California State University trustees will vote on a mid-year fee increase on Nov. 9 that would raise tuition by 5 percent for the spring term… The proposal is not unexpected. When CSU trustees voted in June to raise fees for the current semester they said they would consider another fee increase after a state budget was approved. The budget Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed earlier this month assumed CSU tuition would go up by 10 percent — but trustees had raised fees by only 5 percent in June. "In our analysis, a mid-year adjustment of an additional 5 percent is needed in order to fulfill the budget’s promise to restore access to students in a meaningful sense–that is, to restore access to courses and the range of services students need to succeed and graduate," states a CSU report prepared for the Nov. 9 meeting.
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by Laurel Rosenhall, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: October 29th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Whitman and Brown agree that higher education needs more money. Whitman says she would get $1 billion from cuts to welfare and other reforms and would look to college officials on how to best spend those funds. Brown says he
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by Stephanie Rice, California Watch.
Posted: October 28th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The analysts’ final recommendation would not, by Steenhausen’s own admission, save all that much money for the state or for the average student — but it does invoke a new model of subcontracting public education to out-of-state providers that has emerged somewhat recently. The analysts recommended that the California legislature appoint a task force to explore formally partnering with Western Governor’s University, an online institution based in Utah, to serve some of its adult learners — following the example of Indiana, which announced a similar arrangement with Western Governor’s in June.
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by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed.
Posted: October 26th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
California takes about 4.7% of what a business produces in taxes — which happens to be the national average. The government take is higher in Alaska (13.8%), New York (5.5%) and Florida (5.3%). Even Texas, known for rolling out the red carpet for business, pocketed more than California — 4.9%… But [California] corporations now shoulder less of the state’s tax burden than they did a generation ago, according to a Times analysis of state Franchise Tax Board data. The analysis found that corporations reporting net income paid 5.4% of their state income in taxes in 2008, the most recent year available, down from 9.7% in 1981.
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by Alana Semuels, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: October 24th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
A wave of mass student protests, a new lobbying strategy by university leaders, and the governor’s desire to leave a positive legacy in education during his final year in office led to a remarkable turnaround for California’s public colleges in the budget he signed earlier this month. In a state budget full of funding cuts
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by Laurel Rosenhall, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: October 20th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The study – which says that government workers have been "vilified" in California – concludes that public employees are not overpaid when you make an "apples-to-apples" comparison of employees’ education, experience and other factors that might influence pay… Allegretto defended public workers, saying that there are 60,000 fewer government workers at the state and local level today than before the economic downturn began. And she noted that despite the attention being paid by the governor and other politicians this year to rising public pension costs, those costs make up a small fraction of state spending.
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by Marisa Lagos, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: October 19th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
As much as conservatives would like to suggest that teachers and janitors and bus drivers are to blame, even those scary, underfunded pensions aren’t a problem. For every dollar California pays out in pensions, it gets $1.47 worth of economic activity. For every dollar taxpayers put into the state and local pension system, they get $7.91 worth of economic activity. Much of that activity goes through local businesses and adds to state revenues. Importantly, it represents deferred compensation that the state agreed to pay in the future so it could offer lower salaries in the present.
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by Natasha Chart, Calitics.
Posted: October 19th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Even as they cheered, the rallying students, faculty and staff could not ignore that the latest state budget being considered in Sacramento is expected to restore about $200 million each to the University of California and California State University, and provide about $5.5 billion more to public higher education than last year. "Our actions matter! Our movement matters!" shouted Ricardo Gomez, a vice president in student government. "But don’t get too excited! It’s only a fraction of what’s needed." He and other students want a roll back of the 32 percent undergraduate fee increase that took effect this fall throughout UC. A similar increase was imposed at CSU.
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by Nanette Asimov and Jessica Kwong, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: October 8th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
On several campuses of the University of California, which lost $637-million in state appropriations last year, groups also held events to mark Thursday’s "National Day of Action to Defend Public Education." At the University of California at Berkeley, demonstrators at a variety of events protested the cuts and their effects on public colleges and universities. One event, a sit-in in a library reading room, drew some 500 participants before the campus police blocked access. The demonstrators banged on desks and chanted "Whose university? Our university!" and several hundred remained in the room as of late afternoon, but there were no reports of arrests, according to the university’s News Center.
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by Paige Chapman and Eric Kelderman, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: October 7th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Even with the new state and federal dollars, overall funding for the two university systems will remain lower than three years ago. But campuses anticipate some relief after several years of reduced enrollments and difficulty for students trying to get into courses they need for graduation. "We will be able to hire faculty and be able to provide additional course sections," UC’s Lenz said. Cal State had already announced that it would use the federal stimulus money to admit as many as 10,000 new students for winter and spring terms, as well as restore about 3,000 course sections.
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by Larry Gordon and Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: October 7th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
