I am very concerned about the culture of academia in this country and the perverse incentives that are given to young faculty. The pressures to get funding are just extraordinary. We’re all on this hedonistic treadmill — pursuing funding, pursuing fame, pursuing h-index — and the idea of science as a public good is being lost… When was the last time you heard anyone in academia publicly criticize a funding agency, no matter how outrageous their behavior? We just don’t do these things.
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by Steve Kolowich, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: February 2nd, 2016, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
President Obama’s higher education policies have generally focused on helping students who can’t afford their student loans after graduation rather than tackling the cost of the tuition they pay. That’s what both Clinton and Sanders have proposed doing. Both of their plans would partially federalize public colleges and universities and give the federal government a larger role in determining tuition rates. That’s a big difference from how the federal government has traditionally tried to make college affordable, through grants to low-income students and student loans.
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by Libby Nelson, Vox.
Posted: December 19th, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
California State University received a record number of applications for the upcoming 2016 fall term, with more than 830,000 prospective students vying for a spot at the nation’s largest public university system. The total marked a nearly 5 percent increase over applications received for fall enrollment the previous year, according to university officials. The number of black and Latino students applying to CSU colleges rose about 25 percent each. CSU enrolls about 460,000 students across 23 campuses. In a statement, university officials said the increase in applications reflects a growth in the demand for higher education in California but that capacity issues persist due to state funding limitations.
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by Staff, KPCC.
Posted: December 19th, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
A letter from Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom to the university system’s faculty-run board of admissions — and signed by a host of Silicon Valley VIPs, including Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, as well as Assembly Republican Leader Kristen Olsen and Secretary of State Alex Padilla — argued that upgrading computer science from an elective to a core math course for college-entrance purposes “would acknowledge that computer science is a legitimate field and a valuable foundation for many academic pursuits… It would provide an incentive for schools to offer these classes and for students to take them,” the letter said.
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by Katy Murphy, The San Jose Mercury News.
Posted: December 3rd, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
California’s public universities are becoming increasingly out of reach for all but the most elite students, a new report by the L.A.-based Campaign for College Opportunity argues. The group’s report, “Access Denied: Rising Selectivity at California’s Public Universities,” details how policymakers have not only failed to keep up with population growth but also have shut access to students through funding cuts that have reduced the number of seats available at the state’s two public university systems
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by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC.
Posted: November 30th, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Vice President Joe Biden, announcing on Wednesday that he will not enter the 2016 presidential race, called for a national commitment to free public higher education that goes beyond what the Obama administration has proposed… Biden suggested that it was time to go further than President Obama’s plan for tuition-free community college, which the administration has framed as an expansion of universal public education beyond high school. “We’re fighting for 14 years — we need to commit to 16 years of free public education for all our children,” he said. “We know that 12 years of public education is not enough. As a nation, let’s make the same commitment to a college education today that we made to a high school education a hundred years ago.”
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by Michael Stratford, Inside Higher Ed.
Posted: October 22nd, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The question of who the University of California will be serving when it reaches the third decade of this 21st Century remains one administrators year after year refuse to confront. Will the elite system and its 10 campuses belong primarily to the California students they were built to serve? Or will they become the de facto property of wealthy out-of-state and foreign parents and governments eager to send their children to what has ranked for 75 years as the world’s leading public university system?
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by Thomas D. Elias, The Los Angeles Daily News.
Posted: October 5th, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Federal authorities are investigating allegations that a UC Berkeley custodial contractor underpaid workers who cleaned up after Golden Bears football games and other sporting events, denying them overtime pay for weeks that stretched to 80 or 90 hours… The investigation comes as the University of California system, the state’s third-largest employer, faces increasing scrutiny from lawmakers into the working conditions of thousands of contracted employees who provide essential services such as cleaning, security and landscaping… Gonzalez, the assemblywoman who supports the bill, said the disparity between what UC pays the contractor and what workers are actually paid shows the inherent problems of contracting out service work to those promising the lowest price. “The administrative costs are over 100% of the actual labor costs,” she said.
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by Chris Kirkham, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: October 1st, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
This year’s rankings are the most inclusive, looking at 800 institutions, and refined aspects of their methodology, explained on their website. California Institute of Technology, or CalTech, was named the No. 1 school in the world, for the second year in a row. The United Kingdom’s biggest rivalry was won by the University of Oxford this year, as it beat the University of Cambridge, at No.s 2 and 4 respectively. Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University follow up at third, fifth and sixth places. The University of California, Berkeley, at No. 13, is ranked the best public university from the U.S.
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by Tyler Kingkade, Huffington Post.
Posted: October 1st, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The Legislature couldn’t manage to raise taxes this year, but a new Public Policy Institute of California poll released Thursday shows large majorities of Californians favor some of the tax hikes Democrats wanted. The survey found two-thirds of likely voters, including a majority of Republicans, support increasing taxes on cigarettes and more than half want to overhaul Proposition 13 and start taxing commercial properties at current market rates.
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by Jessica Calefati, The San Jose Mercury News.
Posted: September 30th, 2015, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
