In a first concrete look at how California’s fiscal crisis may dramatically reshape higher education in the state, California State University Chancellor Charles B. Reed said Tuesday that he will ask the university’s trustees to approve an additional student fee hike of 15% to 20% for this fall, and enrollment reductions of 32,000 students in the year to follow. The proposed increase would come on top of a 10% hike approved in May… "The policy of appeasement has been a failure," California Faculty Assn. President Lillian Taiz told Reed and the board.

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by Gale Holland , The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: July 8th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Employee and faculty union representatives at Cal Poly are willing to consider a two-day-a-month furlough program that would help close California State University’s budget shortfalls. But they still have questions about exactly how the program would work and its effect on their workload, as well as student instruction and services. The CSU board of trustees held a special meeting in Long Beach on Tuesday to discuss ways to close a projected $584 million budget shortfall for the 2009-10 fiscal year.

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by Nick Wilson, The San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Posted: July 7th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

One of the greatest concerns of the California Faculty Association is the negative long-term consequences some of the options could have, said Lillian Taiz, president of the association and a history professor at Cal State Los Angeles. "Our students have already seen a more than 130 percent fee increase since 2002, and student aid does not cover the magnitude of these kinds of fee increases," she said. In addition, cuts to enrollment will take the state over the cliff because in the next 15 years hundreds of highly educated baby boomers will retire and there won’t be college-educated workers to meet the needs in the state’s economy, she said. The worry about furloughs is that the time off without pay may not save a single course, job or student. "We are willing to do our part but we need to know it means something," said Taiz.

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by Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell, The San Bernardino Sun.

Posted: July 7th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

By the end of a campus-wide faculty coalition meeting on Tuesday, June 30 in Cal State University Long Beach’s Anatol Center, people were rallying around the idea of a student/faculty walkout and blocking all entrances to the parking structure. The meeting was intended to update faculty about the budget crisis and form a plan of action to deal with the cuts.

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by Steven Piper, The Long Beach Post.

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

From a model for far-sighted investments in the future, California has become a state that uninvests in the present and has no vision at all for the future. Proposition 13, enacted by state voters in 1978, effectively blocked its cities and counties from funding their own endeavors, and the Republican minority in the legislature, abetted by Schwarzenegger, has made it all but impossible to invest in the kind of projects that Warren, Knight and Brown undertook. Today’s California visionaries are calling for a constitutional convention to rewrite the plainly dysfunctional rules by which the state governs itself. It is not only Californians but also America that has a stake in their success. A California that decimates itself during recessions drags the rest of the nation down with it.

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by Harold Meyerson, The Washington Post.

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

CSU said it proposed furloughs to all of its labor unions as a way to address an anticipated $584 million cut, or 13 percent reduction, to CSU’s 2009-10 budget.
If adopted by all the unions, furloughs could cut CSU’s salary expenditures by about $275 million. CSU said it’s eying other spending cuts to cover the rest of the budget gap. Collective bargaining agreements between the CSU and its employee unions include provisions covering mandated non-retention and layoffs, but not furloughs. Each bargaining unit, therefore, must agree to negotiate furloughs, Reed said.

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by Andrew McIntosh, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: June 30th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A "medical school brings a whole new economy to a region" – attracting health care and biotechnology-related industries, White said. Those economic opportunities would ripple into the nearby Coachella Valley, he added. The proposed medical school is especially needed in the inland San Bernardino and Riverside counties, where about half the state’s average number of physicians per-capita practice medicine, White said. The Kaiser Permanente Foundation has pledged a $10 million matching fund for the medical school once the state releases its $10 million, he added. White blasted the deepening cuts to the state’s educational system in his earlier remarks before a who’s who of Coachella Valley leadership. He said it was crucial to continue investing in students despite the most punishing economic conditions in decades. Educators are being asked to "work in the wrong direction," White told the crowd. "This is like an anti-stimulus package experience for me."

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by Marcel Honoré, The Pal Springs Desert Sun.

Posted: June 30th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Tensions spilled out from the Noski Auditorium June 25 at a California Faculty Association meeting as CSUN faculty from various departments voiced their opinions about voting for layoffs or furloughs. CFA board members refused to vote at a meeting on June 23 for either option. "Because we have not been given details from the chancellor’s office, we do not know if we accept the furlough if that would mean that we would keep people," said Dave Ballard, co-president of the CFA…

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by Jessica Small, The Daily Sundial.

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

Do we overlook college tuition for California young adults when we house inmates at the cost of $49,000 annually? California needs reform, not a jack-hammer that threatens to topple our intellectual assets. We must strive to pass a responsible budget that accurately reflects our priorities and values. A budget, not balanced on the backs of the poor and elderly but a budget that protects our most vulnerable Californians – children, the elderly, the ill and the disabled; a budget that values education over imprisonment. As legislators, it is within our power to shore up California’s future-to provide our citizens with the tools they need to thrive.

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by Assemblyman Mike Davis, The Pasadena Star News.

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

The California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System’s Fresno site, which is managed by the University of California, Davis, is shutting its doors due to reduced state funding… The laboratory served veterinarians in the food animal industries, especially the poultry industry. It specializes in livestock and poultry services including pathology, bacteriology and virology.

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by Staff, The Fresno Business Journal.

Posted: June 26th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.