Last week the University of Arizona sent shock waves across higher education when its president Robert C. Robbins announced a massive furlough, to begin May 11 and extend to June 30, 2021… Like the University of Arizona, flagship universities and major systems were not spared. The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents executive committee approved a furlough policy for its campuses last week. The University of Oregon gave 30-day notice to 282 employees that they were being put on leave-without-pay status. The University of Montana furloughed 63 of its staff.

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by Michael T. Nietzel, Forbes.

Posted: April 19th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

H.D. Palmer, a Department of Finance spokesman, said all requests for additional funding would be reviewed but that Newsom is preparing a May revision that is essentially flat and “could go further than that” — meaning budget cuts. The state could face a deficit of as much as $35 billion in the near future, legislative analyst Gabriel Petek said Thursday. The impact on UC campuses could be particularly dire. Their unanticipated costs reached about $310 million in March — amounting to about 40% of $775 million monthly revenue in a system with an annual $9.3-billion core budget, according to Christopher Newfield, a UC Santa Barbara professor and systemwide budget expert. Without additional funding, students may face larger class sizes, reduced course offerings, more difficulty getting into needed classes and potentially higher tuition, said Michael Meranze, a UCLA historian who has long studied UC finances. A generation of scholars could be sidelined if UC lacks the funds to recruit them, jeopardizing the system’s renowned innovation and intellectual leadership, he said.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: April 16th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

“We have not made a decision about the fall quarter yet. We are looking at multiple models and have activated a continuity of education task force, a continuity of research task force and are also working with public health experts to help inform such a decision in concert with the UC system.”
The California State University system is weighing the same option for its schools, including its campuses in San Diego and San Marcos. Those two schools collectively serve nearly 50,000 students.

Posted: April 16th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Until now, most prestigious universities have not been able to sell online education to faculty or the public, given numerous studies indicating its inefficacy compared to in-person classroom teaching. Yet, periods of large-scale shock can be used to enact highly deleterious ideas and transform them into common practice… the impending economic recession likely means that lecturer employment will be further reduced while faculty are furloughed—leading to larger course sizes.

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by Alexia Arani, Davide Carpano, Lilly Irani, Simeon Man, Saiba Varma, and Matthew Vitz, Salon.

Posted: April 8th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

When the economy stalls, demand for college typically rises as the unemployed decide to go back to school to improve their job prospects… Ironically, funding for education plummeted. States didn’t have money and they cut funds to public colleges just as enrollments surged. “Funding per student was a disaster,” said Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “We’ve seen it recover very slowly but it’s still lower than what it was before the recession.” Budget cuts forced public institutions to raise tuition… We’re already seeing states from Missouri to New Jersey cut funding for public colleges and universities because they don’t have the money. That’s potentially setting the stage for tuition hikes. “Here we go again,” said Baum.

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by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report.

Posted: April 6th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The infrastructure of UCSB’s online learning experience compared to that of the local community colleges, or even local high schools, has been inferior. This rush to implement inadequate software coupled with poor instructor communication under a strict quarter system threatens to tarnish the reputation of UCSB… Within the bounds of a research university, connection should be the emphasis. Students that are now practicing social distancing are also feeling isolated from their academic community. The general feeling of faculty disarray is communicated through chaotic Zoom lectures and the numerous conflicting emails subsequently raising student anxiety levels. It is clear that the faculty were not supported enough prior to the start of spring quarter to prepare and alter their lesson plans.

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by Terra Paige, Daily Nexus.

Posted: April 4th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California announced Wednesday that it will suspend admission testing requirements for students seeking to enroll in fall 2021, among other temporary measures, to help students during the coronavirus pandemic… The university also said it will suspend its letter grade requirement for A-G courses completed in winter/spring/summer 2020 for all students… “The goal of these changes is to ensure a fair process that does not affect the life chances of students who, but for the coronavirus pandemic, would have become full-time students at the University of California,” said Kum-Kum Bhavnani, chair of the Academic Senate.

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by Jasmine Kim, CNBC.

Posted: April 1st, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Over the weekend, young MAGA operative Charlie Kirk and undercover conservative trickster James O’Keefe put out calls in widely circulated tweets for conservative college students to take advantage of new online classes by recording their professors… The threat of having recorded Zoom classes taken out of context online ups the ante, however, with the likelihood of those segments being turned into Fox News clips that are then weaponized against academic institutions… “For all the concern these days that conservatives are expressing for free expression in universities, activities such as these seem to indicate a different interest in the suppression of views,” Tiede said.

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by Will Sommer, The Daily Beast.

Posted: March 25th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Declaring that it would be unseemly to raise tuition during the current national health emergency, leaders of the ten-campus University of California system on Wednesday withdrew their proposal to increase costs for the next five incoming freshmen classes. However, the tuition plan — which originally was scheduled for a vote Thursday — may be revived at a later date, they said. The regents’ next meeting is expected to be in May.

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by Larry Gordon, Ed Source.

Posted: March 18th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Online education has been alternately hailed as the wave of the future, a way to deliver relevant curriculum to the masses at a lower cost, and disparaged as an inferior, Mickey Mouse version of “real” study that leaves some of the most vulnerable students behind. Now California is about to embark on an enormous, unplanned experiment in remote learning — and no one knows how long it will last.

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by Vanessa Arredondo , Felicia Mello and Janelle Salanga, CalMatters.

Posted: March 17th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.