It is not a disagreement about expenditures or taxes that is preventing the New York State Legislature from passing a 2011 budget. No, it is a piece of legislation called the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act, which… would allow the state’s two public university systems, the City University of New York and the State University of New York, to set their own tuition rates and give them the freedom to raise additional revenue to compensate for the $840 million in budget cuts the state has imposed on them over the last three years.

Read full article [here].
by Peter D. Salins, The New York Times.

Posted: July 27th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Henry Powell, chair of the Academic Senate, said whatever the cause, losing graduate students will have a reverberating effect beyond the university, calling graduate students the "lifeblood" of the UC and critical to California’s "knowledge-based economy." "These kinds of cuts hurt the whole state because our economy is very dependent on discovery," he said. "Often innovative and powerful research is done by graduate students."

Read full article [here].
by Alisha Azevedo, The Daily Californian.

Posted: July 26th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Without a budget resolution in sight, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hinted Monday that he might not sign a budget before he leaves office next January unless he gets the reforms he wants… "If I don’t get what I need, I will not sign it and it could drag on to the next governor," Schwarzenegger told reporters after meeting with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce on Monday.

Read full article [here].
by Jeff Wilson, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Posted: July 26th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

"The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis," Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. "To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education."

Read full article [here].
by Tamar Lewin, The New York Times.

Posted: July 23rd, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The contracts offered by the giant company, according to both sources, restrict the scientists from publishing research results, sharing them with other scientists, or even talking about them for as long as three years, a serious restraint in the midst of an ongoing crisis. Both during the immediate crisis and for an extended period as government leaders and the courts figure out how to respond to the Gulf tragedy, the work these scientists do will essentially belong to BP, which will be free to suppress it or characterize it in any way it chooses. Faculty members under contract to BP, meanwhile, would be unable to testify against the company in court and would be available to testify on the company’s behalf.

Read full article [here].
by Cary Nelson, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: July 22nd, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California students still pay a price. Berkeley has been criticized for reducing the number of state residents it accepts as it doubles nonresident enrollment. But most UC campuses have been reducing admissions whether or not they enroll more out-of-state students. The schools simply cannot afford to educate, at their own expense, more students than the state has been willing to pay for. As more resources become available, UC and the state must make the admission of more California students a priority; but as a long-term strategy, enrolling more out-of-towners is a judicious decision that will preserve the state’s crown jewel of higher education.

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: July 20th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The Water Resources Center Archives, a unique collection of technical reports, speeches, photographs and other historical materials, has been housed at the Berkeley campus for more than a half-century. However, budget worries and concerns that the Agriculture and Natural Resources Division of the UC president’s office lacked the expertise to maintain the archive led university officials to seek proposals from other schools interested in housing the collection.

Read full article [here].
by Mike Taugher, The Contra Costa Times.

Posted: July 19th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Some colleges that have used online-education companies have pulled back from outsourcing, at least to a degree, out of concerns over both academic principles and high prices. Although Embanet’s chief executive says deals that cost colleges 85 percent are increasingly not the norm — at one conference, he characterized the company’s cut as anywhere from 50 to 85 percent — Boston University came to see the price of outsourcing as too steep in the long run… "We couldn’t let an outside party be responsible for the quality of our instruction — that was just too problematic on a long-term basis," Mr. Halfond says. He added, "We didn’t want to be dependent on a for-profit company in terms of our academic reputation."

Read full article [here].
by Marc Parry, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: July 18th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

All the PowerPoint slides and chat rooms in the world can’t replicate the power of an in-person learning experience, and it’s hard to see how a cyber UC degree would have the same status as a regular one. UC faculty members are skeptical now, but in the future, employers and graduate schools will be. Complaints about how a cyber college would dilute the university’s status and dumb down learning helped bring down a similar project at the University of Illinois after two years. Apart from concerns about status – which are real, even if they’re not pretty – there’s an increasing amount of research that shows online learning is qualitatively different from regular learning – and not for the better.

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: July 18th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In an apparent violation of the state’s open meeting law, the University of California regents prevented a filmmaker from entering a public meeting with a video camera Thursday on grounds that he lacked a press credential. An e-mail exchange also reveals that UC had questioned the filmmaker about the content and purpose of his film, and asked his identity as a condition of access – also apparent violations of state law, legal experts said.

Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: July 16th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.