In California, the story is the same in spades. Take our state budget crisis. A British newspaper recently ran a rather melodramatic piece about California as a failed state and compared us to Iceland. It was a wacky comparison. Iceland went bankrupt because its bankers spent lots of money they didn’t have. California is in conniptions because it has lots of money it won’t spend… Turning California into a Third World nation where the environment is neglected, a lot of people are genuinely desperate and a lot of the young have a hard time getting an education or just can’t get one doesn’t benefit anyone. We’re not poor in money or water. We’ve just chosen to allocate them in ways that benefit tiny minorities at the expense of the rest of us. We should at least have a conversation about how we distribute our abundant resources. Derek is right: California is a place of abundance, except when it comes to political sense.
Read full article [here].
by Rebecca Solnit, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: November 1st, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Compared to many of its peer universities that play big-time sports, the financial state of the University of California at Berkeley’s athletics department looks pretty good in some ways. While the Golden Bear sports program is among the 90-plus percent of all Division I programs and the 75 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision programs that do not turn an annual profit, the $7.4 million subsidy it received from general institutional funds in 2008 is actually $1 million less than the median for public institutions with major football programs. But to the consternation of some faculty members at Berkeley, the university’s sports program is running multimillion-dollar deficits — on top of the annual institutional subsidies — that are requiring the university to make short-term loans to the sports program. Not only that, but Cal officials revealed that the central administration in 2007 forgave $31 million in previous loans to the athletics department to cover annual deficits… "Everybody thinks we [play intercollegiate sports] because it brings in big bucks, when that’s clearly not the case," says Brian Barsky, a professor of computer science at Berkeley.
Read full article [here].
by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed.
Posted: October 30th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Tuesday, it announced that the university’s enrollment of degree-seeking students grew to 443,000 as of August 2009, up 22 percent from 362,000 in August 2008… The university attributed the sizable increases to a range of factors, including increased efforts in retaining students, expanded marketing, and the "current economic downturn, as working learners seek to advance their education to improve their job security or reemployment prospects." Many community colleges and several of Phoenix’s major peers in for-profit career education, including Kaplan Higher Education (21.9 percent) and Corinthian Colleges, Inc. (24.4 percent), have reported sharp upturns in student enrollments this fall. But given Phoenix’s size and bulk, its increase produces startling numbers that — depending on how things formally shake out in enrollments this fall — would make the for-profit university bigger than the entire California State University System, which had 437,000 students in fall 2008 and was expected to limit enrollments this fall.
Read full article [here].
by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed.
Posted: October 28th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Cal State Fullerton will receive $1.6 million in federal stimulus money that will allow the campus to reinstate 264 courses and rehire some lecturers this spring, officials said today. The courses will be spread throughout the university’s eight colleges, said spokeswoman Paula Selleck. The actual courses have not yet been determined, but priority will be placed on those aimed for juniors and seniors to help them graduate on time, Selleck said. Officials are also working on determining how many lecturers may be rehired. The one-time federal funding will only allow the university to reinstate the courses and lecturers for this spring semester. The courses and jobs could be lost again next fall without additional funding sources, Selleck said.
Read full article [here].
by Fermin Leal, The Orange County Register.
Posted: October 27th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
It is embarrassing that I need to explain to you your job description and why California needs a healthy, free UC system, but here it goes: Mr. Yudof, your job is to lobby for us, to procure the money we need, not to grieve for our inflicted demise. In 2002, UCs created more than $16 billion in economic growth. In tax revenue alone, the state makes $1,580 annually from each college grad. The UCs have created nearly 370,000 jobs directly and indirectly; this represents more than 2 percent of all California employment. The UCs can make huge contributions to the state of California, but instead of shared prosperity, you’d rather privatize the university and profit financially with the cronies who appointed you.
Read full article [here].
by Jamie Silverstein, The Daily Nexus.
Posted: October 27th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Facing an increasingly unhelpful (and unreliable) partner in the state government, the University of California is gradually turning to other sources for needed funds. Though ideally public support would be sufficient to fund the university, the decision to seek more private donations demonstrates that administrators are taking the necessary steps to address budget cuts in a realistic way. On Friday, UC President Mark Yudof announced the kick-off of Project You Can, a systemwide scholarship campaign to raise $1 billion in four years for financial aid. This effort is unprecedented, given that the campuses collectively raise only about $100 million annually in private donations to support students and it indicates how doubtful university leaders are that they can count on government support. And with reason-there’s little extra money going around in Sacramento for anything, let alone for a low priority like higher education.
Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Daily Californian.
Posted: October 27th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
When UC Berkeley lends its Department of Intercollegiate Athletics millions of dollars to pay its bills each year – and even forgives that debt at times – it’s helping a top-tier college sports program beloved by thousands of fans. But a growing number of Cal academics are disturbed by the practice, arguing that the prestigious research university should not subsidize elite athletes at a time of soaring college costs, faculty furloughs and reduced course offerings. The faculty, which will debate the issue at next month’s Faculty Senate meeting, is not alone. Now the independent Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics – formed 20 years ago by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to raise academic standards in college sports – is turning its attention to an out-of-control "arms race" among college football programs competing to pay increasingly high coaches’ salaries and other associated costs.
Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: October 27th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Mr. Shulenburger at the Association of Public Land Grant Universities cautions universities on the allure of out-of-state enrollment, because, he says, few can match the appeal of a Michigan or Wisconsin. There is a limited pool of out-of-state students, he says, and universities "will begin raiding ourselves pretty quickly." With a state economy in shambles, the University of Arizona was granted a waiver on its out-of-state enrollment cap, to go as high as 40 percent from an already high 30 percent. Robert N. Shelton, the university’s president, says he has yet to take advantage of that wiggle room, mostly because of a huge increase in applicants from Arizona. Currently, only 10 percent of students at Rutgers’s New Brunswick campus come from outside New Jersey. The university could easily increase that number by tapping nearby New York and Pennsylvania. "The temptation for us to recruit more out-of-state students is very, very strong," says Douglas S. Greenberg, executive dean of the university’s School of Arts and Sciences. State residents pay about $12,000 in tuition and fees, which is high for a public university. Out-of-state students pay almost twice that.
Read full article [here].
by Paul Fain, The New York Times.
Posted: October 26th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
In the last 20 years, the state has cut funding in half for the UC. In the last 10 years, the UC Regents have doubled student fees. Currently, we are facing a 30 percent fee increase that would put fee levels above $10,000. This will bar low- and middle-income students from the UC system from affording or even applying to the UC. The state has broken its promise to fund enrollment growth of 2.5 percent for the UC; it’s already overenrolled by 14,000 students. The state and the UC have abandoned the Master Plan and its commitment to provide a space for the top 12 percent of California’s graduating seniors. To address the nearly $1 billion state divestment from higher education, the UC reduced faculty and staff salaries by implementing a furlough program. However, in the last decade, we have seen the number of administrators in the UC and their collective salaries double. We are seeing a serious lack of vision and priorities from UC officials and the state legislature.
Read full article [here].
by Victor Sanchez, The Daily Nexus.
Posted: October 26th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
As Mr. Lingenfelter and countless other observers of the sector note, even when the economy rebounds, the pressures on colleges will be greater and all the usual sources of support—states, donors, and students and their families—are likely to be less able to provide resources. The challenge, says Mr. Lingenfelter, is for higher education’s leadership to recognize that aiming to get back to pre-crash levels of financing or educational effectiveness is not enough. "We come across to the public as totally insatiable and resistant to change," he says. "We’ve got to improve productivity." For most college leaders, managing in this new era of uncertainty has meant hunkering down. But observers say the coming months and years could require far more openness to change.
Read full article [here].
by Goldie Blumenstyk, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: October 25th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
