For a few days, it appeared that Sacramento’s budget-makers were on the right track, but the final Budget numbers once again fall short when it comes to higher education funding. The Joint Legislative Budget Conference Committee had approved the modest “full funding” requests to enable campuses to increase enrollment and avoid further tuition increases. But that decision didn’t survive the chopping block when Governor Jerry Brown and Legislative leaders hammered out a final Budget deal—leaving UC support basically flat and providing CSU with only a limited boost over the Governor’s May proposal. What additional monies that were provided, relied primarily on one-time funding rather than ongoing support. How can campuses admit four-year students with only one-year funding?

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by Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine, Fox and Hounds.

Posted: June 15th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Both the University of California and California State University systems receive funding increases under the budget agreement, though most of the education bills won’t be voted on until next week. The plan offers a combined $344-million one-time boost to the school systems, as well as new ongoing funding that’s expected to expand enrollment on UC and Cal State campuses while allowing university leaders to keep tuition at current levels.

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by John Myers, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: June 14th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Ditching specialized, upper-division courses in order to free up faculty for general education could give more students access to “bottleneck” classes that they need to graduate, said Newfield, but at the cost of “dumbing down college rather than making it more accessible. You don’t get to the end of the curriculum.” Brown spokesperson Brian Ferguson said the governor made his comments “in jest” but was pointing out that students need a clearer and simpler path to graduation than they currently have. He declined to mention any specific classes or types of courses that Brown would eliminate from his ideal menu.

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by Felicia Mello, Cal Matters.

Posted: June 12th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California and Texas A&M University systems are the leaders of a team that was awarded the contract on Friday to run Los Alamos National Laboratory. The two systems will be joined by the research and development organization Battelle in a limited-liability corporation, Triad National Security… The University of California system currently operates the lab in partnership with the engineering and construction firm Bechtel, but their joint-management company has come under fire in recent years for a series of safety and security blunders… Texas A&M threw its hat into the ring in recent months, and eventually joined the California system’s bid… Texas A&M has helped the California system run another national laboratory, Lawrence Livermore, since 2007.

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by Megan Zahneis, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: June 8th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California’s public universities will get an infusion of cash to increase enrollment, smooth students’ progress toward graduation and repair aging buildings under a state budget agreement reached Friday by Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders. The agreement, which still must be approved by the full Legislature and signed by the governor to take effect, boosts annual funding for California State University by $197 million and the University of California by $97 million.

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by Felicia Mello, Cal Matters.

Posted: June 8th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Sadia Kahn ended up at UC Berkeley because of a look her dad gave her. When she was in middle school she told him she wanted to go to Berkeley because she’d noticed adults perked up when they heard the word, but in this case it backfired. “He had the saddest look in his eye,” Kahn recalls. “I think he felt guilty. He knew that was something we couldn’t afford.” Attending a university in California can be a financial burden beyond the means of many college hopefuls. Rising tuition is compounded by the lack of affordable housing in the state and the high cost of living.

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by Vanessa Rancano, Cal Matters.

Posted: June 7th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

We analyzed collective-bargaining agreements ratified between 2010 and 2016 at 35 colleges and universities. Adjunct faculty won salary increases at every institution we looked at. A 2018 survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources shows that U.S. faculty members this year are earning only 1.7 percent more than last year, a figure that is below the current rate of inflation. Unionized faculty have negotiated steady increases that are significantly higher, and some of the steepest gains have come from unions formed within the last few years.

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by Kristen Edwards, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: June 3rd, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Resolving any of these problems, however, requires resources. And Brown’s recipe for higher education is missing the most important ingredient: funding. The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960, signed by Gov. Pat Brown, established three pillars for the UC: affordability, accessibility, and quality. A year later, Pat’s son, Jerry, graduated from Berkeley with a degree in classics – when the UC was officially tuition-free. The UC’s problem is not that it is dissimilar to Chipotle. It is that our principles of affordability, accessibility, and quality have been lost… Governor Brown wants the UC to be more like Chipotle. We want him to put his money where his mouth is.

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by Rigel Robinson and Varsha Sarveshwar, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: May 31st, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Over the past two decades, as state funding for higher education declined, California’s public research university increased class sizes, sometimes failed to maintain basic infrastructure like roofs and cooling systems, and put off construction projects—even as it enrolled an additional 90,000 students. The result is a deferred maintenance backlog that UC estimates at $4 billion and fears among faculty and administrators that the system, once the envy of the rest of the country, is beginning to lose its luster.

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by Felicia Mello, Cal Matters.

Posted: May 15th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The regents need to make a better effort to engage and communicate with students. The board suffers from accountability and transparency issues that stem from the appointment process itself and continue into regents’ terms. The regents are appointed by the governor of California to 12-year terms. However, before the governor appoints any regent, he or she is supposed to first consult an advisory committee as per the California State Constitution. But in our eyes, the regent selection process has historically felt as though the governor picks people at random to sit on the board… Gov. Jerry Brown recently convened a meeting of the advisory committee for the first time since 2001. It is essential that this advisory committee continues to meet before Brown appoints any more regents. Additionally, UC students deserve to have a bigger say in the regent appointment process.

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by Sarah Abdeshahian and Nuha Khalfay, The Daily Californian.

Posted: April 19th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.