Presenting a different perspective on the common misconception that eliminating tuition costs for all California college students would be too costly, a policy paper released Tuesday said that a tuition free college education in California could actually cost taxpayers as little as $48 per year. The policy paper, “The $48 fix: Reclaiming California’s Master Plan for Higher Education,” was facilitated by Reclaim Higher Education Coalition, whose mission is to “reclaim the Donahoe Act of 1960, otherwise known as California’s Master Plan for Higher Education.” As detailed in the plan, California was originally committed to free tuition for all students pursuing an education in California’s community colleges, the 23-campus California State University system or 10-campus University of California system.

Read full article [here].
by Alysson Aredas, The Turlock Journal.

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

California’s public universities need more stable and predictable funding to accommodate growing enrollments of low-income students and to avoid the “boom-and-bust cycle” that triggers large tuition increases, according to a new report by the College Futures Foundation. Without substantial reforms, the University of California and California State University systems face a troubling future, the study said, akin to global warming: “a slow moving and fundamental change in our economic infrastructure that threatens our civic institutions.” … Modest and predictable tuition increases should be matched with increases in state tax revenues, and higher education funding should no longer be treated as a discretionary budget item by the state, said College Futures.

Read full article [here].
by Larry Gordon, EdSource.

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

Together, the Santa Rosa couple brings in $103,000 annually. That’s too much to qualify for the major financial aid programs but not enough to pay the $34,000 total annual cost of a UC education. The financial pressures may force their daughter Rose to attend community college, despite her 4.66 GPA as a senior at Maria Carrillo High School, her mother said. “I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this stuff,” Cohen-Sandler said. “I’m constantly calculating, how are we going to make this work?”

Read full article [here].
by Teresa Watanabe and Rosanna Xia, The Los Angeles Times.

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

Students at elite colleges are even richer than experts realized, according to a new study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records… Roughly one in four of the richest students attend an elite college – universities that typically cluster toward the top of annual rankings (you can find more on our definition of “elite” at the bottom). In contrast, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attend an elite college; less than half attend any college at all.

Read full article [here].
by Gregor Aisch, Larry Buchanan, Amanda Cox and Kevin Quealy, The New York Times.

Posted: January 18th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Obviously, colleges don’t deserve all the credit for their graduates’ success. But they do deserve a healthy portion of it. Other research that has tried to tease out the actual effects of higher education finds them to be large. And they’re not limited to money: Graduates are also happier and healthier. No wonder that virtually all affluent children go to college, and nearly all graduate. The question is how to enable more working-class students to do so. “It’s really the way democracy regenerates itself,” said Ted Mitchell, Obama’s under secretary of education. The new research shows that plenty of successful models exist, yet many of them are struggling to maintain the status quo, let alone grow. It’s true in red states as well as in many blue and purple states, and it’s a grave mistake. There is a reason that City College and California’s universities evoke such warm nostalgia: They fulfilled the country’s highest ideals — of excellence, progress and opportunity.

Read full article [here].
by David Leonhardt, The New York Times.

Posted: January 18th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Sanders: Will you work with me and others to make public colleges and universities tuition-free through federal and state efforts? DeVos: Senator, I think that is a really interesting idea and it’s really great to consider and think about. But we also have to consider the fact that there is nothing in life that’s truly free. Somebody has got to pay for it. Sanders: Right now we have proposals in front of us to substantially lower tax breaks for billionaires in this country, while at the same time low-income kids can’t afford to college. Do you think that makes sense? DeVos: If your question is really around how can we help higher education and college be more affordable– Sanders: That wasn’t my question. My question is: should we make public college and universities tuition free so that every family in America, regardless of income, will have the ability to have their kids get a higher education? DeVos: We can work together and we can work hard on making sure college or higher education in some form is affordable for all young people that want to pursue it.

Read full article [here].
by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post.

Posted: January 18th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The governor, who has never been a major supporter of UC, basically resisted anything that would help the university bring in more money — higher tuition, better funding from the state or admitting more out-of-state students, who bring geographic diversity to campus in addition to paying a higher tuition that helps fund financial aid for low-income Californians. Instead, Brown expressed his preference for a more austere UC, one that saves money by pushing more online courses and prodding professors into teaching more classes while engaging less in research and other academic pursuits. That’s not a vision, though. It’s short-sighted frugality that would strip down one of the state’s best-run and most admired institutions… The state needs a true vision, one that is realistic yet as bold as that outlined in the Master Plan for Higher Education, and which includes major reinvestment in California’s jewel of higher education.

Read full article [here].
by The Editorial Board, The Los Angeles Times.

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

In states Donald Trump won, the poll found support for state-level tuition-free programs was at 69 percent. It was 78 percent in states that went for Hillary Clinton. Support for free tuition at public institutions for anyone who is academically qualified was 73 percent. The online poll was conducted by Penn Schoen Berland in December. It included 834 participants with a 2.8 percent margin of error. “The poll indicates making public college tuition free for those academically qualified is embraced across the political spectrum,” said Morley Winograd, chief executive officer and president of the campaign, in a news release.

Read full article [here].
by Ashley A. Smith, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: January 13th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The UC Student Association’s Fund the UC Campaign looks to find alternate ways to increase funding for UC schools. It focuses mainly on reforming Proposition 13 to create more funds… Rafi Sands, undergraduate student government external vice president, said raising property taxes on commercial properties could potentially refund $9 billion for California state funds, which could increase funding for higher education and possibly reduce tuition. Sands added he thinks Prop 13 has had devastating effects on California state tax revenue, which has affected health care, criminal justice and created school-to-prison pipelines. “This is not a temporary problem, and it needs to be campaigned for year-round,” Sands said.

Read full article [here].
by Dina Stumpf, The Daily Bruin.

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

Brown is proposing phasing out the scholarship entirely. Under his plan, only the students who have already received awards would be eligible for new money. Brown estimates that by the 2020 budget year, the phase-out would reduce costs to the state’s general fund by nearly $116 million. During Rendon’s response Tuesday afternoon to Brown’s budget proposal, the Democrat from Paramount singled out the Middle Class Scholarship as a program he wants to protect.

Read full article [here].
by Melanie Mason, The Los Angeles Times.

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