California students flocking to universities in Arizona

Californians, including many turned away by public universities in their own state, are flocking to four-year state and private universities in neighboring Arizona… Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University each enrolled more than 1,000 first-time freshmen from California this year, The Arizona Republic reported. By contrast, the number of first-time freshmen from Arizona who enrolled in the University of California system or California State University schools is less than 300.

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by The Associated Press, The Sacramento Bee.

Top out-of-state colleges prowl San Diego looking for online students

“I’m not surprised that these out-of-state schools are blanketing California with ads,” said Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, an online news site. “The state has had difficulty meeting all of the student demand it’s had at its public universities.There’s a market for this.” … The state’s population will hit 40 million this year and is expected to keep growing. The number of high school graduates also is on the rise, especially among Hispanics and Latinos… Things don’t always turn out well. The 2017 Online College Students survey says that many students fail to do a thorough job of examining their options, including when it comes to checking on tuition and financial aid packages.

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by Gary Robbins, The San Diego Union Tribune.

You’ve Heard of Berkeley. Is Merced the Future of the University of California?

“Half of all school-age children are Latino, so it’s the future we’re looking at. If we don’t improve these numbers quickly, a significant population will continue to be shut out.” Now, more than any other campus, Merced is pivoting to serve a new generation of students. If California hopes to address the vast gap between rich and poor, students such as Mr. Virgen will need to earn college degrees. It is something of a paradox: the future of the state depends on whether the University of California can grow to be more like Merced, and the future of Merced depends on whether it can grow to be more like other campuses.

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by Jennifer Medina, The New York Times.

University of California proposes first tuition decrease in almost 20 years

UC’s governing board will vote Thursday on a 2018-19 budget plan that proposes a tuition decrease of $60 — the first time in nearly two decades that fees would drop from one year to the next. Academic charges, including tuition and student services fees, would total $12,570 annually. The decrease comes from the elimination of a $60 tuition surcharge that the university imposed in fall 2007, and extended in 2013, to pay for nearly $100 million in damages from two class-action lawsuits related to raising fees on graduate students in the middle of a semester.

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

UC Berkeley, tight on money, to spend $30 million on women’s sports facilities

Despite ongoing budget cuts and belt tightening at UC Berkeley, Chancellor Carol Christ just announced plans for a $30 million upgrade to the women’s beach volleyball and softball facilities… the school continues to struggle to pay off $438 million in outstanding debt from the renovation of Memorial Stadium and construction of a new training facility, and soon after the university spent $18 million in donor money to build a new aquatic center. UC Berkeley, meanwhile, is still grappling with a sports budget deficit that peaked near $22 million a couple of years ago and totaled $19.5 million for the school year that just ended… Christ said the funding for the volleyball and softball upgrades will come from “undesignated bequests” — donations that were given to UC Berkeley with no strings attached.

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by Matier & Ross, The San Francisco Chronicle.

UC Board of Regents to enter 3rd meeting with 5 vacancies

Usually, there are only two vacancies, which are due to regents reaching the end of their terms, according to Student Regent Devon Graves, and this year was former regents William De La Peña and Bruce Varner’s turn. The death of Bonnie Reiss earlier this year and the resignations of Norman Pattiz and Monica Lozano have raised the number of vacancies up to five, the highest since 2013… There is no strict timeline for when the governor must appoint regents for their 12-year terms, but Gov. Jerry Brown met with an advisory committee in April — the first time a governor had met with the committee in 17 years — to help him choose new regents. No appointments have been announced as of press time, and there are no appointments on this week’s Board of Regents meeting agenda.

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by Jackson Guilfoil, The Daily Californian.

UC opens doors to record number of Californians, led by growth in transfer students

The University of California opened its doors to a record number of Californians for fall 2018, led by growth in transfer students from across the state, according to preliminary data released Wednesday. The public research university’s nine undergraduate campuses offered seats to 95,654 Californians, nearly 3,000 more students than last year. Overall, UC admitted about three-fifths of the 221,788 California, out-of-state and international students who applied.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

California law banning affirmative action predates President Trump’s rollback

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it would reverse affirmative action policies established under the Obama administration. Former president Barack Obama’s policies, which outlined ways that schools could legally use race as a factor in admissions decisions, have not been in effect in California since Proposition 209… Though the UC system does seek to promote “qualitative diversity” through alternative methods such as increasing enrollment from low-income families and families with little college experience, these efforts are far less effective at creating ethnic diversity than race-conscious admissions, according to a 2003 UCOP report about the effects of Prop. 209.

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by Madeleine Gregory, The Daily Californian.

Student-Debt Forgiveness Is a Wonderful Boon, Until the IRS Comes Calling

Education analysts, student advocates warn of impending crisis from one-time tax bills individuals may not be prepared to pay off… Students seeking relief on their college and graduate-school debt could be sitting on a hidden tax bomb: Billions of dollars in one-time bills from the Internal Revenue Service for any debt they get forgiven. The tax bills are a feature of the “income-driven repayment plans” that have been offered by the Education Department since 2007. One version of these plans allows borrowers to set their monthly student-loan payments at 10% of their discretionary income. The balances often grow over time because the payments aren’t big…

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by Josh Mitchell, The Wall Street Journal.

Prospering with an affordable college education

In its current form, the Higher Education Act reauthorization bill, known as the PROSPER Act, would make higher education more expensive, undermine student aid programs and eliminate important student consumer protections. Under the bill being weighed by lawmakers, some 72,000 University of California students would feel the effect of eliminating the in-school student loan subsidy, an action that would add an estimated $70 million in student loan debt to each new freshman class… the bill excludes mandatory inflation adjustments for Pell Grants, further eroding the value of a grant that has already decreased substantially in purchasing power over time. In 1975, Pell Grants covered 79 percent of the cost of higher education, while today they cover just 29 percent…

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by Janet Napolitano, The Orange County Register.