Graduation season is usually accompanied by receiving congratulatory gifts and the big question of what’s next. Well, nearly 500 women at North Carolina’s Bennett College got an answer for the future in the form of a gift. Debt Collective, a union of debtors rallying against consumer debt, contacted the president of the HBCU and offered to clear the debt for the current graduating class… they chose Bennet College because data indicated that Black women have higher student loan balances than any other group of student loan borrowers.

Read full article [here].
by Josh Rodgers, Yahoo!News.

Posted: May 23rd, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

It was reported that the Biden administration is considering competing plans for how much student debt to cancel and who will get it. Among the plans are versions that exclude anyone who made over $125,000 or $150,000 as individuals (or $250,000 or $300,000 as a couple) in 2021. In theory, nearly everyone should qualify since only roughly 3% of student debtors make more than these limits… In an effort to exclude 3% of student debtors, the Biden administration is going to make 45 million navigate a complex obstacle course. Most of them may, but many won’t. Those excluded will be precisely the most vulnerable, the poorest, those with the least access to the internet…

Read full article [here].
by Thomas Gokey, MarketWatch.

Posted: May 19th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

…since SB 118 removes student enrollment from CEQA consideration, more emphasis will be placed on total campus population, including faculty and staff. California legislative analyst Jennifer Pacella noted that no university campuses exceed the total campus population estimate in their long-range development plans, though UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Santa Barbara have slightly more than their student enrollment targets.

Read full article [here].
by Maria Young, The Daily Californian.

Posted: March 14th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom moved with lightning speed on Monday to pass a bill that would prevent UC Berkeley from having to cut its student enrollment by several thousand… Senate Bill 118 changes the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, so that student enrollment, or changes in enrollment, by itself does not constitute a project subject to that law. It also applies retroactively, meaning it applies to the UC Berkeley case. Newsom signed the bill into law Monday evening, just hours after its passage.

Read full article [here].
by Andrew Sheeler, The San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Posted: March 14th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Kennedy owned a piece of property on Oxford Street, directly across from campus, that was approved for 56 apartments. Kennedy, who was short of cash at the time, was willing to sell it to the university for a bargain price of $500,000. There was some initial interest from UC Berkeley’s administration, but after months of going back and forth, the deal fizzled out… “UC Berkeley couldn’t get it together to buy it,” Kennedy said. “At that time they were a bureaucracy that couldn’t act nimbly if their lives depended on it.” A quarter-century later, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that UC Berkeley’s life — or at least its ability to grow as one of the premier public universities in the world — depends on whether it can act nimbly to produce student housing as fast as possible.

Read full article [here].
by J.K. Dineen, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: March 14th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Signed into law in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, CEQA requires local governments to study the potential environmental impacts of building projects before approving them. Over the years, the law has been wielded by groups that oppose developments for numerous reasons, going far beyond its original intent, according to housing advocates. California has added 3.2 times more people than housing units over the past 10 years.. Since 2015, UC campuses have added 21,700 beds while enrollment grew by about 43,000… In the fall of 2001, the median rent for a studio apartment for new leases was $900, according to data from the city of Berkeley. Last fall, it was nearly $1,800.

Read full article [here].
by Christine Mai-Duc, The Wall Street Journal.

Posted: March 14th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

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.

Read full article [here].
by Lily Button, The Daily Californian.

Posted: March 10th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

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.

Read full article [here].
by Anita Chabria, The Los Angelese Times.

Posted: February 16th, 2022, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

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.

Read full article [here].
by Alexis Gravely, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: October 29th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

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.

Read full article [here].
by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: September 2nd, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.