With his state strapped and his legacy looming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed on Wednesday to greatly reduce the amount of money California spends on its prisons and to funnel that sum to the state’s higher education system instead. The governor said he would also push for a constitutional amendment prohibiting the percentage of the state budget earmarked for prisons from exceeding what is set aside for its public university system. "Choosing universities over prisons," Mr. Schwarzenegger said in his final annual address to the Legislature. "This is a historic and transforming realignment of California’s priorities."

Read full article [here].
by Jennifer Steinhauer, The New York Times.

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

California’s public university systems have unprecedented numbers of qualified applicants for admission at the same time they’re reducing student slots. They’ll turn away about 150,000 qualified people this year. This amounts to all but abandoning the state’s 50-year-old master plan for higher education… We want government services galore, yet every poll shows the vast majority of us don’t want new levies to pay for them. Which leaves us with choices. We – not our politicians – put ourselves into this spot. Getting out will require sacrifices, but no politician now seeking high office has asked for any, except from state employees and the powerless, including battered women. Which will leave us stuck in this situation until our ideas and presumptions become more realistic.

Read full article [here].
by Thomas D. Elias, The Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Posted: January 2nd, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

For the Central Valley to regain lost ground, however, we’ve got to keep investing in ourselves. We need to build on our infrastructure in a responsible way, develop in a manner that supports economic strength and vitality decades down the road, and make things hospitable for new and existing businesses without losing sight of health and safety concerns. Perhaps most importantly, we must address the serious issues that have emerged with public education. We can make no greater investment of taxpayers’ money and attention than K-12 schools, community colleges, the University of California system and the California State University system. We must address the dropout problem, continue to provide vocational opportunities for new graduates, and bring California up to speed in science, technology and engineering. As badly as we’ve fared in those areas statewide over the past decade, we’ve fared even worse in the Central Valley. The to-do list for 2010 starts with a realistic state budget that brings us to some semblance of sanity.

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Bakersfield Californian.

Posted: January 2nd, 2010, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

As California’s promise of affordable higher education slips out of reach for many, some parents urge making a noise in Sacramento… "Our students aren’t just competing against other students in the community but from all over the world," Howard Singer said. "Do you think in other states and countries students are only getting 80% of an education? I don’t think parents realize yet the impact these budget cuts are going to have on their children. Many parents can’t open up their wallets, but they can bombard the governor and legislators."

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

Posted: December 21st, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

With tens of thousands being turned away from state universities, California lawmakers likely will consider granting community colleges the right to offer a limited number of bachelor’s degrees. The shift, which has occurred in 17 other states in the past decade or so, would represent a major philosophical change in California, where the three state higher-education systems have clearly defined roles. Bachelor’s and higher degrees are offered by University of California and California State University campuses, while community colleges offer two-year associate degrees and certificates for a variety of professions.

Read full article [here].
by Matt Krupnick, The Oakland Tribune.

Posted: December 21st, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

This Christmas break, students from University of California and state and community college campuses will fan out across the state to collect signatures in support of an initiative that would free the Legislature from its two-thirds vote requirement on budget and revenue matters. Their goal is to collect enough signatures by April 15 to qualify for the November 2010 ballot. Amid a welter of sit-ins, teach-ins and building takeovers, this is a bold effort to reach beyond the campuses and address the chronic problems of a dysfunctional Legislature and the state’s fiscal crisis. If it passes, the California Democracy Act will allow a simple majority in the Legislature to pass a budget and balance it if necessary with new revenue sources.

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

Posted: December 20th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility recently announced that it has filed two pension and retiree health-care reform initiatives with the California Attorney General’s office. The measures would alter the formulas used to calculate state and local government employee defined-benefit pensions for future employees, offering a lower “tier” of benefits to these employees and thus reducing pension costs to state and local agencies… The CFFR initiative deserves serious consideration for the fact that it would represent an improvement over the status quo, but if the state is to truly effectively tackle the structural problems and sustainability of its pension system, it must learn the lesson of the private sector and switch to a defined-contribution plan that offers compensation comparable to that received by private-sector workers.

Read full article [here].
by Adam Summers, The Business Journal.

Posted: December 10th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

On Dec. 3, the Sacramento State Coalition, a student activist group, declared that higher education was dead. Mock memorial services were held. Fee increases were protested. Outrage was the word of the day. The anger seemed to be mostly directed at Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez, who can do nothing to change the situation we are currently in. A makeshift casket was left at Gonzalez’s office. It was full of slips of paper: short notes about students’ dissatisfaction with recent fee increases and faculty cuts. Gonzalez was not offended by this protest. Instead, he was pleased with how vocal students and faculty were. "Public higher education in California … will suffer if the state fails once again to fund us at adequate levels," Gonzalez said. "I applaud the students for making sure their voices are heard by the Legislature and governor."

Read full article [here].
by State Hornet Staff, The State Hornet.

Posted: December 9th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The California State University Board of Trustees recently adopted its 2010-11 budget proposal, which asks the state to increase funding for the CSU system by $884 million. The budget proposal, which the Board of Trustees calls a "recover and reinvest" budget, would increase state funding from $2.3 billion to $3.2 billion. It aims to recover the cuts imposed in the last two years and to reinvest for long-term needs, according to a CSU press release. "The recommendation is to increase funding for the CSU," said Erik Fallis, spokesman for the CSU Chancellor’s Office. "The state budget process in the last two years resulted in some very drastic cuts to the CSU and a great deal of those cuts are one-time cuts." Over the last two years, state funding for the CSU system has been cut by $625 million. The budget proposal seeks to restore $305 million in one-time cuts, which were imposed this year by the governor and the Legislature.

Read full article [here].
by Kristine Guerra, The State Hornet.

Posted: December 9th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Higher education is not just another state program to be slashed and burned in yet another stopgap budget panic. Without affordable higher education, California will have a difficult time emerging from the recession — and the innovations and entrepreneurial job-creating advances that come from this system will go elsewhere. The state is at a crossroads. Our government’s approach to how higher education is funded must change. We like what De Anza Community College President Brian Murphy, who was chief consultant to an earlier review of the Master Plan, told the committee Monday. "You have to affirm the Master Plan’s promise, not compromise it by reorganizing it to what you can now afford," he said. "You can’t solve the higher education problem absent a reform of the financial system."

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Posted: December 9th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.