CSU system, California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office is calling for the state to guarantee the right of all qualified students to enroll in their local CSU campus.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: February 15th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The results are a telling story of students being priced out of public education, low wage workers who are teetering on the brink of poverty, and executives’ lifestyles have grown more lavish. "UC’s attempt to stop me made me wonder more than ever what their leadership had to hide. I was astounded to learn our great public university is prioritizing its wealthiest executives, while students, faculty and staff struggle to hang on. It is shameful. Everyone needs to see this film to understand UC executives’ decisions are not always best for average Californians and demand that UC start to get its priorities straight."

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by Staff, The Daily Democrat.

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

If lawmakers pursue a cuts-only budget to solve the state’s $26.6 billion deficit, they could eliminate class-size reduction, require that kindergarten students be 5 years old at enrollment and hike university tuition by another 7 to 10 percent, according to a new review by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office… As was expected, the alternatives are grim – $4.5 billion less for K-12 schools than Brown proposed, as well as a $1.7 billion reduction to universities and community colleges. The Analyst’s Office also laid out $2.6 billion in cuts to corrections and courts, $1.2 billion in health and social services reductions, $1.8 billion in cuts to "general" state and local government operations and $1.7 billion in cuts to transportation and resources.

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by Kevin Yamamura, The Sacramento Bee.

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

President Barack Obama, who has called for the U.S. to lead the world in college graduates by 2020, proposed budget cuts that would reduce support for higher education by $89 billion over 10 years… Pell grants give college students from low-income families as much as $5,550 per school year to pay tuition and other costs. Program costs skyrocketed over the past three years to about $35 billion from $15 billion in fiscal 2008 as eligibility widened and the economic crisis hurt families’ finances… The proposal is a signal that both Democrats and Republicans want to see the Pell grant program shrink, said Jarrel Price, an analyst with Height Analytics in Washington who studies the effect of government policy on for-profit colleges.

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by John Lauerman, Bloomberg.

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