The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted 10-1 in favor of a resolution calling for the city to make enrollment in City College of San Francisco free to residents and city workers… Kim today said that making higher education free was a way to make the city more affordable for residents and strengthen the city’s workforce and middle class… the plan is expected to cost around $12.6 million in its first year. She is proposing to pay for it with a November ballot measure that would raise the transfer tax on all property sales valued at more than $5 million and create a new 3 percent tax bracket for properties worth $25 million or more.

Read full article [here].
by Bay City News, KRON 4.

Posted: July 12th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

When it comes to picking a new president, young people in America are united in saying education is what matters most. But there’s a wide split in what else will drive their votes. For African-American adults between the ages of 18 and 30, racism is nearly as important as education. For young Hispanics, it’s immigration. And for whites and Asian-Americans in the millennial generation, it’s economic growth… The poll of 1,965 adults age 18-30 was conducted June 14-27 using a sample drawn from the probability-based GenForward panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. young adult population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Read full article [here].
by Jesse J. Holland and Emily Swanson, WSIL-TV.

Posted: July 12th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California said it had increased admission offers to California freshmen by more than 15 percent for the fall 2016 semester while reducing offers to international students at two of its prestigious campuses. The numbers are likely to help defuse a controversy sparked by accusations that the university has rejected Californians in favor of nonresidents… A detailed chart released by the university showed that 71,178 California freshmen have been offered admission to the university’s nine undergraduate campuses for this fall, an increase of 9,344 from last year. That is a sharp reversal from 2015, when admission offers to California freshmen declined by 1,039 from the previous year, spurring protests by parents whose children were denied spots.

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by Stephanie Saul, The New York Times.

Posted: July 12th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

You can see both sides of the argument. On one hand, the faculty see Harrington as a rogue who may have caused the death of a football player and cost the school $5 million. To the players, Harrington comes off as the sort of fierce, inspiring, skilled coach who can be divisive, yet engender aggressive loyalty. And, as they say, he probably doesn’t run the team any differently than how any other college team operates. In college football, this is just how things are done. The debate is about who is in charge.

Read full article [here].
by Patrick Redford, Deadspin.

Posted: July 6th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

For the first time in more than a decade, the odds of getting a coveted spot to attend the University of California rose this spring at every one of the system’s campuses, reversing a trend that has stressed out the state’s high school seniors and set off a high-stakes debate over who deserves a UC education… Freshman admission rates for Californians at the most competitive campuses — Berkeley, at 21.3 percent, and Los Angeles, at 17.7 percent — are still less than half of what they were in the 1990s. But both schools made offers this spring to more than 1,000 additional California high school seniors compared to the previous year.

Read full article [here].
by Katy Murphy, The Mercury News.

Posted: July 6th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Over the past three decades, decision-makers in Sacramento have reduced support for all three public higher education systems during budget crunches. State support for UC has been reduced by more than half… Those who believe that out-of-state students at UC are displacing Californians are out of touch with reality. The major factor that limits enrollment is money – to pay faculty, provide student services and give financial aid. Out-of-state students more than pay their own way because their tuition and fees are more than $20,000 a year higher, and effectively subsidize the cost of educating California students. Exclude non-resident students and there will be less, not more room for Californians.

Posted: June 14th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A starting salary of less than $44,000 forces postdocs to scrape by in high-rent California and make sacrifices for our scholarship and professional advancement down the road. But for women postdocs, the sacrifice is even greater. Among recent PhD graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields, women are paid 31% less than men – this suggests a wage hike and wage gap review for postdocs is in order. But salary is not the only significant obstacle that women postdocs face. Failed sexual harassment policies, zero or minimal childcare subsidies, inadequate parental leave policies and inflexible workplace rules hostile to new mothers are also major factors in, as University of Hawaii Professor Hope Jahren describes, the university shedding “women the way the trees on campus lose their leaves in the fall”

Posted: June 13th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

When Marc Edwards, a professor of environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, helped uncover the water contamination crisis in Flint, he did so mostly by burning through his own money… As public universities lose state funding, and are increasingly forced to function more like any other business, universities have to shift priorities. CEO-like presidents are hired, poorly paid adjuncts are called upon to fill in the gaps, and schools treat low-income and homeless students as “risks.” But another big problem is that these universities also lose their research missions — and as a country, we suffer for it. With fewer resources in this area, researchers do fewer partnerships with communities, there is less innovation, and public trust in research falls…

Posted: June 13th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

“I think a large issue with that 2015 deal is that the university negotiated a permanent change in the pension system in exchange for a short-term commitment from the state,” observed Dr, Michael Meranze, a UCLA history professor who also blogs about UC faculty issues. “Whereas the state, for instance, makes annual contributions, say, to [California State University’s] pension and to other state employee pensions. … The state has never formally admitted that it benefited from those years of non-contribution, nor [has it] formally committed to restarting its contributions on a regular basis.” The point is more than academic, explained Celeste Langan, co-chair of the UC Berkeley Faculty Association. Part of the lure of a lower-paying public research university for scholars, who have already delayed entering the job market for as much as decade to get a PhD (along with a mountain of student loan debt), is precisely the robust retirement security offered by its pensions compared to 401(k)s at private universities.

Read full article [here].
by Bill Raden, Capital and Main.

Posted: June 9th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Now FedLoan Servicing is in the news again for problems related to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. PSLF allows borrowers to get their Direct federal student loans canceled after making 120 monthly payments under an income-driven repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying public service organization… The American Bar Association (ABA) is reporting that FedLoan Servicing has been notifying borrowers that certain organizations that clearly qualify as public service employers under applicable federal regulations are not qualifying employers for the PSLF program. In fact, several of the ABA’s own employees were notified that the ABA itself doesn’t qualify as a PSLF-eligible employer, even though they are paid by the ABA’s 501(c)(3) arm and are clearly engaged in public service activities.

Posted: June 6th, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.