Isn’t that just like California, to punish its most productive citizens by taxing their dividends at the same rate as their pilot’s wages? Why bother living off a trust fund at all? But what does Meg mean when she says California is "one of a few states"? In this case, forty-one. Forty-one states tax capital gains at the exact same rate as "traditional income." Only nine tax capital gains at a lower rate. One of them is South Dakota. Which may be a "competing state" with California, but it’s unclear in what. So by "a few" Meg means "almost all" and by "align" she means "undercut" and by "competing states" she means Arkansas.

Read full article [here].
by Chris Kelly, The Huffington Post.

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

Garcetti v. Ceballos was filed by a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was demoted after he criticized a local sheriff’s conduct to his supervisors. The ruling in the case found that First Amendment protections do not extend to public employees when they speak in capacities related to their jobs. A footnote said that the ruling did not necessarily apply to higher education. But to the dismay of faculty groups, several federal judges have applied it in the higher education context. Several of those cases have involved faculty members who criticized their administrations. The Adams case is one that might seem quite close to the First Amendment, as it involves controversial stands on political issues.

Read full article [here].
by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed.

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

How can California’s political climate be classified as anything other than dysfunctional when it is much easier to cut funds from higher education than to close a tax loophole on yacht owners? That is not only immoral, it is fiscally irresponsible for the state’s long-term future when, for example, studies consistently show that for every $1 invested in a California State University student, we see returns of $4 to the state economy. How many state employees will have to be let go and additional services cut before we reach the predictable outcome that cuts alone will not solve what is ailing this state? The severity of California’s problems long ago passed party identification. If the Republicans were the majority in the Legislature instead of the Democrats, only the most politically naive would conclude that the state would fare better in the current climate.

Read full article [here].
by Byron Williams, The San Jose mercury News.

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

The stresses of the budgetary environment have created an undercurrent of uncertainty and fear throughout Davis, stretching from students who say they can’t afford tuition hikes to financial aid officers overwhelmed by increasing demands on their time. The economic downturn has had a compounding impact on Davis’s financial aid office, which has lost eight positions — a 17 percent staff reduction. The staff cuts come at a time of increasing demand at Davis, where the number of Pell Grant-eligible students climbed from 33 percent to 37 percent in a single year. Katy Maloney, interim director of financial aid at Davis, largely attributes that shift to students’ parents being laid off and other products of the recession.

Read full article [here].
by Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: March 17th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A Chronicle investigation of 618 private colleges found that one in four have financial ties with trustee-affiliated companies. These relationships are common at both small liberal-arts colleges and large research universities. The connections, ranging from a few thousand dollars’ worth of business to multimillion-dollar contracts, involve banks, law firms, construction companies, and insurance conglomerates.

Read full article [here].
by Paul Fain, Thomas Bartlett, and Marc Beja, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: March 14th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The irony here really cries out for attention: a large state university system needs a free market economy that hums along in top gear so that the revenue needed to support it can be generated. But California’s two unusually well developed state university systems provide enormous local voting power in many Assembly districts for a bitterly anti-capitalist ideology that sabotages the California economy. The campuses are shooting themselves in the foot. The power that those students and faculty chanted about is indeed theirs, and if they used it to elect sensible assemblymen and state senators their problems would be solved by the healthy business climate that would result. The votes that they actually cast are the source of their troubles.

Read full article [here].
by John Ellis, FrontPageMag.

Posted: March 12th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California’s public colleges and universities must prepare to serve 387,000 more undergraduates by 2019 than in 2008 — a 16% increase — and will need an additional $1.5 billion in enrollment funding for the task, according to a report released Wednesday by the California Postsecondary Education Commission. By 2019, demand for slots at California’s community colleges is expected to rise by 313,253 students, according to the report. At the California State University and the University of California, demand will peak several years earlier, according to the projections, making the need for funding solutions more immediate. Called "Ready or Not, Here They Come," the forecast was presented at a commission meeting in Sacramento.

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

Posted: March 11th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A report called "Ready or Not, Here They Come" projects that the demand for undergraduate enrollment slots at University of California, California State University and community college campuses will increase by 16 percent, or 387,000 students, by 2019. That’s compared to the number of students the colleges served in 2008. To accommodate all those additional students, the college systems will need $1.5 billion more in support in 2019 than what they received in 2008, the study found. "The state will also need to backfill for unfunded students who are currently being served by the systems," the report said.

Read full article [here].
by Kelly Johnson, The Los Angeles Business Journal.

Posted: March 11th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Current UC policy requires that new fees be no higher than the average cost of comparable public schools. But when UC’s regents meet in San Francisco later this month, they will consider changing the policy by removing one word: "public." That’s likely going to make the cost of studying medicine, law, business or any number of other careers more expensive – and out of reach for many, say UC graduate students.

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

Posted: March 11th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In the last decade, government worker pension costs (not including health care) have risen to $3 billion from $150 million, a 2,000% jump, while state revenues have increased by 24%. Because the stock market didn’t grow the way the legislature predicted in 1999, the only way to cover the skyrocketing costs of these defined-benefit pension plans has been to cut other programs (and increase taxes). This year alone $3 billion was diverted from other programs to fund pensions, including more than $800 million from the UC system. It is becoming clear that in the most strapped liberal states there’s a pecking order: Unions get the lifeboats, and everyone else gets thrown over the side.

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Wall Street Journal.

Posted: March 10th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.