Nearly a year after a deadline for the University of California to overhaul business practices at its headquarters, UC President Janet Napolitano has made improvements but is still doing business in a way that lets her office amass “virtually an unlimited amount” of money… The state audit two years ago was the first to look solely at UC’s $813.5 million headquarters, which oversees the public university’s 10 campuses, five hospitals and three national laboratories. Howle’s discovery of the president’s reserves — much of it used for university projects but never disclosed to the regents in Napolitano’s annual budget presentation — prompted her to prescribe the overhaul.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle .

Posted: February 6th, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A statement by the Cal State Student Association — students representing the Student Senate of the California Community Colleges (SSCCC), the University of California Student Association (UCSA), and Cal State Student Association (CSSA) — expressed concern that the budget proposal is still not enough to address particular issues that low-income students face. The statement describes the financial aid system as “broken” and unable to meet a standard in which a student can live without stressing over money. This is because of high California housing costs and everyday living expenses incurred by college students. The CSSA, SSCCC, and UCSA student representatives appreciate the budget increase but do not believe it will effectively tackle systemic issues that low-income students face.

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by Alex Ortiz, The Bottom Line.

Posted: February 6th, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The federal government promised to cancel the student loans of approximately 41,000 public employees and certain non-profit workers after ten years of payments as long as they worked in public service. A decade later, authorities approved just 206 people for loan cancellation, according to the U.S. Department of Education… “For years, Navient solutions, LLC has told its customers that they were eligible to have their loans forgiven after 120 payments, despite knowing that those individuals did not have eligible loans,” court documents in the case state, According to federal rules, borrowers must consolidate into a so-called Direct Loan to be eligible for the Student Loan Forgiveness Program. The plaintiffs in the case say Navient never told them that.

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by Jackie Callaway , ABC Action News.

Posted: January 31st, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

For the first time in 15 years, the number of would-be freshmen applying to the University of California has dropped, the first sign that a national trend of declining college enrollment could be hitting the West Coast… At L.A.’s Downtown Magnets High School, college counselor Lynda McGee speculated that students were increasingly discouraged from applying to UC because of the system’s low acceptance rates. Students think they’re not good enough, she said.

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by Teresa Watanabe and Suhauna Hussain, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 31st, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Historically, governor-appointed regents have consisted of lawyers, politicians and businessmen. “I think that this appointment is interesting because it does not significantly increase the diversity of the board,” Nuha Khalfay, the ASUC EAVP, said in an email. “By diversity I include ethnicity and gender but also geographic representation.” Khalfay also added that the board is disproportionate since it consists of residents from Southern California and the Bay Area, lacking Central Valley representation.

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by Thao Nguyen, The Daily Californian.

Posted: January 31st, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In his annual State of the CSU address, White declared that 2018 was, in many ways, the best year ever for the nation’s largest and most diverse public university system — with 487,000 students on 23 campuses. Last year, he noted, Cal State had the largest number of graduates in its history. Four-year graduation rates also increased by six percentage points to 25.4%, and the achievement gap narrowed between low-income and underrepresented minorities and their peers. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “visionary” proposal for a $300 million increase in ongoing permanent funding for Cal State will help campuses keep the momentum going, White said.

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by Teresa Watanabe and Suhauna Hussain, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 22nd, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

University of California regents this week will take their first collective look at the inaugural budget proposal of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has pledged to boost higher education spending after years of fiscal frugality under his predecessor, Jerry Brown. Regents also will discuss plans to increase enrollment, raise graduation rates and improve support for struggling students in their two-day meeting that begins Wednesday in San Francisco… the budget blueprint Newsom unveiled this month fell short of the regents’ hopes. They requested an increase of $477.6 million in permanent, ongoing funding for the 2019-20 budget that they approved last November. Newsom proposed an increase of only $240 million.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 15th, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her Republican critics have both called her proposal to dramatically increase America’s highest tax rate “radical” but a new poll released Tuesday indicates that a majority of Americans agrees with the idea. In the latest The Hill-HarrisX survey — conducted Jan. 12 and 13 after the newly elected congresswoman called for the U.S. to raise its highest tax rate to 70 percent — a sizable majority of registered voters, 59 percent, supports the concept… Increasing the highest tax bracket to 70 percent garners a surprising amount of support among Republican voters. In the Hill-HarrisX poll, 45 percent of GOP voters say they favor it while 55 percent are opposed to it. Independent voters who were contacted backed the tax idea by a 60 to 40 percent margin while Democratic ones favored it, 71 percent to 29 percent.

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by Matthew Sheffield, The Hill.

Posted: January 15th, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

University of California employees continue to report missed or reduced direct deposit paychecks that they attribute to the university system’s troubled payroll system, UCPath. The complaints, often from student employees whose paycheck-to-paycheck income leaves them particularly vulnerable to payroll problems, prompted two California state lawmakers — Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego — to write letters voicing their concern to the University of California chancellors in their respective districts.

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by Andrew Sheeler, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: January 14th, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Without assurance of funding, lab directors may not be able to admit graduate students to their labs in the coming academic year. “It’s an impact that’s going to be felt after the shutdown,” says Benjamin Corb… There’s also a growing pileup of applications that have yet to be reviewed by NSF employees who are currently furloughed. Research teams usually obtain funding from a variety of agencies. Teams may have some staff members who have been awarded funding already, but other key staff members may not be able to work without a functioning government.

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by Katherine Ellen Foley, Quartz.

Posted: January 11th, 2019, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.