While $210,000 for an investigation is a hefty price, it is just a fraction of the $1 million that the president’s office spent investigating allegations of wrongdoing by former UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi. That probe, headed by former U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, led to Katehi’s resignation in August. In 2012, UC paid $445,879 to the security consulting firm Kroll Associates to help with a task force headed by former state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso looking into the pepper spaying of student demonstrators by UC Davis police. More recently, the president’s office spent $57,671 on the probe into how outgoing UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks received a free campus gym membership, personal training sessions and an elliptical machine — perks that totaled all of about $5,000.

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by Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: June 21st, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Although diversifying the makeup of student bodies has been a major effort on college campuses in recent years, when it comes to the president’s office, there has been little change: The typical college president continues to be a white man in his early 60s, a new national survey has found. College presidents are also increasingly preoccupied by (and worried about) budgeting and fund-raising. At public institutions, well over half of those surveyed predicted that state government funding would decrease in the next five years, and more than three-quarters believe that tuition and fees will go up. As colleges grapple with these challenges, the survey offers a snapshot of the leaders in higher education: who the current presidents are, how they got there, how they spend their time and what they think the future holds.

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by David W. Chen, The New York Times.

Posted: June 20th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The regents in the University of California system recently instituted Regents Policy 2109 in response to state lawmakers threatening to withhold from the university system nearly $20 million if school officials didn’t cap the number of out-of-state American students. The university’s response to the state government’s threat was to limit the percentage of out-of-state American students in the student body to 18 percent on most campuses… Officials for the University of California say that the school system is simply being consistent with state law. “This policy applies to students who, under California law AB (Assembly Bill) 540, qualify as state residents for tuition purposes,” Ricardo Vazquez, spokesman for the University of California, said to Fox News.

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by Perry Chiaramonte, Fox News.

Posted: June 20th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Such combination classes – known as co-requisites, bridges or hybrids – are seen as a crucial tool to help hundreds of thousands of CSU students climb out of the remedial education hole in which some feel trapped. Part of a national reform movement, such courses also are aimed at helping students graduate faster. CSU system administrators earlier this year said they want to turn all non-credit remedial classes into college-level credit bearing ones by 2018, with the co-requisite classes as the likely model. That move is an important part of the CSU campaign to bolster the system wide four-year completion rate for first-time freshmen to 40 percent from the current 19 percent by 2025. More than a third of entering CSU freshmen are found to need some remedial work.

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by Larry Gordon, EdSource.

Posted: June 20th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Though other colleges are not specifically studied, because of the number of campuses in the vast CSU, it’s no stretch to reckon that what caused expenses to rise there are the same forces causing spending increases elsewhere. No, knockers of the professors who toil in the halls of academe, it’s not high academic salaries that are driving the increase. Mostly, it’s a massive increase in hiring and spending on middle managers in nonacademic departments. And, no, mom, pop and junior, students and parents are by no means left off the hook. For decades, they have pushed for plusher dorms, better dining halls and programs that make the university experience a better one, from Title IX equality for women to health care to separate departments aimed at keeping students from dropping out. All of that costs money.

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by The Editorial Board, The Los Angeles Daily News.

Posted: June 16th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The offer is limited to high school graduates from the Newport-Mesa, Huntington Beach and Garden Grove districts on a first-come basis, with a $300,000 commitment for each of the next three years by the Coastline Community College Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the college. For the average student, the offer translates to $1,500 in tuition and fees, and up to $1,000 more to cover textbooks during the first year, Coastline officials said., along with additional counseling and support. The aid, under the Coastline College Promise, is available to those from all economic backgrounds… in return for the financial help, students must perform a minimum of 20 hours of community service.

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by Roxana Kopetman, The Press-Enterprise.

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

Assembly Democrats had proposed new scholarships—which would supplement existing aid programs—that would offset the cost of room and board, textbooks and other living expenses that tend to be bigger drivers of college costs than tuition. The fully implemented plan would cost $1.6 billion per year; legislators had suggested phasing in the program over five years, with an initial cost of $320 million. The budget doesn’t put any money toward such grants. Instead, it directs the California Student Aid Commission to consider how to consolidate existing scholarships in ways that would lower students’ overall college costs, including non-tuition expenses such as housing and transportation.

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by Tribune News Service, The San Francisco Examiner.

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

There is no end in sight to the bureaucratic mess in which California students who attended predatory for-profit colleges find themselves entangled. This week, the U.S. Education Department will announce it plans to halt and rewrite rules the Obama administration had created to hold the colleges accountable and help students who were defrauded by schools like Corinthian Colleges get rid of the student loans they took out to pay for what turned out, in many cases, to be a dismal education. The announcement is the latest blow for students across the country who were reeled in by fraudulent for-profit schools promising opportunities and good jobs but rarely delivering.

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by Emily DeRuy, The East Bay Times.

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

Taxpayers in Visalia, Farmersville, Exeter, Woodlake and surrounding communities will save $5,445,412 from refinancing $18,271,140 from portions of the Measure I general obligation bond, approved by voters in 2008. The interest rates on the refinanced bonds, Series A and Series C, were reduced from 5.39 percent to 2.84 percent and 5.84 percent to 3.42 percent, respectively. Taxpayers in Tulare, Lindsay, Corcoran and surrounding communities will save $3,334,246 from refinancing $14,205,000 of Measure J general obligation bonds, approved by voters in 2008. The interest rate on the new bonds was reduced from 5.40 percent to 2.86 percent. Hanford taxpayers will save $3,491,207 from refinancing $13,540,000 of Measure C general obligation bonds, approved by voters in 2006. The interest rate on the new bonds was reduced from 5 percent to 2.78 percent.

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by Calley Cederlof, The Visalia Times-Delta.

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

The Trump administration is formally reconsidering — and may dismantle — two new rules that were a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s crackdown on predatory for-profit colleges. The announcement by the Education Department on Wednesday freezes changes that would speed up and expand a system for erasing the federal loan debt of student borrowers who were cheated by colleges that acted fraudulently. It also throws into limbo what is known as the gainful employment mandate, which cuts off loans to colleges if their graduates do not earn enough money to pay off their student debt. Fraud, especially fraud committed by a school, is simply unacceptable,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a statement. “Unfortunately, last year’s rule-making effort missed an opportunity to get it right.”

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by Stacy Cowley and Patricia Cohen, The New York Times.

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