The ULP charge rejects claims by the UC that these actions have been taken in order to promote campus safety, instead arguing that the UC has targeted activity and speech that express solidarity with Palestine. “From the brutal predawn arrests ordered by university leaders to the vague and threatening notices of investigation, the university’s goal is clear: to end Palestine solidarity activism on campus,” said Anna Markowitz, associate professor of education at UCLA. “In this ULP charge, we are saying that this illegal suppression of speech cannot stand, whether about Palestine or about other issues that students and faculty may raise in the future.”

Read full article [here].
by Caitlin Scialla, Santa Barbara Independent.

Posted: September 19th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The allegations against Aini touch on trespassing and failing to disperse; violations of school policies. She is not accused of any violent behavior, and says her involvement in the protests was simply an act of free speech, a guaranteed right. School officials say the process is taking time because they want to follow University of California guidelines. The Orange County District Attorney’s office doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations, and it’s unclear if any students have been charged with a crime connected to the May 15 conflict. Now — several hearings, court filings and sleepless nights later — Aini and other students are still waiting to hear whether they’ll be subject to formal sanctions by either the university or the county criminal system. Officials at UC Irvine haven’t absolved them or declared them guilty. And it’s been a month since Aini has heard from the District Attorney’s office.

Read full article [here].
by Victoria Le, The Orange County Register.

Posted: August 7th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

University of California regents voted Thursday to ban political opinion from main campus homepages, a policy initially rooted in concern about anti-Israel views being construed as official UC opinion. Political opinions may still be posted on other pages of an academic unit’s website, according to the policy approved at the regents meeting in San Francisco. It will take effect immediately.

Read full article [here].
by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: July 17th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

An increasing proportion of U.S. adults say they have little or no confidence in higher education. As a result, Americans are now nearly equally divided among those who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence (36%), some confidence (32%), or little or no confidence (32%) in higher education. When Gallup first measured confidence in higher education in 2015, 57% had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence and 10% had little or none. The latest results are based on a June 3-23 Gallup survey that gauged Americans’ confidence in various institutions.

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by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup.

Posted: July 8th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The academic senate, a voting body that represents faculty members, has already called for an independent investigation into the administration’s crackdown on a protest at the on-campus pro-Palestinian encampment on May 15 that led to law enforcement from over 20 local agencies making nearly four dozen arrests and the encampment being cleared. On Friday, the senate explicitly asked UCI to lift the punishments levied on students allegedly involved with the encampment until investigations into the students’ conduct are completed. In early May, UCI issued interim suspensions to several students involved with the encampment. Critics of the interim suspensions say UCI has historically reserved them for students posing an imminent threat to the safety of others — something, they say, these students did not do.

Read full article [here].
by Jonathan Horwitz, The Orange County Register.

Posted: June 14th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Why have think tanks funded by right-wing mega-donors paid such attention to college campuses? One answer is that the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and the increased visibility of queer and trans people, fundamentally threaten the libertarian and conservative ideologies that justify the obscene wealth hoarded by these donors. Since 2020, for example, millions of people came into the streets demanding that governments take action to address the COVID-19 pandemic and structural racism. In recent years, young people have demanded climate action. These demands for collective solutions to social problems threaten the ultra-wealthy mega-donors, who see all collective goods and collective action as proceeding along the road to socialism.

Read full article [here].
by Isaac Kamola, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: June 5th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Each system would receive a modest bump of 2.05% in 2025-26 — a far cry from the 10% the governor projected in his January budget proposal. That 10% itself was a compromise. Each system was supposed to see a 5% bump in 2024-25 and the same in 2025-26. But in January, Newsom called for no bump in year one and to double-up in year two as a way to manage the state deficit. That 10% for the two systems would have meant $1 billion combined in 2025-26, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. A mere 2% increase would total roughly $200 million.

Read full article [here].
by Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters.

Posted: May 15th, 2024, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

While the increasingly popular quip that “colleges are just real-estate hedge funds with classes attached” may inspire eye rolls, recent moves are making the joke cut deeper… Rather than help ease student’s cost burdens, the growing hedge-fund-like nature of endowments has actually made affordability worse. According to a 2018 case study on the financialization of higher education from the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, complex financial investments called interest-rate swaps had cost a sample of 19 schools $2.7 billion — enough to cover the total cost of college for 108,000 students.

Read full article [here].
by Catherine Liu, Business Insider.

Posted: March 8th, 2023, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Just weeks after the University of California and academic workers heralded historic wage gains in new labor contracts, the question of how to pay for them is roiling campuses, which are scrambling to identify money, considering cutbacks in graduate student admissions and fearing deficits… The UC Office of the President estimates that the increased costs for salary, benefits and tuition across all 10 campuses will be between $500 million and $570 million over the life of the contracts… Options are limited, with no new state influx of money in the coming academic year dedicated to covering the raises when they kick in — and the state is facing a projected $22.5-billion budget deficit. Fixed federal contracts that pay for 60% of the academic workers can’t be abruptly renegotiated. Many campuses have raised questions as to why UC negotiated the contracts without identifying a clear funding source.

Read full article [here].
by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 27th, 2023, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A majority of the general public (55%) supports forgiving up to $10,000 of a person’s federal student loan debt. But the more generous the relief, the more that support narrows… when asked about income limits, poll respondents’ views about debt relief didn’t budge… In one of the poll’s most unexpected findings… a whopping 82% said the government’s priority should be making college more affordable for current and future students. Just 16% believed forgiving student debts should take priority.

Read full article [here].
by Cory Turner and Sequoia Carrillo, NPR.

Posted: June 17th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.