UC chancellors and faculty leaders announced solid support for Napolitano while state Assembly Speaker Toni G. Atkins and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León expressed deep reservations. Brown, who is a UC regent, previously committed to raising state funding for UC by 4% annually for the next two years only if tuition stays flat, according to H.D. Palmer, a state Department of Finance spokesman. He acknowledged that there was no formal compact with UC over the matter but said those conditions “have been clear from the outset.” Palmer declined to say how the governor would react if the UC regents increased tuition, or whether Brown might move to cut funds for UC. Atkins, also a regent, said she will vote against the plan at the UC Board of Regents’ meeting on Nov. 19-20.

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by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: November 6th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

For the first time in four years, UC leaders are proposing tuition hikes — as much as 5% in each of the next five years — to help cover rising costs and to expand the enrollment of California students. For undergraduates who are California residents, tuition next year could rise to $12,804, not including room, board and books. By the 2019-20 school year, that could increase to $15,564… Napolitano said tuition hikes could be reduced or even eliminated in all or some of the years if state funding for UC rises above the 4% annual increases currently anticipated. But a major hurdle is the opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown, who objects to the hikes. If the state doesn’t increase its UC spending, Napolitano said, she wanted to provide the 10-campus university and its 238,400 students a more dependable, longer-range and moderate schedule of increases.

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by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: November 6th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The president of the commission trying to revoke accreditation from City College of San Francisco admitted in court Tuesday that she had edited out language in the report favorable to the college and that the college was denied a chance to defend itself as required. The surprising admissions by commission President Barbara Beno made for dramatic testimony in Day 2 of the trial to determine whether the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges broke the law when evaluating City College in 2012 and 2013 before voting to revoke its accreditation. The college remains accredited pending the outcome of the trial in San Francisco Superior Court.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: October 29th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Between 2008 and 2012, 29 of the 50 states decreased their direct funding of public colleges and universities, with seven of them dropping by more than 20 percent in constant dollars. (Three states increased their spending by more than 20 percent.) Because public college enrollments grew significantly during this period, the state funding per student dropped more significantly, with declines of more than 20 percent in 20 states and dips of between 5 and 20 percent in 18 others… The states’ disinvestment has disproportionately hurt less-wealthy students and the colleges and universities that serve more of those students, the report says.

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by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: October 27th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

An unprecedented 20% of this year’s freshman class across the system’s nine undergraduate campuses are from outside California. That’s up from 6% in 2009 and 5.3% in 2004. At UCLA and UC Berkeley, that enrollment figure is about 30% of freshmen. University officials insist that the growth in nonresidents has been accomplished mainly by increasing sizes of the incoming freshman classes. And they note that top public universities in other states enroll much higher percentages of nonresidents than UC does. But families of top-tier California high schoolers turned away from their first-choice campuses have their doubts. As do state lawmakers.

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by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: October 22nd, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Brown said he’d learned from his failure in the mid-1970s to build a war chest that he could have used to push an alternative to Proposition 13… would not seek to change the law, a third rail in California politics. But he left open the possibility of altering other tax laws… In 2010, Brown pledged not to raise taxes without voters’ consent, even though Sacramento can increase levies without the public’s permission. He declined to make a similar vow now. And although Brown insisted that the tax increase he took to the ballot in 2012 — Proposition 30 — was temporary and he had no intention to make it permanent, he did not rule out an extension. “Tax reform is difficult — that’s why I haven’t talked a lot about it — but I’m not ruling it out,” he said, adding that his goal is to replace the revenue provided by Proposition 30 with money saved from paying down the state’s debt by the time the measure expires.

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by Seema Mehta and Michael Finnegan, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: October 19th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The explosion of investor interest in [K-12] education raises a number of questions, among them: What kind of influence will the for-profit education sector attempt to exert over education policy? And if school reform is crafted to maximize the potential for investor profit, will students benefit, as boosters claim—or will they suffer? There’s also the question of the effect of privatization on costs. And there, the healthcare example gives reason for concern.

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by Lee Fang, The Nation.

Posted: September 25th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A judge on Friday refused to halt the Oct. 27 trial that will determine if a commission properly evaluated City College of San Francisco before voting to revoke its accreditation. But Judge Curtis Karnow handed one early victory to San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera… Though seemingly minor, the city attorney’s victory bolsters Herrera’s argument that the commission’s decision to revoke accreditation from City College should be invalidated on grounds that its overall evaluation of the college – beginning in March, 2012 – was riddled with flaws.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: September 19th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A new report from the New America Foundation finds that many colleges offer generous merit scholarships to students with good grades or test scores, while charging relatively high prices to the students from low-income families. This practice originated at private colleges, but is now spreading to public universities too… colleges can both serve an economically diverse swath of students and maintain their selectivity and prestige. The University of California system’s nine campuses are an unparalleled engine of social mobility — and many also rank among the best universities in the United States… Vassar’s efforts to make its student body more economically diverse are impressive, but UC campuses work at a scale that a small liberal arts college just can’t match. No other prestigious universities in the United States enroll so many students from low-income families. Few even come close. This isn’t a miracle; it’s the result of deliberate choices.

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by Libby Nelson, Vox.

Posted: September 18th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California is planning a $250 million venture-capital fund to finance startup companies stemming from research conducted by its faculty and students. The fund, seeded with money from the UC endowment, would be one of the largest of its kind, targeting work done at the university’s 10 campuses, five medical centers and three national laboratories. A proposal to establish the fund is set to be presented to the governing UC Board of Regents on Wednesday. The plan was posted online Monday… The shift to a more entrepreneurial approach hasn’t enjoyed unanimous support—particularly when assistance comes directly from the university. Some faculty members have expressed concern that such investment activity favors certain departments over others and fosters a competitive, market-driven atmosphere that isn’t conducive to pure academic research.

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by Erica E. Phillips, The Wall Street Journal.

Posted: September 15th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.