California, one of the world’s wealthiest places, has seen one of the world’s most astonishing declines in college achievement. The state’s continuation rate, the proportion of students starting college who complete it, fell from 66 percent to 44 percent in just eight years (1996
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by Christopher Newfield, Academe.
There are really two problems facing the state that have been wrapped into that widely-cited $19-$20 billion figure. Lumping them together amplifies the crisis. The state now faces a financing problem
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by Daniel J.B. Mitchell, UCLA Today.
The amount of the University budget gap is half of the $1 billion or so the University doles out to its 3,650 employees who earn $200,000 a year or more. To put this in perspective, that means for each UC campus 365 people earn more than 96 percent of Californians. It also means that the "severe financial challenges," as the UC Office of the President likes to call its budget problems, are as much a product of Oakland as Sacramento. Arguments about being competitive are as bankrupt as the UC professes to be. By selectivity, the UC Riverside’s business school ranks below San Diego State’s and just above Cal State San Bernardino’s. Yet the $370,000 salary of the UCR business school dean is more than what the president of either campus makes. It is hundreds of thousands more than what these schools’ business deans make.
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by Travis Donselman, The Daily Californian.
"This class is graduating at a time of great difficulty for America and for the world," Obama said. "You’re entering a job market, in an era of heightened international competition, with an economy that’s still rebounding from the worst crisis since the Great Depression. You’re accepting your degrees as America still wages two wars — wars that many in your generation have been fighting. " At the same time, he said, "you’re coming of age in a 24-7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter."
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by Scott Wilson, The Washington Post.
Building a collection of online classes could help alleviate bottlenecks and speed up students’ paths to graduation. But supporters hope to use the pilot program to persuade faculty members to back a far-reaching expansion of online instruction that would offer associate degrees entirely online, and, ultimately, a bachelor’s degree… But even as Mr. Edley spoke, several audience members whispered their disapproval. His eagerness to reshape the university is seen by many faculty members as either naive or dangerous.
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by Josh Keller and Marc Parry, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Unsurprisingly, the crippled economy in California has generated renewed debate about whether the state can sustain its three largest pension programs… In addition to a gradual ramping up of contributions, the Academic Senate has suggested the university issue bonds to cover the system’s state-funded employees, who comprise about one-third of the university’s workforce. In so doing, the theory goes, the sponsors of other university employees – supported by non-state sources, including auxiliary enterprises, the medical center and federal grants – would be compelled to cover their share as well.
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by Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed.
State support for higher education tends to be cyclical — a fact that’s been comforting to many who study or teach at public colleges and universities that have been facing budget cuts these past two years. But research presented here Monday at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association suggests that while you can still assume that what goes down will come up, you can’t assume it will happen any time soon. The research asserts that the time it takes states to restore deep cuts has grown longer in the last 20 years. Further, the research suggests that states that imposed large tuition increases, have centralized governing boards, or are located in the West may have to wait a particularly long time for cuts to be restored.
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by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed.
The surprise is the state’s prison system, which has more than doubled its personnel over the past two decades, growing four times faster than the rest of state government to become its second-largest employer, with 17% of the total workforce. Without this increase in the prison-industrial complex, state employment would actually have lagged population growth. And yet Ms Whitman, who has been endorsed by the police union, has promised to support all the "tough on crime" policies that have caused the booms in incarceration and prison-hiring.
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by Staff, The Economist.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stressed the importance of California’s colleges and universities and pledged to increase their funding during a meeting with the state’s higher education leaders Tuesday morning in the Capitol building… Schwarzenegger pledged his commitment to maintaining the funding levels for higher education outlined in his proposed state budget for 2010-11. "In the private meetings we have just had with our education leaders I have made it very clear I will not sign a budget unless (higher education) funds are there," he said.
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by Shaunt Attarian, The Daily Californian.
And there was a time when doing both simultaneously was more than hollow bravado and wishful thinking. In that era, there appeared to be no structural conflict between being public and being one of the world’s leading centers of learning. But institutions and practices are historically contingent. In recent years there has come into being a set of historical conditions very different from the set that enabled California to achieve a stellar system of higher education. Clark Kerr was able to mobilize widespread support for the Master Plan during a period of prosperity and of diminishing class inequalities. That Plan is increasingly threatened by the expressed priorities of voters and their elected representatives caught up in the anti-tax politics for which the notorious Proposition 13 of 1978 is an enduring emblem.
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by David A. Hollinger, Townsend Center POV.