Prestigious and predominantly white universities secure disproportionate shares of research grant money, philanthropic donations, full-tuition-paying national and international students, and corporate sponsorships that compensate for diminished support from state legislatures. In a perverse way, these advantages get translated into supposedly objective measures of quality in college rankings, like that of U.S. News, further helping those institutions draw affluent, advantaged students. This trend has left less prestigious public universities that provide the most accessible postsecondary opportunities with weaker private revenue streams, even while they educate the neediest students.

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by Laura Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen, The Los Angeles Times.

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

In a regents’ committee meeting on January 20th, UCOP officials summarized the governor’s budget in a few slides. The 3 percent base increase is on the new, permanently-reduced amount. The rest are line-items that normally a public university would fund out of general operating money… DM [Deferred maintenance] gets $175m in one-time funds, and more earmarks are added. The DM figure is about 1.25 percent of a reasonable estimate of system-wide deferred maintenance, so at this rate UC will fix this year’s back log about 80 years from now. Except it’s not annual money… In short, Newsom restores Jerry Brown austerity in the form of frozen tuition and sub-inflation net state funding. We all hate the phrase, but this is classic “do more with less”–with no state interest in its effect on UC viability.

Read full article [here].
by Chris Newfield, Remaking The University.

Posted: January 25th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Right now, over 43 million people in the United States are buried under $1.5 trillion dollars in federal student loan debt, including 6.3 million borrowers ages 50-64 and nearly a million borrowers over the age of 65 who may still be paying for a loved one’s education or for their own… We are calling on President Biden and Vice President Harris to immediately cancel up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt. The U.S. Department of Education holds that debt and can cancel it, too. This is exactly what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris should direct their Education secretary to do.

Read full article [here].
by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, CNBC.

Posted: January 22nd, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

As a new federal administration begins to take shape under President Joe Biden, a growing list of University of California-affiliated alumni and faculty have been nominated or appointed to positions in the new government… Public service is one of the three core elements of UC’s mission, and these former UC faculty and alumni manifest this mission at its highest level. Here are a few of the nominations and appointments so far — just a snapshot as new staffers continue to join the administration.

Read full article [here].
by staff, UC Newsroom.

Posted: January 22nd, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Student debt should be cancelled because borrowers haven’t realized the income gains that would enable them to pay it off, the burden of student debt weighs especially heavily on the historically marginalized, and a good deal if not a majority of outstanding student debt isn’t going to be repaid anyway. Why should the government grind pointless payments out of its borrowers for the next many decades? Let’s be done with this failed policy experiment for good.

Read full article [here].
by Marshall Steinbaum, The Appeal.

Posted: January 14th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Newsom’s proposal provides a 3% increase in base funding for UC and Cal State, which would help the two public university systems recover from substantial financial losses and added expenses triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both systems were hit with state budget cuts of about $300 million each, massive losses in revenue from housing and dining, added expenses for technology as campuses shifted to online learning, and additional outlays for coronavirus testing and tracing, cleaning and protective equipment. The proposed increase does not cover all of those losses or come close to reaching the level of funding that the systems had asked for. Moreover, Newsom said the increases were being proposed with the “expectation” that the UC and Cal State systems do not raise tuition or fees.

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

Posted: January 8th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

As she prepares to leave office, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urged Congress not to enact President-elect Joe Biden’s proposals to eliminate tuition at public colleges or cancel student debt. “I hope you also reject misguided calls to make college ‘free’ and require the two-thirds of Americans who didn’t take on student debt or who responsibly paid off their student loans to pay for the loans of those who have not done the same,” DeVos wrote in a letter to congressional leaders, as well as to the members of the House and Senate appropriations committees on Monday.

Read full article [here].
by Kery Murakami, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: January 5th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

At the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, California students led the nation in creating college ethnic studies programs that explored the histories and cultures of people overlooked by the dominant European-centric curriculum… But support for those programs has been uneven, prompting lawmakers and California’s Democratic governor to require that students at all 23 Cal State campuses take at least one ethnic studies course to graduate. CSUs should have their courses ready by fall of 2021.

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

Posted: December 30th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Harnisch said the relief will certainly help colleges and universities at a time when they need it most, the amount won’t be enough for them to stabilize themselves from the financial blow caused by the pandemic. “It’s really unprecedented, the financial stress that institutions are under with losses in auxiliary revenues, increased student need, unanticipated expenses and state budget cuts,” he said. “And while it’s important that this bill passed, it doesn’t go far enough.” … The relief bill also doesn’t provide any money to states for education, which will strain those governments as they craft their budgets for next year, Harnisch said. “We’re looking at collectively $450 billion or more in state budget shortfalls, and higher education will be the most vulnerable items in state budgets in the months ahead,” he said.

Read full article [here].
by Betsy Foresman, Ed Scoop.

Posted: December 29th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

After last month’s defeat of a California ballot measure to revive affirmative action in higher education admissions and hiring, other ways to increase diversity among faculty and students at the state’s colleges and universities are moving front and center… Here are ten of those ideas, culled from interviews and email exchanges. Each of the ten surely has political, financial and educational challenges and maybe even unexpected consequences. Some are as easy as a change in nomenclature; others, such as a vast expansion of financial aid, would be extraordinarily expensive. But in the New Year’s spirit of optimistic resolutions and turning the page to something different, we present them without judgment here more as discussion points than as fully weighed options.

Read full article [here].
by Larry Gordon, Ed Source.

Posted: December 29th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.