Add graduate students to the list of potential “losers” in the House Republicans’ tax overhaul plan. The bill, in its current form, eliminates or consolidates tax credits used by both graduate and undergraduate students — but those pursuing master’s degrees and PhDs will get hit the hardest by the proposed changes… Approximately 145,000 graduate students could be affected by this change, about 60 percent of them from STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, according a 2011 to 2012 survey by the Department of Education, the most recent data available… experts suggest students could owe around an additional $2,000 per year or more…

Read full article [here].
by Jen Kirby, Vox News.

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

“Unless this can be circumvented, it would be a major disincentive for people to go to graduate school,” said Claus O. Wilke, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin. And the impact of the measure, he said, would fall mostly on students who go into fields that provide a benefit to society without offering high pay… Mr. Wilke, who moved to Texas from Germany to pursue his research, said the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives could push more American students out of the country to seek their advanced degrees. “The people who are really good will go to Canada or Germany,” he said. “Does the United States want the best scientists moving away?”

Read full article [here].
by Eric Kelderman, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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

… the Hope Scholarship Credit and Lifetime Learning Credit. Those two credits would be “consolidated” into the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which would partially expand eligibility to students and families pursuing a fifth year of higher education (it’s currently capped at four years). — “This isn’t about good policy,” said Steven Bloom, director of federal relations at the American Council on Education. “This is about raising revenue, really on the backs of students.” — Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, said in a statement that the GOP bill “would have deeply negative consequences for access to higher education, the cost of college, and efforts to develop the highly skilled workforce that is needed to propel our nation’s economy forward.”

Read full article [here].
by Mel Leonor, with help from Caitlin Emma, Michael Stratford and Kimberly Hefling., Politico.

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

… Sex work is one of the more unusual ways that adjuncts have avoided living in poverty, and perhaps even homelessness. A quarter of part-time college academics (many of whom are adjuncts, though it’s not uncommon for adjuncts to work 40 hours a week or more) are said to be enrolled in public assistance programs such as Medicaid. They resort to food banks and Goodwill, and there is even an adjuncts’ cookbook that shows how to turn items like beef scraps, chicken bones and orange peel into meals. And then there are those who are either on the streets or teetering on the edge of losing stable housing. The Guardian has spoken to several such academics, including an adjunct living in a “shack” north of Miami, and another sleeping in her car in Silicon Valley.

Read full article [here].
by Alastair Gee, The Guardian.

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

…a big chunk of that new money — perhaps tens of millions of dollars — will go to pay for the faculty’s increasingly generous retirements. Last year, more than 5,400 UC retirees received pensions over $100,000. Someone without a pension would need savings between $2 million and $3 million to guarantee a similar income in retirement. The number of UC retirees collecting six-figure pensions has increased 60% since 2012, a Times analysis of university data shows. Nearly three dozen received pensions in excess of $300,000 last year, four times as many as in 2012. Among those joining the top echelon was former UC President Mark Yudof, who worked at the university for only seven years — including one year on paid sabbatical and another in which he taught one class per semester.

Read full article [here].
by Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times.

Posted: September 24th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Jagdeep Bachher stands out among chief investment officers… Since being hired to lead the University of California Regents’ $110 billion pension and endowment in 2014, he’s fired almost half of the outside money managers formerly on his payroll as he’s sought to cut fat and concentrate market bets.“I truly believe that less is more,” Bachher says. “Let’s do a few things and do them well.” And so he has: While the funds’ performance when he arrived was middling at best, they gained about 15 percent in the 12 months through June… Among his peers, Bachher is known for his charisma, his intellectualism, and being extremely organized—all traits that serve him well navigating the notoriously prickly politics of a state university system.

Read full article [here].
by Michael McDonald, Bloomberg Business Week.

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

The University of California sued the Trump administration Friday… Trump administration’s decision to end protection from deportation of nearly 800,000 young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally before age 16, completed high school-level education and stayed out of trouble.

Read full article [here].
by Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times.

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

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.

Read full article [here].
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.

Read full article [here].
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.

Read full article [here].
by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

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