Legislative budget committees are refusing to end state college financial aid or cut most state funding from Hastings College of the Law. Rejecting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s two proposals means lawmakers will have to find $235 million to trim elsewhere in the budget. Legislators must quickly close a $24.3 billion budget hole before the state runs out of money.
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by wire service, The Contra Costa Times.
…But when Graham went on the Internet on May 28 and clicked the submit button, she received a message telling her the program was closed. She had become a casualty of the state’s financial crisis. "I knew about the budget problems, but I assumed that meant they would be more selective about who got in," Graham said. "I didn’t realize they wouldn’t even let me apply." Public-college administrators throughout California have been scrambling to plug financial holes because of a state deficit now projected at $24.3 billion.
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by John Wilkens, The San Diego Union Tribune.
At UCSD, where 28,000 students mix with 15,000 employees, the campus has been abuzz with rumors of imminent, widespread layoffs. Spector said there are more layoffs to come, although it’s impossible to predict how many more before the state resolves its budget crisis. In a span of a few days last week, UCSD’s share of budget reductions proposed for University of California mushroomed to approximately $90 million from $30 million, Spector said. UCSD’s budget is $2.3 billion.
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by James P. Sweeney, The San Diego Union Tribune.
Schwarzenegger’s cuts to Cal Grants would translate to more than 200,000 students statewide – more than two-thirds of all current students offered Cal Grants – losing all or part of the Cal Grant they were counting on to help pay for college this fall, according to The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit research group that works to increase access to higher education.
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by Michelle Hatfield, The Modesto Bee.
Then there’s the proposed $750 million cut to the state’s university systems, which would lead not only to lower enrollment, but also could spur a brain drain if frozen salaries drive off first-rate faculty. Add to this the proposed elimination of Cal-Grant scholarships long given low-income students and Cal State and University of California campuses might become the exclusive property of the rich and upper middle class.
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by Thomas D. Elias, The San Jose Mercury News.
Besides the president’s and the chancellors’ pay, the cuts apply to the salaries of executive and senior vice presidents, the general counsel, and executive vice chancellors. Other employees are likely to be asked to make similar sacrifices, Mr. Yudof’s letter implied. "Given the magnitude of the budget shortfall," he wrote, "all options need to be considered, and, unfortunately it is likely that every member of the UC community will be affected negatively." The university had already frozen executives’ pay in an earlier round of budget-cutting moves that included reducing this fall’s freshman enrollment by more than 2,000 students.
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by Charles Huckabee, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
As the state weighs cutting about $8.1 billion from public schools, colleges and universities, scores of educators, parents, students and others told lawmakers Monday that such reductions would jeopardize student success and safety in the short term and California’s prosperity in the long term.
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by Seema Mehta and Gale Holland, The Los Angeles Times.
College students, faculty and administrators from up and down California blasted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s education budget proposals in a packed budget conference committee hearing Monday afternoon. Their bottom line: The proposed cuts to California’s community colleges and universities will mean fewer students can attend, just as the economy is driving more people to seek education. To help close the $24.3 billion deficit, Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting payments to the California State University system by $481 million and to the University of California system by $800 million.
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by Laurel Rosenhall, The Sacramento Bee.
The student aid program known as Cal Grants is the last vestige of a transformative California vision of the role of higher education in building a society and an economy. If these grants are eliminated to help close the deficit, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed, the character of California will be depressingly and devastatingly altered. The vision was embodied in the California Master Plan for Higher Education that became law in 1960 as the Donohoe Act. The guiding premise is this: The only limit on a Californian’s higher education should be the individual’s academic proficiency. Gov. Pat Brown and his colleagues understood that a highly educated populace is the foundation of prosperity. The flood of Californians who became college educated thanks to the Master Plan literally made this state, unleashing the creativity and entrepreneurship that made California one of the top 10 economies in the world.
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by David P. Lopez, The San Jose Mercury News.
Budget cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could prevent hundreds of thousands of Californians from attending college this fall, higher education officials told a legislative committee Monday. The executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, Diana Fuentes-Michel, said the Republican governor’s plan to phase out Cal Grant aid to lower income, college-bound students could keep more than 200,000 out of classes. "If these students cannot afford to attend college, they will face the worst job market in decades," she told a two-house committee that is trying to eliminate a state budget deficit now pegged at $24.3 billion.
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by Steve Lawrence, The San Jose Mercury News.