Anthropology Library was scheduled to permanently close Feb. 28 due to staffing shortages… According to MacKie-Mason, the campus libraries currently receive 40% fewer funds per enrolled student than in 2014. The budget reduction requires the campus libraries to cut crucial scholarly materials used for research, teaching and learning.
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by Lily Button, The Daily Californian.
UC Berkeley might be forced to cut more than 3,000 students from its fall enrollment because of a CEQA lawsuit. That’s the trampled ambitions of 3,000 high school seniors and transfer students, many people of color, that have somehow pushed through the hardships of the pandemic to maintain the grades, jobs, extracurriculars and everything else needed to be competitive at one of the state’s top public schools… less than 2% of public building projects being subject to a CEQA lawsuit… groups have sued the university multiple times when it has attempted to increase housing and facilities.
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by Anita Chabria, The Los Angelese Times.
Unlike other parts of the legislation, historically Black college and universities, tribal colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions actually received more funding in the latest version of the Build Back Better Act, according to House Education and Labor Committee chair Representative Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia. Of the total $10 billion that will be allocated to these institutions, $3 billion will be used for grants to improve research and development infrastructure. The bill also includes institutional aid for capacity-building and financial aid for low-income students, with $2.35 billion each for HBCUs and HSIs over five years, $705.6 million for TCUs, and $588 million for other MSIs.
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by Alexis Gravely, Inside Higher Ed.
By aligning with Brandman, UMass becomes the latest public university to make an aggressive foray into the market for educating and training adult learners, following Purdue University’s purchase of Kaplan University in 2017, the University of Arizona’s acquisition last year of Ashford University and ambitious plans in Missouri, Louisiana and most recently Arkansas. All of them have eyed the massive market of tens of millions of adults who lack a college degree but need education and training to enter or thrive in the workforce, hundreds of thousands of whom are now enrolled at national nonprofit institutions such as Southern New Hampshire University or Western Governors University.
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by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed.
Hundreds of newly retired University of California employees aren’t getting their pensions and they don’t know when they’ll start receiving their checks. The UC Retirement Administration Service Center acknowledged the delay in a July 27 email to pensioners in which it said some new retirees wouldn’t receive their first retirement payment as expected on July 30. Instead, the office would let retirees know by Aug. 16 when they can expect to receive their payment… “With any government agency or any private company in history, this would be taken as something that was extremely serious, because it’s a sign of very deep distress,” Cox said. “What if the United States government said, ‘well, you know, something went wrong, we can’t pay you your Social Security.’ Who in the world does that?”
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by Katherine Swartz, The Sacramento Bee.
The $515 million to create a debt-free grant for lower- and middle-income University of California and California State University students? The budget deal for the 2021-22 fiscal year dedicates not one dollar to it but will next year, “subject to an available and sufficient appropriation.” The $149 million to fund 15,000 extra seats in 2022-23 for California residents at the UC and CSU? Not a dollar either… the money for the UC still falls short of how much of its core funding for student academics used to flow from state support. Just over a decade ago, 60% came from the state’s general fund. Lately, it’s closer to 40%, meaning the system has relied more on tuition hikes.
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by Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters.
Three top University of California campuses — UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego — would reduce their share of out-of-state and international students to make way for more local residents, and the UC system would admit 6,230 more freshmen in 2022, under an amended state budget bill posted Friday… The state would provide enough funding to reimburse the campuses for the loss of nonresident supplemental tuition, which amounts to nearly $30,000 per student and $1.3 billion collectively each year.
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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.
The California Community College System could get a $170 million boost in state funding to hire full-time faculty members. The system’s budget officers aren’t thrilled about it… “While it’s not surprising that college administrators would like completely unrestricted dollars, California must address the ongoing problem of balancing a college’s books by paying the majority of its faculty poorly and on one semester contracts.” Nationally, about 40 percent of adjunct faculty members struggle to cover basic household expenses, and nearly 25 percent need public assistance, according to a 2020 report by the American Federation of Teachers.
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by Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed.
Campus leadership said the decision to scrap the PE program came from a desire to fall in line with other universities. “Offering PE courses for academic credit is no longer considered to be either an appropriate or common practice in higher education,” UC Davis spokesperson Melissa Blouin told The Enterprise last year. The termination of the program caused an uproar among faculty, students and the wider community last fall. Faculty protested, students circulated an online petition that more than 5,000 people signed, the student government unanimously passed a resolution opposing the decision and California State legislators wrote to campus leaders urging them to reconsider.
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by Caleb Hampton, The Davis Enterprise.
The Legislature also proposes to spend big to free up enrollment space at public universities… Because out-of-state students pay much higher tuition, the state would pick up the tab for that lost revenue, totaling $180 million over three years. The ultimate goal is to cap out-of-state undergraduate enrollment at the three coveted campuses at 18% –– making good on a budget deal from several years ago. Lawmakers’ budget proposal also includes $67 million to add 6,200 enrollment slots across the entire UC and $81 million to add 9,400 slots at Cal State campuses. The expansion would take effect in fall 2022. They also want to spend $540 million so that college students would have to borrow less or nothing for college.
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by Laurel Rosenhall, CapRadio.