Faculty from every University of California campus, including UC Berkeley, are planning to walk out on Sept. 24 "in solidarity with students and staff to protest the defunding of public education and the UC administration’s mishandling of the budget crisis, which has done disproportionate harm to students and low-paid employees," according to an ad hoc website ucfacultywalkout.com, which has been set up to gather faculty endorsement signatures, numbering 750 at press time. "There is a real budget crisis at the state level. But there is also a crisis of priorities on the part of both the California legislature and UC administration," says Joshua Clover, associate professor of English at UC Davis, on the website. "The State of California and the UC administration have responded to the budget crisis in ways that fundamentally compromise the mission of the University of California: to provide accessible public education to everyone. We’re walking out on September 24 to defend that mission."
Read full article [here].
by Staff, Berkeley Daily Planet.
Posted: September 17th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Community colleges play a key role in Obama’s ambitious plan to retrain unemployed workers and create an additional 5 million college-degree holders over the next decade, helping the American workforce regain its status as the best educated in the world. While older Americans have more college degrees than their counterparts in any other country, Americans age 25 to 34 rank 14th in the world in college-degree attainment. The proposal, now being debated in Congress, could usher in a heyday for community colleges—if two-year institutions don’t blow it by choosing this very moment to abandon their core strength. In recent years some community colleges have moved away from their roots as low-cost, open-access institutions and tried to compete in the big leagues by offering bachelor’s degrees.
Read full article [here].
by Kevin Carey, Newsweek.
Posted: September 16th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
University of California leaders hinted Wednesday that they would approve student fee increases totaling 32 percent to battle a budget crisis that is expected to last through 2011. The two-part increase, scheduled to come to a vote in November, was supported by several members of the Board of Regents, including Regent Eddie Island, who usually opposes fee increases. "We are indeed at a point of crisis," Island said during the meeting at UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus. "I’ve gone to the side of necessity." The increases would include both a midyear fee hike in January and a larger one later in the year. By next August, undergraduates for the first time would pay more than $10,000 per year in systemwide fees.
Read full article [here].
by Matt Krupnick, The Oakland Tribune.
Posted: September 16th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Proposals to sharply raise student fees at University of California campuses this winter and again next fall, and to further restrict freshman enrollment, appeared to gain reluctant support Wednesday from the system’s governing board. Yet, the plan also triggered angry opposition from students and employees that led to 14 arrests. Meeting in San Francisco, some UC regents said they wondered whether it would be fair or even legal to raise fees in the middle of the academic year.
Read full article [here].
by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: September 16th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Protests at the UC Board of Regents meeting led to the detainment of several union activists this morning. More than 10 UCSF Police Department officers moved into the meeting, held at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay campus, and the meeting resumed after a more than 20 minute delay… After the meeting resumed at approximately 9:30 a.m., UC Board of Regents Chair Russell Gould dismissed activists’ claims that UC employees had lost confidence in UC President Mark Yudof. He said the passage of the no-confidence vote against Yudof on Sept. 3 did not reflect systemwide dissatisfaction with Yudof’s leadership, as less than 10 percent of UC employees participated in the vote. "It’s astounding that it gets as much attention as it does," Gould said. "I am placing my confidence in (Yudof) as well as my gratitude."
Read full article [here].
by Zach E.J. Williams, The Daily Californian.
Posted: September 16th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
University of California police arrested 14 raucous protesters who briefly shut down a regents meeting today in San Francisco where a proposed tuition hike was being discussed. "Whose university? Our university!" chanted dozens of UC students, alumni, faculty and staff who expressed fury at UC President Mark Yudof for asking the regents to raise student tuition by 32 percent by next year. The request comes on top of thousands of employee layoffs and unpaid furloughs intended to close a budget shortfall of at least $753 million. "You’re incompetent!" David Patida, a UC Santa Cruz student yelled at Yudof and the regents.
Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: September 16th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Another staggering tuition increase being proposed at University of California campuses is wrong-headed, and will damage California for years to come. We should be investing in our brightest young people and not driving them away from our public universities. There was a time when California’s leadership understood that its first-rate public university system would produce graduates whose skills put the state on the cutting edge of almost every sector of American society. Now the once-proud UC and California State University campuses are decaying under a leadership philosophy that no longer treats students as assets. So it’s hardly surprising that UC President Mark Yudof is recommending a 15percent increase in tuition next spring and a second 15 percent increase beginning in fall of 2010.
Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Torrance Daily Breeze.
Posted: September 15th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Mark Yudof and the regents ignore this movement at their own peril-their plans to raise tuition by 32 percent will likely spark a real revolt on campus, and Sept. 24 is simply the very beginning of what promises to be a long, hot autumn. UC graduate students have now begun organizing, too. We have had nearly 700 graduate students from every campus in the system declare that they will honor the walkout and suspend teaching on that date. We understand that the issues here are complex, but the fault for the current crisis can’t simply be blamed on the state budget. The crisis we face is both real and artificial: real because the recession, combined with deep-seated inequalities in California’s tax structure, has resulted in a severe drop in state funding; artificial because the university can easily meet the budget gap by tapping unrestricted reserve funds from its revenue-generating wings and by trimming its substantial administrative excess.
Read full article [here].
by Jasper Bernes and Chris Chen, The Daily Californian.
Posted: September 15th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Hundreds of faculty, students and staff from the University of California’s 10 campuses are calling for a systemwide walkout Sept. 24 to protest UC’s handling of its budget crisis. The protest is intended to disrupt classes to call attention to the deep impact of millions of dollars of budget cuts on the quality of education throughout the UC system. What began in recent weeks as a proposed faculty walkout coinciding with the first day of school next Thursday at some campuses – including UCSF, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz – has grown to include graduate and undergraduate student groups, and labor unions representing thousands of employees.
Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: September 15th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The decade’s long trend of disinvestment in higher education here in California has put the University of California into a downward spiral, leaving little hope of a recovery ahead. The fight for an accessible, affordable and quality university has fallen on the backs of the students as budget after budget continues to be balanced at our expense, betraying the California Master Plan for Higher Education that promised a tuition-free institution and education for all those who wanted it.
Read full article [here].
by Victor Sanchez, The Daily Californian.
Posted: September 15th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
