The California State University has received more than 611,000 undergraduate applications in the two month fall 2011 priority application period beginning Oct. 1 and ending Nov. 30. The number of applications slightly tops last year’s record, demonstrating a consistently strong demand for a CSU education
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by Staff, Cal State Public Affairs.
Everyone wishes we were moving faster because we’re not funding the entire unfunded liability and the normal cost. But we also have limited dollars and we’re getting no support from the state, unlike Cal State University or retirements for community colleges, we get zero support from the state. Now, we’re fighting for that and believe we should get support from the state, which would improve our ability to accelerate our contributions, a much more achievable goal. But right now we’re basically cutting into programs and cutting into other priorities at the university in order to fund the retirement system.
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by Jordan Bach-Lombardo, The Daily Californian.
The California State University’s hopes to offset recently announced fee increases may not be realistic, according to the state’s non-partisan fiscal analyst. The CSU plans to raise tuition 5 percent in January, and 10 percent next fall, but asked the state for $125 million to "buy out" the 10 percent increase in its next budget. "Buyouts are not the most strategic investment of funds," said Judy Heiman, principal analyst with the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which will make a recommendation on 2011-12 funding levels for the CSU.
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by Ken Paglia, The State Hornet.
While low-income students are exempt from tuition, middle-class students aren’t. The two-income family is hurt twice. Such families have to pay full tuition because of their income, yet find that income penalizes them when applying for student aid… UC will truly be world class when Californians return to the original idea that public education should be free from kindergarten through college. Until then, educational opportunities are denied to qualified students who cannot afford the burdensome debt that tuition entails. Those middle-class students who do graduate from the university begin their professional lives saddled with enormous debts that previous generation never encountered.
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by Guest Opinion, The Vacaville Reporter.
It’s middle-class families who are really feeling the pinch with higher tuition, local high school counselors said. They’re less likely to get financial aid based on need and often have to rely on loans and savings to pay for college, they said. Steve Boyd, a counselor at Foothill, knows how hard it is for middle-class families figuring out how to pay for college. Boyd, a father of two, said he is "personally feeling squeezed out," especially when he’s taking furlough days because of state budget cuts. "It just doesn’t seem right," he said. "It doesn’t seem like it should be this difficult, but it is." A survey released this month by the Public Policy Institute of California reflects Boyd’s frustration. Nearly three-fourths of respondents said the state does not provide enough funding for universities. About the same number believe the price of tuition keeps qualified students from going to college.
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by Jean Cowden Moore, The Ventura County Star.
Undergraduate college student borrowing has risen dramatically in recent years. Graduates who received a bachelor
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by Rebecca Hinze-Pifer and Richard Fry, Pew Research Center.
California’s a basket case? The state has one of the highest living standards in the country, yet over the past 10 years the economy has still grown much faster, per person, than the national average. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, it’s up 15% — compared to 8.9% for the U.S. overall. It’s grown faster than low tax neighbors like Arizona, Utah or New Mexico. It’s grown three times faster than Texas. And this was from 1999 through 2009: In other words from the peak of the dot-com years through the depths of the recession. It managed this growth despite the double blows of the tech and housing busts… In the quarter century through 2005 (the most recent year for which we have data), Californians bailed out the rest of America to the tune of about $620 billion in today
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by Brett Arends, MarketWatch.
Last week’s meeting — like every other UC Board of Regents meeting this year — was held at the University of California’s only graduate student campus: UC San Francisco. The remote location of the November meeting reveals a lack of transparency in UC government, as well as a disappointing unwillingness to engage students in the decision-making process… there’s no convincing reason for the meetings to be at UC San Francisco except to avoid angry students. Only two administrators decide on the location of the bi-monthly meetings: Chairman Russell Gould and President Mark Yudof. For the first time in a decade, they decided that none of this year’s meetings would be held at an undergraduate campus.
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by Avni Nijhawan, The Daily Bruin.
If the Supreme Court interprets copyright law such that books manufactured abroad may be legally sold to U.S. college students for the same price as they are sold to, for example, Indian students, the publishers argue, all hell will break loose. "Copies of foreign editions would be imported en masse, by large campus-based bookstores, Internet resellers, and others," they write. "The loss of revenue from domestic editions would drastically reduce the ability of publishers to compensate authors for their work and lead to significant changes in the publishers’ business models which, in turn, will cause ripple effects beyond the publishing industry."
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by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed.
"There’s a more subtle aspect of this that’s harder to get your hands on, but I think is clear," said Lawrence Busch, a sociologist from Michigan State University who was hired by UC Berkeley’s academic senate to head an evaluation of a five-year, $25 million contract UC Berkeley signed in 1998 with pharmaceutical company Novartis to research advances in plant genetics. That evaluation concluded that the deal "compromised the mission of the university" and played a role in the 2003 tenure denial to microbiologist Ignacio Chapela, an outspoken critic of the Novartis contract. After international outcry over the decision, Chapela was granted tenure in 2005.
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by Suzanne Bohan, The Contra Costa Times.