Concern over soaring tuition rates and ballooning student debt has propelled a rapidly expanding campaign for free public higher education at the local, state and even national level. In California, lawmakers, gubernatorial candidates and education advocates are among those pushing for ways to get rid of fees and other costs for some students… Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, pitched universal access… “Let’s not make this more difficult than it is. We already do this for K through 12, and nobody bats an eyelash about it,” Eggman said… UCSA endorsed an even more sweeping proposal: The $48 Fix, a free-college brainchild of 17 California faculty associations, university employee unions and advocacy organizations… The California Democratic Party passed a resolution supporting the plan last week.

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

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

A recent opinion survey conducted by the Pew Research Center raised in stark terms the question of how Americans value institutions of higher learning… Most attention has focused on two aspects of the results. First, responses among Republicans and Democrats differed dramatically. Whereas 72 percent of Democrats responded that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country, and only 19 percent that they had a negative effect, among Republicans, 58 percent saw colleges and universities as having a negative effect on the country and only 36 percent thought that they have a positive impact… Democrats having a more favorable view of higher education institutions than Republicans — is of long-standing, the difference used to be much less.

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by Frederick M. Lawrence, The Hill.

Posted: August 28th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California has reached a $1.3 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor over a payroll issue that resulted in thousands of non-academic employees being routinely underpaid by small dollar amounts on each paycheck. UC asked the labor department to investigate in December 2015, after uncovering the problem during the switch to its troubled new payroll system. Incompatible timekeeping methods across its 10 campuses, the university said, led to regular failures in calculating overtime pay for hourly workers. The agreement, reached in May, covers operations from 2014 through 2016. More than 13,700 current and former employees who were underpaid by at least $20 will receive a total of about $746,000 in back wages and $616,000 in damages, an average of just under $100 per person. The repayments will begin next month.

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: August 11th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Of a group of nearly 1,100 students who transferred to California State University in fall 2013 with the Associate Degree for Transfer, 48 percent graduated within two years, data provided by CSU shows, compared to 31 percent of all undergraduate transfers. Within three years, 80 percent had completed their studies, 16 percentage points higher than transfer students overall… Since formally launching in the 2011-12 academic year, the transfer degrees have become an increasingly popular option. The California Community Colleges system awarded 30,868 in 2015-16, about a quarter of all the associate degrees it conferred. That’s an almost-50 percent increase from 2014-15 and up from just 722 in the first year. The chancellor’s office continues to ramp up outreach about the program, with plans for new digital and radio ads soon, including some in Spanish.

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: August 10th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

In a marked change from previous years, net tuition at college and graduate schools rose in line with inflation over the last 12 months. Doesn’t sound too encouraging? Well, consider that from 1990 through 2016, tuition grew at a rate more than double that of inflation, year after year. On top of that, public free tuition programs are proliferating, with New York state’s enormous system announcing the “Excelsior Scholarship” earlier this year. The Campaign for Free College Tuition says more than half the states have some kind of merit-based free tuition, free community college “promise” program or at least legislative action on this front. Rhode Island’s is the latest statewide program.

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by Anya Kamenetz, NPR .

Posted: August 8th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Burawoy, who is also a campus sociology professor, added that campus faculty members with four years of full time employment would be eligible for only 44 percent of their salary during a sabbatical. Meanwhile, Dirks, who has a little more than four years of full-time employment with the campus, will be paid close to 82 percent of his full-time chancellor’s salary during his paid leave. “No doubt this is all laid out in (Dirks’) contract as Chancellor, but it does appear to be a reward for negligence, incompetence and petty corruption,” Burawoy said in an email. “It is an appalling commentary on the distribution of benefits at a time of supposed fiscal crisis and when many students can barely scrape together a living.”

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by Bobby Lee, The Daily Californian.

Posted: August 8th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Seven years ago the state provided $5.5 billion for UC and CSU and $6 billion for retirement costs. The new budget provides $7 billion for UC and CSU and $11 billion for retirement costs… The boost for UC and CSU is just 27 percent, a bit more than half the rate at which total expenditures grew while the boost in spending on retirement costs is 83 percent, nearly twice the rate at which total expenditures grew. The difference produces a dramatic shift in budget share… Unfunded retirement obligations are having a ruinous impact on education (see here for the impact on K-12). California’s dangerous trend of shortchanging education in order to finance retirement costs is growing and will not abate until elected officials attack retirement costs, as explained here.

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by David Crane, Medium.

Posted: August 7th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

On only his second day on the job, May was making good on his promise to go on a “listening tour” to learn more about his new university and community. Spending about 45 minutes at The Enterprise offices, the soft-spoken chancellor discussed some of his plans as well as some challenges he knows are ahead. For starters, May expects that at least a third of his time will be devoted to fundraising — he describes his version as “friend-raising, not fundraising.” During the last fundraising campaign at Georgia Tech, where May was the dean of the College of Engineering, he said he helped raise $544 million for his college. This is the reality when UCD is receiving about 9 percent of its budget from the state of California, and another 10 percent or so from tuition, he said.

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by Tanya Perez, The Davis Enterprise.

Posted: August 4th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Coding boot camps were supposed to be the next big thing in higher education, promising a compressed, career-focused alternative to traditional graduate school. In the past five years, startups offering these programs have raised millions in investment and won praise from policymakers as an innovative way to prepare (or retrain) workers for the jobs of the digital future… Despite their high-tech subject matter and slick Silicon Valley messaging, most boot camps take a decidedly old-fashioned approach to instruction—focusing on in-person classrooms and high student-to-faculty ratios. But because they lack accreditation, their students aren’t eligible for federal financial aid… “The problem with education is that we keep coming back to this one-size-fits-all approach,” says Adam Enbar, CEO of Flatiron School, who insists that he’s seeing “more demand than ever” for his company’s programs.

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by Jeffrey R. Young, Slate.

Posted: August 3rd, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

UC Irvine, under fire for rescinding nearly 500 admission offers two months before the start of fall term, announced Wednesday that it will reinstate all 290 students whose offers were withdrawn for failing to meet deadlines and other requirements for transcripts and test scores. Appeals from students whose acceptances were withdrawn because of poor senior grades will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, said Ria Carlson, associate chancellor of strategic communications and public affairs.

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by Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times.

Posted: August 2nd, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.