Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2017-18 budget proposals for higher education continue his campaign for more efficiency and access at California’s public college and universities, funding ongoing programs to make it easier to transfer from community colleges, improve graduation rates and shorten time to degrees. But Brown triggered some controversy by advocating cuts in aid to middle class students and supporting tuition increases at the University of California and the California State University systems. If UC and CSU continue efforts to widen access and lower costs, Brown said he would not oppose the first tuition hikes in six years at those two university systems, describing such increases as “probably needed.” He wants to keep community college fees frozen at $46 a credit, among the lowest in the nation…

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by Larry Gordon, EdSource.

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

Using a visa loophole to fire well-paid U.S. information technology workers and replace them with low-paid immigrants from India… Experts in the abuse of so-called H-1B visas say UC is the first public university to send the jobs of American IT staff offshore. That’s not a distinction UC should wear proudly… UCSF officials say the decision to outsource 97 IT jobs, about 20% to the total IT headcount, was forced on it by daunting economic challenges… The California Legislature has systematically reduced to pennies the state’s share of the budgets of UCSF and the rest of UC, which once was proudly supported by Sacramento. Meanwhile, Congress has consistently failed to close a glaring loophole allowing U.S. employers to send good American jobs overseas — instead, it has moved to expand the H1-B program at the behest of tech firms claiming, dubiously, that they can’t find enough good engineers in the U.S.

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by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 6th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The leaders of the University of California system — unsatisfied with funding provided by Gov. Jerry Brown and the state Legislature and interested in ambitious new initiatives — are seeking significant tuition hikes. For the 2017-18 school year, the 10-campus UC system wants a 2.5 percent increase in in-state tuition, to $11,502, and a 5 percent increase in the student services fee, to $1,128. But the governor and lawmakers should oppose any increases until they get meaningful answers to a meaty question: How does the UC system justify the explosion in its number of administrators?

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by The Editorial Board, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Posted: January 6th, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

For five years, UC has said its annual tuition for California undergraduates was $12,192, a figure widely reported by news outlets, including The Chronicle, and used by state lawmakers, state auditors and UC officials themselves. But in announcing their tuition proposal Wednesday, UC officials insisted that current tuition was $11,220. They said that if the regents approve the raise later this month, tuition would grow to $11,502 for the 2017-18 school year, an increase of 2.5 percent… It turns out that UC’s often-cited tuition figure of $12,192 has always included a “student services” fee. Now, however, UC is separating out that fee from the tuition figure. That’s because UC is proposing to increase that student services fee by a higher percentage (5 percent) than the base tuition increase (2.5 percent).

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

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

Nearly 750,000 young people known as Dreamers have been granted deportation deferrals under the program, after giving the Department of Homeland Security their fingerprints, home addresses and other personal information. Trump has pledged to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally, and California congressional members are worried his administration will use Dreamers’ information to target the young people, many of whom have lived most of their lives in the U.S.

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by Sarah D. Wire, The Los Angeles Times.

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

Cal sports are in big trouble. After completing the most expensive college football stadium overhaul ever, the Golden Bears now owe more money than any other college sports program. Hobbled by debt service payments, the athletic department ran a $22 million deficit last year and expects to end this fiscal year deep in the red… A high-priced coach might earn $4 million to $5 million a year. Meanwhile, according to public records, athletic departments at least 13 schools in the country have long-term debt obligations of more than $150 million as of 2014—money usually borrowed to build ever-nicer facilities for the football team.

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by Eben Novy-Williams , Bloomberg.

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

The University of California unveiled a proposal Wednesday for the first tuition increase in six years, saying booming enrollment growth and reduced state support have left campuses scrambling to pay for more faculty, course offerings, classrooms and financial aid. Under the proposal, tuition would grow to $11,502 for the 2017-18 school year — a 2.5% increase, or $282. The student services fee would increase to $1,128, a $54 increase. But financial aid would cover the increases for two-thirds of the university’s California resident students, who number about 175,500, said UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein. Nonresident undergraduates would face a total increase of $1,668. They would pay the same increases in base tuition and student fees but also a 5% hike in their supplemental tuition, which would rise $1,332 — from $26,682 currently to $28,014 next year.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

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

As state spending for public universities goes down, international student enrollment goes up. A newly published working paper seeks to quantify this relationship, estimating that for the period between 1996 and 2012, a 10 percent reduction in state appropriations was associated with a 12 percent increase in international undergraduate enrollment at public research universities — and a 17 percent increase at the most research-intensive public universities, the flagships and other institutions that are members of the exclusive Association of American Universities… “A very small number of universities have a capacity to draw in sizable numbers of domestic out-of-state students,” Turner said. But for the rest, she said, increasing international enrollment “is one tool that our paper shows they have been able to use to try to reduce the impact of the cuts on state appropriations. You can think of this as potentially benefiting all the students.”

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by Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed.

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

In a fraudulent stab at “transparency,” there’s even a “Chancellor Search” website where we’re told the names of committee members who will select the finalists for this coveted position, but we’re not given the names of the finalists themselves. It would, of course, be much too risky to let the unwashed masses in on the deliberations going on in our name at our local taxpayer-supported university… Just so you know, “No information about individual candidates will be shared before the President makes her recommendation to the Board of Regents.” So don’t even dream of asking.

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by Bob Dunning, The Davis Enterprise.

Posted: January 1st, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

From the late 1990s to today, applications from Latino Californians grew 500 percent — about five times faster than applications from Asian-Americans over the same time period, and almost 20 times faster than applications from white students. Preliminary data show that Latinos accounted for 37 percent of in-state applicants to UC for 2017, an all-time high… Of course, application and admission are two very different things. While last year more Latinos applied to a UC campus than any other ethnic group, they still trailed the much smaller Asian-American population in acceptance rate.

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by Matt Levin, The Davis Enterprise.

Posted: January 1st, 2017, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.