UC Santa Cruz is preparing to grow its student body by more than 50 percent — some 10,000 students — by the year 2040, Chancellor George Blumenthal announced Friday… Enrollment at UCSC is currently capped at 19,500 by a 2008 settlement between the campus and the city of Santa Cruz. The settlement, which brought an end to litigation by the city, county and citizen groups, also required UCSC to house two-thirds of new students on campus.

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by Nicholas Ibarra, The Santa Cruz Sentinel.

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

Nonetheless when it comes to higher education over thirty years of inadequate funding continues to take its toll and Brown’s budgets have at best only held the line, if they have not made things worse. This week the governor released his initial proposal for the 2018-19 fiscal year and it was more of the same… CFA proposed an increase of $422.6 million, which would fund a 5% increase in enrollment. Last year the system turned away one in ten eligible students — some 31,000 people — owing in good measure to inadequate funding. Brown nevertheless proposed an increase of just $92.1 million for the CSU, which amounts to 1.4 percent of the university’s operating budget.

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by Hank Reichman, Academe Blog.

Posted: January 11th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California State University turned away more qualified applicants than ever last year — 1 in 10 students, or 31,000 people — even though the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education says they should be admitted… Only six of the 23 CSU campuses have enough room to accommodate all qualified freshmen, while just seven can take all qualified transfer students. Meanwhile, state Education Department records show that the number of high school graduates who qualify for CSU has more than doubled in the past 20 years, to 194,689 students from 96,879. CSU applications are also on the rise.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: January 9th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is proposing that Section 9, Article IX of the state constitution be amended to allow the California State Legislature to expel regents following a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature. AFSCME created the proposal in December, after student leaders called on Regent Norman Pattiz to step down because of sexual harassment allegations against him, said John de los Angeles, the union’s communications director.

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by Sydney Coneeny, The Daily Bruin.

Posted: January 9th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The numbers tell the story. California’s high schools are turning out more college eligible students than ever before and our community colleges, the University of California and the California State University system are making headway to accommodate increased demand. The only lagging indicator is State funding for UC and CSU… It is no secret that California has achieved the world’s sixth largest economy in no small measure because of our higher education system. The Golden State’s prosperity is built on innovation, creativity, and technological advancement. Our campuses are the backbone of our economy—turning out the ideas, the breakthroughs and, most importantly, the people who drive our future.

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by Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine, Fox and Hounds.

Posted: January 5th, 2018, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

University presidents say they have been blindsided by charges that they are catering to the wealthy at the same moment that conservatives attack them for elitism, turning their once-untouchable institutions into political punching bags… the sweeping changes to the tax code would still target universities in a way they’ve never been targeted before, taxing the richest private schools’ endowments… Rice University president David Leebron put it this way: “If you go back 15 years, I think universities were held — not where the military is, but pretty much just below that. Now, we’ve fallen a lot.

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by Benjamin Wermund, Politico.

Posted: December 19th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The final draft of the Republican tax bill kills a proposed tax on tuition waivers. It is a big win for grad and PhD students, and higher ed advocates who opposed the measure. House Republicans’ tax bill included a provision that would count tuition waived by universities as taxable income, meaning that graduate students could be on the hook for thousands of dollars more in taxes each year. Approximately 145,000 graduate students could have been affected by the measure. Student groups held rallies and info sessions on campus, blasted the bill on social media, mailed postcards and letters to lawmakers, and hounded Capitol Hill offices with phone calls. And on November 29, students organized a walkout at about 60 universities to protest the measure.

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by Jen Kirby, Vox News.

Posted: December 15th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Lawmakers from the two chambers of Congress agreed to drop provisions that would treat graduate student tuition benefits as taxable income and repeal student loan interest deductions. Both provisions were included in House tax legislation passed last month but left out of a bill that narrowly cleared the Senate Dec. 2. Another provision of that House bill that was reportedly excluded in negotiations would have eliminated interest-free private activity bonds, an alarming prospect for the many private colleges that use the bonds to save on construction of new campus facilities.

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by Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: December 14th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The prospects for higher education are bleak, according to Moody’s Investors Service, a credit-rating agency that on Tuesday changed its outlook for the sector from “stable” to “negative.” In a report, the agency cited financial strains at both public and private four-year institutions, mainly muted growth in tuition revenue. But it also cited “uncertainty at the federal level over potential policy changes.”

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by Adam Harris, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: December 5th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Graduate students are worried. The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would tax our tuition waivers from universities. For many of us, this would drastically inflate our tax obligations… For good reason, the debate over this proposal has thus far focused on Republicans in Congress. University administrations have urged graduate students to join them in lobbying against the change… It’s not the norm for PhD students to pay any tuition.

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by Sarah Arveson, The Washington Post.

Posted: November 29th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.