White recently approved so-called student success fees at San Diego State and Cal State Fullerton. Eleven of Cal State’s 23 campuses have now enacted the fees, with most revenue used to hire faculty and counselors and improve other student services that suffered during a period of budget cuts. The fees, though, have divided many campuses, with opponents arguing they are a little-disguised sidestep around raising tuition.

Read full article [here].
by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

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

University of California President Janet Napolitano struck a rare blow for rational education practice this week by pushing back strongly against the craze for online learning courses. Online education isn’t a panacea, she said; it’s not for everyone, it’s not cheap, and if it’s done right it may not even save money. Are you listening, Gov. Brown?

Read full article [here].
by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: March 26th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Peter Sung Ohr, in Chicago, ruled that “players receiving scholarships from the employer are ’employees'” and ordered that an election be conducted to determine whether Northwestern players wanted representation by the College Athletes Players Assn. for the purposes of collective bargaining. Northwestern will appeal the decision to the NLRB in Washington. That probably will not be the final step in a process, that could eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. If the ruling stands it could affect other private universities such as USC. The NLRB does not have jurisdiction over public universities… “Sixty years ago, the NCAA invented the term ‘student-athlete’ to avoid this day,” Huma, a former UCLA linebacker, said in a phone interview. “Because the Northwestern players showed courage, today did come. And players are one giant step closer to justice.”

Read full article [here].
by Gary Klein, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: March 26th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Department of Education data show that three quarters of American undergrads have some amount of “unmet financial need” they have to cover either with loans, a job while enrolled or both. Take Pell Grants, the largest federal aid program aimed mainly at low-income students. Even after taking into account federal loans and work-study, about 86 percent of Pell recipients had nearly $9,000 in “unmet need” on average per year… The daunting, complex aid process can be even more so for low-income and first-generation-to-college families, says Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. Navigating that tangled forest takes effort, time and savvy that some families don’t have.

Read full article [here].
by Eric Westervelt, NPR.

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

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez… dangled the prospect that the Legislature might be willing to consider more than the $142.2-million boost that the governor has proposed for the university system in his 2014-15 spending plan… The governor countered that there continue to be “lots of interests, desires and claims” on state funding. “It’s challenging to grasp what is important and what is not so important,” Brown said. “I like the academic world, I like reading about what academics do, but there’s always a gap.” He also reiterated his continuing theme that technology, including online education, would ultimately yield savings for Cal State, the University of California and California community colleges. “It’s not going to happen soon and I don’t know in what form, but I can imagine students googling English 101,” Brown said.

Read full article [here].
by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

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

More than 696,000 undergraduates attending a four-year school, or 74 percent of all undergraduates, took out a federal loan in the 2011-12 school year. That’s up from 397,497, or 51 percent of all undergraduates, in 2003-04, according to “Borrowing for College,” the latest report from the Campaign for College Opportunity on the state of higher education in California… People who are saddled with student loan debt are less likely to buy a home, start a small business or pay into a retirement account, the report notes, citing national survey results conducted by other groups.

Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

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

University of California President Janet Napolitano on Monday joined a growing chorus of higher education leaders who have expressed skepticism about the use and cost-effectiveness of courses that are offered online… “There’s a developing consensus that online learning is a tool for the toolbox, but it’s harder than it looks and if you do it right, it doesn’t save all that much money,” Napolitano told about 500 policy and education experts at a speaker series sponsored by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Read full article [here].
by Sharon Bernstein, Reuters.

Posted: March 24th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Businesses provided $3.2 billion, or 5 percent, of American universities’ total research budgets in 2012, a portion that has been stable since the 1970s, according to the National Science Foundation. Such partnerships are unusually common at the UC system’s 10 campuses and three associated national laboratories, which lead discoveries in medicine, engineering and other fields… John M. Simpson, an advocate at the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, argued that the quest to monetize intellectual property may distract colleges from their original mission: producing knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

Read full article [here].
by Stephanie M. Lee, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: March 20th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A California lawmaker Thursday questioned whether the federal government is providing enough scrutiny of higher education accrediting agencies, citing the controversial decision by a private panel to revoke the accreditation of City College of San Francisco. Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) raised the prospect that the accrediting system and the government’s oversight of it is flawed in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan… Among the questions posed by Speier are why regions have only one accreditor, whether the government has looked at the merits of certifying more than one accreditor for each region and whether agencies should be reviewed more frequently.

Read full article [here].
by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: March 13th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Increased competition for seats at University of California schools has fueled the outcry over the referendum, Ramakrishnan said. Last year, acceptances for in-state freshmen applicants across the system reached an all-time low — just 63 percent got into one of the UC campuses, compared with 78 percent in 2004, according to state data. Acceptance rates dropped among Asian-American applicants, too, by 9 percentage points from 2004 to 2013… While Poon said she doesn’t believe affirmative action is the answer to educational inequities, she fears that pitting ethnic groups against one another when they need to work together to promote better-funded schools and universal preschool will be problematic.

Read full article [here].
by Katy Murphy and Jessica Calefati, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: March 13th, 2014, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.