The University of California, aiming to end fighting over how many out-of-state students it admits, on Tuesday announced a revised proposal to limit non-Californian and international undergraduates. Under the proposal, UC would restrict the percentage of nonresident students to 18% at five of its nine undergraduate campuses. UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine — whose proportion of nonresident students exceeds 18% — would be allowed to keep, but not increase, those higher percentages. The new plan is a retreat from the proposal for a 20% systemwide cap on nonresident students that university officials presented to the UC Board of Regents in March… Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy, D-Sacramento, has been a leading critic of the increase in nonresident students but said this week he was generally pleased with the revised proposal. If the regents approve it, he said, he would support the release of the $18.5 million in additional funds for UC.

Posted: May 9th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

By a 21-15 vote, the Cal State San Bernardino Faculty Senate passed a vote of no-confidence on Tuesday directed at university President Tomas Morales. The vote followed an hourlong discussion during which some senate members complained about a toxic environment on the campus, with faculty fearful of speaking out because of potential retribution, and of a failure of the campus administration to effectively include the faculty in decision making. Supporters of Morales said he was being unfairly attacked, primarily for the changes he has implemented.

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by Mark Muckenfuss, The Press-Enterprise.

Posted: May 9th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Prompted by a massive state audit that found misleading budgeting practices and extravagant spending in the University of California’s central administration, one lawmaker is demanding the resignation of UC President Janet Napolitano. “The leaders of our state university systems are duty-bound to maintain the highest levels of transparency, integrity, and accountability to California taxpayers, students, their families, and the Legislature, especially when it comes to public monies,” Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva said in a statement Tuesday. “President Napolitano no longer engenders the public trust required to perform her duties. It’s time she resigned.”

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: May 9th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

John Douglass, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, agreed. In a 2015 paper on the history of UC’s autonomy, the scholar concluded that self-governance — and steady funding by the state — have been the essential ingredients in creating “one of the world’s premier research universities.” But none of that has stopped lawmakers from trying to step in. If Galgiani’s proposed Constitutional amendment is approved by the Legislature, voters would then be asked to decide whether to prohibit UC from raising tuition and paying “substandard wages” to cleaning and maintenance workers in any year when more than 600 UC administrators earn a salary higher than the governor’s.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

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

The community college announced this week that Santa Ana Unified School District students will receive free tuition their first year, beginning in September… Tuition will be paid by the nonprofit Santa Ana College Foundation, funded in part by city and Santa Ana College employees through payroll deductions, a $5 million state grant and Santa Ana College’s Centennial Scholarship Campaign. Santa Ana College’s tuition for full-time students is $1,104 a school year. About 85 percent of the students there, from low-income families, already receive tuition waivers through the California Community Colleges Board of Governors. Others get help from other state and federal grants.

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by Roxana Kopetman, The Orange County Register.

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

We can identify many of the threats to public higher education in the United States: political attacks on faculty by conservative politicians, systematic budget cuts, selling out academic programs to big-money donors. Who would have thought that a major threat would come from a university’s own president? Yet that’s the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from State Auditor Elaine Howle’s scalding report on the University of California Office of the President… those flaws undermine the administration’s ability to make the case for UC’s mission and protect the system from its enemies.

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by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times.

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

Democratic Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said he sees “great value” in looking at the auditor’s recommendation of separating the budget of the president’s office from the rest of the university. “This does not leave a good taste in the mouths of California taxpayers,” Rendon said Wednesday afternoon in his office at the state Capitol. But when asked whether the state should reexamine the UC’s constitutional independence, the speaker said it’s neither his intention nor desire – though he did not rule it out. “Look, we don’t want to manage the UC,“ Rendon said. “We do want them to be accountable. And we do want them to have the highest levels of transparency.” Assembly Republicans want the speaker to subpoena budget documents from the president’s office. But Rendon said the Legislature’s subpoena power is limited to matters of “criminal malfeasance.” “We certainly haven’t seen that at this point,“ Rendon said.

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by Ben Adler, Capital Public Radio.

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

Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, who has clashed with the university in the past, suggested that the audit “merits us looking at the UC autonomy” again. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, criticized the Board of Regents for failing in its oversight of the UC Office of the President and called it “out of touch, in some ways, with the larger population of individuals that it has been selected to serve.” “To say that this is a black eye on UC is an understatement,” Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, said. “I think there’s a long way to go, a long way to go to re-establish the trust that was there before, especially with the Legislature.” Before the hearing, Assembly Republicans held a news conference urging the Legislature to subpoena all records related to the UC Office of the President’s reserve funds and its interference with the campus surveys to determine if any criminal activity had taken place.

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by Alexei Koseff, The Sacramento Bee.

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

State Auditor Elaine Howle said Tuesday that UC’s budget practices were surprisingly weak and ineffective and left regents in the dark on how money was being spent. Howle said the president’s office itself was unaware of just how much it had in reserves because it was kept in various accounts. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, said the auditor’s findings reflect poorly on the regents. Monica Lozano, chairwoman of the Board of Regents, steadfastly defended Napolitano and her office, but said Tuesday that regents would step up oversight. In the audit, Howle recommended that the Legislature begin overseeing the president’s office budget rather than have the Board of Regents oversee it by having the state directly fund the office. Currently, the president’s office gets its money from the 10 campuses.

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by Melody Gutierrez, The San Francisco Chronicle.

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

When former Arizona governor and then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was tapped to head the University of California nearly four years ago, supporters touted her political stature and experience running another unwieldy bureaucracy. Hiring a politician rather than an academic was a strategic choice: The powerhouse research university, with more than 230,000 students, needed to make inroads in Sacramento after losing $1 billion in state funding during a painful recession. But Napolitano’s bold plays for a greater share of the pie — most famously a threat to hike tuition unless the state ponied up the difference — rankled some Sacramento politicians. Now a blistering new state audit that found her office accumulated tens of millions of dollars in secret reserves and inappropriately interfered with the audit has brought simmering tensions to a boil.

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by Katy Murphy, The Mercury News.

Posted: April 30th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.