"One of the things still in jeopardy in the budget is the ability for the UC to fund students who are unfunded," Tierney said. "[Almost] 15,000 students are unaccounted for in terms of state money, so we’ve asked for $51 million dollars for those students and that’s in jeopardy, so we may have to cut back on enrollment." According to a press release, the UC has implemented a system-wide waiting list for prospective students for the first time in its 142-year history. There are approximately 1,000 applicants currently on the list, the press release said. The UC is set to receive over $3 billion in funding from the state. While this amounts to roughly $370 million more than last year’s distribution, the increase is a mere 40 percent of the $913 million requested by the UC in order to close its budget shortfall.

Read full article [here].
by Staff, The Santa Barbara Daily Nexus.

Posted: January 21st, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The state spends 6.5 times more on a prisoner than it does on a college student going to UCLA, one of the best universities in the world. Even when one adds all the expenses paid by the student and not the state – fees, room and board, books – the cost of prison is still almost 2.5 times more than being enrolled at UCLA. Put another way, California could send every last prisoner to a UC campus, covering all expenses, and still save nearly $2.3 billion per year. That’s not right.

Read full article [here].
by Chon A. Noriega, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: January 21st, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

For the first time in history of the University of California, incoming freshmen may be waitlisted, said UC officials after Wednesday’s meeting of the UC Board of Regents. The waitlist is designed to give the university flexibility in deciding how many students to enroll for the 2010 school year. Enrollment figures may change due to the uncertainty of state funding… Regents and presenters to the board’s committee on finance voiced concern about the feasibility of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s effort to reprioritize state funding for public higher education. Despite varying opinions, regents expressed the need for a coordinated lobbying effort directed at the state Legislature to guarantee more funding for the university. "I think, once again, you have a budget you can’t believe in," said UC Regent Richard Blum. "I don’t think half the stuff is going to come true. We have to be up there (in Sacramento) as regents, as administrators and as students."

Read full article [here].
by Javier Panzar, The Daily Californian.

Posted: January 21st, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

As our Legislature stands pat, our deficits will narrow the socioeconomic mosaic that composes Berkeley which flies in the face of our mandate as a public institution. Whether you are an infuriated English major or a nonplussed Chemistry grad student, please avoid the tendency toward apathy and wanton violence alike. Instead of firebombing a car, attacking the chancellor’s house, or watching another marathon of "Lost," direct all your energies toward Sacramento and let’s roll back the clock on California public education together.

Read full article [here].
by Chris Haugh, The Daily Californian.

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

And they have directed the hardest budget blows against higher education, long the symbol and substance of California’s commitment to the future. Decades before California became the most populous state, it had the largest number of public college students. The commitment it made a century ago to what historian John Aubrey Douglass calls the California Idea – a higher education system balancing broad access, affordability and quality – created wealth and knowledge unequaled on the planet. It is now being dismantled before our eyes, an act of slow-motion vandalism. Valuing present satisfactions at the expense of the future has always been the road to poverty, but never more so than in the new California. Once a state of arrival, populated heavily by migrants from other states and nations, California is becoming a more settled place, where most new Californians arrive by way of the maternity ward. It is on a path to having the first homegrown adult majority in its history, one that will thrive or fail depending on the quality of investments made today in that majority’s skills and knowledge. Yet the vandalism of higher education threatens to leave that next generation less educated than the last and put California in the pinch of having too few college-educated workers to meet the needs of its economy. This reality has not yet seeped into our political conversation, dominated by the immediate-gratification culture of talk radio and online comment sections, where people pass around brown paper sacks of ignorance and share the crack pipe of spin. But the students who are protesting the fee hikes and enrollment cuts on their campuses know it in their bones; their future and California’s are one and the same.

Read full article [here].
by Mark Paul, The Sacramento Bee.

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

Budget cuts mean my freshman daughter’s experience at UC Santa Barbara is far from the system’s glory days… UC administrators say they never have experienced anything like this year’s budget cuts. Santa Barbara has lost 25% of its state funding in recent years. Admissions were up about 7% in the 2009-10 school year, while classes were cut by 10%. Santa Cruz, for example, offered 123 literature courses in the previous school year, compared with 101 this year. What does all this mean for students? Besides the stress, it means a less personalized education. With nearly 40 kids in her French class, Sara will have fewer opportunities to ask questions or practice speaking; the teacher will be more pressed for time during office hours and when grading papers.

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

Posted: January 13th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

"We believe that, relative to the past fiscal year, uncertain assumptions for major portions of the budget balancing proposal make the state’s credit more susceptible to adverse economic or other developments," Standard & Poor’s wrote. S&P cited the governor’s reliance on "extraordinary federal cooperation" and voter approval of $1 billion in transfers from mental health and child development funds as risky assumptions. It also said the unlikelihood of the Legislature reaching a quick deal on "deep cuts as proposed" could hinder the state’s finances. Ratings downgrades can increase the state’s borrowing costs for public works bonds and other cash needs…. S&P cited the usual list of reasons for California’s structural budget problems — a two-thirds vote requirement for budget and tax approval, heavy reliance on the stock market and ballot-box budgeting.

Read full article [here].
by Kevin Yamamura, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: January 13th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Steinberg praised the goal of spending more on universities than prisons as "aspirational." Yes, it truly is. California’s higher education system, once a source of pride and economic development for the state, is becoming inaccessible for many students. Schwarzenegger certainly senses the public’s disgust and is onto something potentially popular. There’s too much ballot-box budgeting involved. But Democrats should try to compromise and not be so knee-jerk opposed to privatizing prisons.

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

Posted: January 7th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

"The most essential of government functions is public safety," said Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks), "and we have to make sure that’s our top priority." In the current budget, UC, Cal State and the state’s Cal Grant financial aid program combined to receive about $6 billion, not including revenues from student fees. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation received $8.12 billion, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. Under the governor’s plan, spending on UC, Cal State and Cal Grants would have to account for at least 10% of the state’s general fund by 2014-15; prisons could receive no more than 7%. The guarantee could be suspended by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. Changing that ratio would require the type of deep cuts in prison spending that Sacramento has long balked at making.

Read full article [here].
by Shane Goldmacher and Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 7th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Perhaps the most welcome idea in the address, though, was Schwarzenegger’s renewed commitment to education — in particular, the state’s colleges and universities. "If you have two states and one spends more on educating and the other one spends more on incarcerating, in which state’s economy would you invest?" he argued. He made a radical proposal to remedy that budgeting inequity: a constitutional amendment to guarantee that no less than 10 percent of the budget go to higher education and no more than 7 percent go to prisons.

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: January 6th, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.