"Most people assume that community colleges are supported by people only through tax dollars, but we now know community colleges and their students need larger budgets," said Mary Bitterman, president of the Bernard Osher Foundation. "It’s time for people to pay attention to this need." Based on California Community Colleges growth projections, the system stands to lose funding for about 50,000 students under the governor’s budget proposal, according to Chancellor Diane Woodruff.

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by Kevin Yamamura, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: May 6th, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

"We are starving the education system and it’s not (just) this budget. This has been going on for the last two decades," said Garamendi. He said all levels of public education, from K-12 to the University of California, have been put on a "starvation diet." The lieutenant governor, who told his audience in the campus free speech area that he was a graduate of the California State University system, said the time has come to "invest in the intellectual infrastructure" of California.

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by Roger H. Aylworth, The Chico Enterprise Record.

Posted: April 30th, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

More than any other interest group, the titans who run companies in Silicon Valley and Southern California have the ability to bridge the partisan divide in Sacramento and demand short-term and long-term solutions to California’s fiscal meltdown. They also have a huge stake in the outcome. Growing businesses need engineers, trained workers and a university system that serves as an incubator for research and development. All that is threatened if lawmakers slash funding for schools, universities and community colleges to balance the budget. To date, the business lobby has focused largely on stopping proposals they don’t like – such as Legislative Analyst Liz Hill’s proposal to reduce the research tax credit. What’s missing is a unified voice for reform.

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by The Editors, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: April 30th, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The leaders of the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges predicted that a new round of spending cuts would have dire consequences for their 142 campuses, from losing top-notch faculty to making a college degree too expensive for some students. "I really believe California is at a crossroads – a political, educational, cultural, economic crossroads," CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said. "Is the state going to dedicate its resources to invest in young people’s futures, invest in California’s wherewithal, or disinvest?"

Read full article [here].
by Lisa Leff, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: April 29th, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Saying that proposed budget cuts threaten California’s economic future, leaders of the state’s public college and university systems urged lawmakers Monday to raise taxes rather than close the doors of higher education on its future work force. "By 2025, California will be short 3 million prepared workers to be economically viable," California State University Chancellor Charles Reed said. "What’s going to happen is that those jobs will go somewhere else."

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by Timm Herdt, The Ventura County Star.

Posted: April 29th, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Assemblywoman Nell Soto, D-Ontario, has rightly criticized the governor’s budget. Soto says: "The governor’s budget will do permanent damage to California by knocking the air out of public education." Indeed, the cuts to education are hard to comprehend. Investment of $1 in primary education yields about $10 in revenue to the state when the student later becomes an employed taxpayer. Investment of $1 in the California State University system yields about $3 in revenue to the state after a student graduates, and the return is relatively fast. Political economists have long argued that an educated work force is a productive work force, which means revenue for the government in the form of tax payments and the concomitant ability to provide social services.

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by Ken White, The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

Posted: April 27th, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California’s motorists had been paying the VLF for decades. It wasn’t until state Sen. Tom McClintock, who’s now running for Congress to replace Rep. John Doolittle in the 4th District, made it an issue, did anyone think of it as evil. So when Glantz says that the state made a de-facto decision about maintaining a great public university system, and that decision is negative, it’s not too much of a stretch to put the car tax cut in the lineup of likely suspects. But so far, there’s still far too much silence from the universities’ leaders on the choices: quality schools, colleges and parks in a state to which productive and creative people are attracted, or the no-new-tax mantra and life on the cheap.

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by Peter Schrag, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: April 23rd, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

About 15 speakers at Monday’s event were politicians or students. State Sen. President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Alameda, said California has the highest cost of living but is on the road to having the lowest quality of living. Cutting funding for college isn’t the answer, protesters cried. For every $1 spent on CSU funding, $4.41 is generated.

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by Michelle Hatfield, The Modesto Bee.

Posted: April 22nd, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Student fees have about doubled since 2000 at each of the three segments of public higher education – community colleges, California State University and the University of California. Further increases, those at the rally asserted, will inevitably deny access to college… A handful of legislators and state officials addressed the rally, including Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who said the crowd reminded him "of my days in college in the 1960s, when we changed America." He urged students to deliver a direct message to legislators considering the 2008-09 state budget. "The message is simple," Garamendi said. "Kick us out, we’ll vote you out."

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by Timm Herdt, The Ventura County Star.

Posted: April 22nd, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Students frustrated by the skyrocketing costs of going to college staged noisy demonstrations up and down the state Monday and said they were just warming up for protests against the governor’s proposed $1 billion cut to higher education. "The state budget doesn’t pass until June, so we have plenty of time to keep pressing," said Jennifer Knox of the UC Students Association, one of several student groups that organized the half-dozen banner-waving, slogan-chanting protests from the state Capitol to San Diego to Humboldt County.

Read full article [here].
by Tanya Schevitz, Kevin Fagan, and Matthew Yi, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: April 22nd, 2008, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.