Assembly Speaker Karen Bass announced today the membership of a joint committee tasked with reviewing the state’s long-term plan for ensuring public colleges offer affordable, accessible and high quality education. Bass tapped seven Democrats and three Republicans to serve on the Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education. Ten senators will also be selected to serve on the committee.

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by Torey Van Oot, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: November 23rd, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The relative silence of most of the candidates who wish to lead California out of its canyon of deficits is all the more striking given what else was going on in California last week. The one-time gem of the state, its university system, was taking another hit. Turning aside protests by students, the University of California Board of Regents approved a 32% increase in student fees. That amounted to $2,500 per student… As a politician, he was not shocked that, last week, the candidates who want to be governor mostly took a pass on the budget deficit. "There are no easy solutions. All the approaches will be painful. So that’s why the silence was deafening, and it’s not surprising to me," said O’Connell. But, he added, "it is a time when real leadership steps up to the plate."

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by Cathleen Decker, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: November 22nd, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Today, we face a similar crisis. The Obama administration is wisely applying New Deal tactics with its stimulus package of $750 billion. The Great Recession would be worse without it. Meanwhile, what is California doing? The governor and Legislature are applying the same tactics as Hoover, the state’s onetime favorite son. They are balancing the budget by cutting spending. It is a formula for disaster. The results are the same as they were in Hoover’s time: making the Great Recession worse. Cities, counties, schools and universities are laying off workers, cutting expenditures and charging more, thereby raising unemployment and reducing consumer spending.

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by Richard Walker and Gray Brechin, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: November 22nd, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Students occupied a building Friday on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in an escalation of protests over large fee increases at UC campuses statewide that echoed the unrest here during the 1960s. The occupation ended peacefully late Friday evening. The takeover by as many as 50 students and their sympathizers took place before dawn Friday, a day after the UC Board of Regents approved a 32% increase in student fees to cope with California’s long-running fiscal crisis.

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by Jim Carlton, The Wall Street Journal.

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

The University of California system Board of Regents voted Thursday to hike student fees 32% to help close a massive budget shortfall. The decision, which elicited protests from UC students, faculty and staff, comes after California lawmakers slashed higher-education funding because of the state government’s fiscal woes. The UC system faced a $1.2 billion deficit for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. The fee increases are designed to mitigate the lost funding at the UC system, which, with 230,000 students, is one of the nation’s largest. The increases will be implemented in two steps, once during the middle of this academic year and again for the 2010-2011 year. Instead of tuition, the UC system charges what it calls fees, which have become the equivalent of tuition… Without the increases, "it would be hugely difficult to attract and maintain world-class faculty," said ex-congressman Tom Campbell, former dean of UC Berkeley’s business school and now a Republican gubernatorial candidate.

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by Stu Woo, The Wall Street Journal.

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

And on Thursday, to top it all off, the Board of Regents voted to increase undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — by 32 percent next fall, to more than $10,000. The university will cost about three times as much as it did a decade ago, and what was once an educational bargain will be one of the nation’s higher-priced public universities. Among students and faculty alike, there is a pervasive sense that the increases and the deep budget cuts are pushing the university into decline… "Dismantling this institution, which is a huge economic driver for the state, is a stupendously stupid thing to do, but that’s the path the Legislature has embarked on," said Richard A. Mathies, dean of the College of Chemistry here at Berkeley, long the system’s premier campus. "When you pull resources from an institution like this, faculty leave, the best grad students don’t come, and the discoveries go down." As the litany of cuts continues, there is a growing worry that senior faculty members may begin to defect. In fact, some colleges around the nation have begun identifying funds to use to recruit U.C. professors.

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by Tamar Lewin, The New York Times.

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

The Regents’ meeting Thursday morning at UCLA was overwhelmed by student protesters, as was a committee meeting the day before. Thousands of students crowded the campus, camping out in public spaces, occupying a university building, picketing outside and voicing displeasure inside the meeting hall. Just after 11:30 a.m., police cleared the meeting room, after the crowd became rowdy at the end of the public comment period.

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by Danielle E. Gaines, Merced Sun Star.

Posted: November 19th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The decision was made with little debate after a lengthy committee discussion Wednesday. Thousands of students and labor union activists protested outside the meeting at UCLA… A raucous crowd of about 2,000, including students and labor union activists who traveled from other UC campuses, faced a large force of UC police and CHP officers in riot gear outside UCLA’s Covel Commons, where the regents met. Across campus, about 40 demonstrators occupied a classroom building, locking themselves inside.

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by Larry Gordon and Amina Khan, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: November 19th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

After the vote, students rushed to the parking decks to stage a sit-in to block regents’ vehicles from leaving. Campus police and California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear stood nearby. As one regent member walked out, students surrounded his path shouted, "Shame on you, shame on you." The situation ended without incident as students gradually left the scene. The University of California’s Board of Regents approved the plan a day after the regents’ finance committee also approved the 32-percent hike in undergraduate tuition fees. Some faculty members and campus workers — worried about furloughs and layoffs to come — joined the protesting students. "Stop cuts in education and research," a sign carried by a teacher said. Political Science Professor Mark Sawyer was in his UCLA classroom, giving a lecture on interracial marriage in Brazil, as the shouts of marching students neared. Protesters holding picket signs burst into the room shouting, "Walk out, walk out!" Sawyer said. The class was stunned, but moments later heeded the protesters’ calls. And Sawyer decided he’d walk out with them, too.

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by Alan Duke, CNN.

Posted: November 19th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

LAO effectively wants the regents to come up with the one third owed by the state to the UC pension plan from "non-state funding." That is code for raising tuition because there is no other source that can or will cover the cost. I am sure LAO would deny saying it endorses privatization of UC. But since the regents can’t come up with non-state money to cover the state’s third without even more tuition increases than already enacted or proposed, the LAO’s message is clear: raise tuition substantially to cover accrued pension liabilities. Don’t expect anything from the state.

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by Daniel J.B. Mitchell, UCLA Today.

Posted: November 18th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.