Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City, will convene the first hearing of The Joint Committee for Review of the Master Plan on Higher Education at the Capitol. The day-long session will include a good deal of background testimony from experts on that plan. Over the next four months, the Committee will meet four more times as it tries to map out a system capable of meeting the state’s future needs. One key aspect of the master plan Ruskin hopes to look at is the set of formulas that determine student’s eligibility to enter into and transfer between the community college system, the California State University System and the University of California system. "Can we provide a space for everyone who is eligible?" Ruskin asked. "That is becoming less and less the case."

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by Malcolm Maclachlan, Capitol Weekly.

Posted: December 3rd, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The California Faculty Association has released a white paper that blasts the CSU system’s leadership for "a ‘restructuring’ of the CSU that goes far beyond ‘belt-tightening’ in hard times and is, in fact, a radical change in the mission of the system."

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by Jon Ortiz, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: December 1st, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

These days, the California State University system — the nation’s largest with 23 campuses and 450,000 students — seems like a ship unmoored. With its lifeline of state funding cut more than half a billion dollars this fiscal year, Cal State, along with other California schools, has been unable to avoid unprecedented student fee hikes, staff and faculty furloughs, and deep reductions in enrollment. Many campuses are planning for historic program reductions that could greatly narrow academic options, alter the career plans of thousands of students and, ultimately, further harm California’s shaky economy, experts say.

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by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: November 29th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Steve Boilard, who researches higher education for the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, suggests in a report on "The Master Plan at 50" that the state look at reducing student enrollment levels at UC and CSU, given funding constraints… Lower enrollments at state universities could eventually weaken the state’s ability to attract businesses, said Stephen Levy of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy. California’s highly educated labor force has been the main draw for employers to locate here instead of in lower-cost states, Levy said. "Silicon Valley and Orange County survive because they have a particularly skilled labor force," Levy said.

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by Andrew Galvin, The Orange County Register.

Posted: November 27th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

"UC schools are taking a big hit because of the loss in funding," said Marisol Mendoza, a career counselor at Anaheim High. "But if you ask me whether students are going to stop seeking out in droves a UC education, I’d say I just don’t see it happening." Mendoza said UC schools are still a bargain when compared to other top-tier private schools… Still, some critics warn that higher fees may lead to the state universities educating fewer state residents and poor students. Students, worried about being saddled with debt, may forgo a UC education altogether, they said.

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by Fermin Leal, The Orange County Register.

Posted: November 27th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Allegations of police brutality during a protest at Berkeley last week and faculty concerns about athletics spending are the latest PR headaches for Robert J. Birgeneau, the campus’s chancellor. As for the system’s president, Mark Yudof has been busy defending a 32 percent tuition hike, while suffering additional criticism for joking about his compensation in a New York Times interview. Despite these challenges, Birgeneau and system officials believe they can galvanize support from a student protest movement that often maligns them, and instead channel the students’ energy into a productive lobbying campaign for more state resources.

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by Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: November 25th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The Senate Rules Committee named seven Democrats and three Republicans yesterday to the new Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education.

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by Torey Van Oot, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: November 25th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

All this is seriously threatened now by a trend in Sacramento toward cutting higher education first… This impending tragedy could be avoided, of course, if attitudes were different in state government. Providing an additional $2 billion to the universities would end all these cuts and restore most classes and student slots. That would cost an average of $52 per year — a dollar a week — per Californian. California voters repeatedly show in local elections they are willing to pay far more than that in parcel taxes, city sales taxes and other levies when they can see the benefits that money will provide. But statewide politicians have never even tried to make a case for higher education. It’s far easier to cut and slash and raise tuition and fees and drive the state’s once-proud university systems into something less than world-class stature, allowing them to contribute even less to the state’s future. So attitudes — and maybe a lot of politicians — need to change if the education component so vital to the California dream is to be revitalized.

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by Thomas D. Elias, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: November 24th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

About 150 UC Berkeley students and community members marched into the UC Office of the President in Oakland Monday afternoon, demanding to speak to UC President Mark Yudof. The group entered the lobby of the building at 2:30 p.m. and began a sit-in, asking to speak to UC officials to discuss their concerns about the way the university was handling its budget cuts. "They say our protests are misguided," said UC Berkeley student Cristina Urista, as protesters demanded to see the UC budget. "Why doesn’t the administration show us the budget?"

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by Hannah Edwards, The Daily Californian.

Posted: November 24th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California’s budget crisis was not inevitable. The state, points out George Lakoff, who teaches linguistics at UC Berkeley, "is the world’s seventh-largest economy–there’s plenty of money." The real issue, Lakoff said, is that "conservative ideology says the only public good is a private good." When a university education is conceived as a market commodity purchased by students purchase in expectation of a higher-paying job, "it means changing the very nature of a research university." That change has been in the works in California at least since 2003, when Schwarzenegger took office. In 2004, the governor signed a "Higher Education Compact" with the UC and California State University systems, which effectively made gradual privatization official policy, specifying that both systems would "seek additional private resources and maximize other fund sources…to support basic programs." Until then, it had been the state that was committed to supporting "basic programs." But one year earlier, said UC Santa Cruz politics Professor Robert Meister, who was on UC’s Planning and Budget Committee at the time, Schwarzenegger gave UC administrators "a green light to raise tuition as much as they thought necessary without the threat of cuts." Immediately, Meister said, UC "began using tuition as capital assets for projects."

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by Ben Ehrenreich, The Nation.

Posted: November 24th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.