Hundreds of newly retired University of California employees aren’t getting their pensions and they don’t know when they’ll start receiving their checks. The UC Retirement Administration Service Center acknowledged the delay in a July 27 email to pensioners in which it said some new retirees wouldn’t receive their first retirement payment as expected on July 30. Instead, the office would let retirees know by Aug. 16 when they can expect to receive their payment… “With any government agency or any private company in history, this would be taken as something that was extremely serious, because it’s a sign of very deep distress,” Cox said. “What if the United States government said, ‘well, you know, something went wrong, we can’t pay you your Social Security.’ Who in the world does that?”

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by Katherine Swartz, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: August 3rd, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The $515 million to create a debt-free grant for lower- and middle-income University of California and California State University students? The budget deal for the 2021-22 fiscal year dedicates not one dollar to it but will next year, “subject to an available and sufficient appropriation.” The $149 million to fund 15,000 extra seats in 2022-23 for California residents at the UC and CSU? Not a dollar either… the money for the UC still falls short of how much of its core funding for student academics used to flow from state support. Just over a decade ago, 60% came from the state’s general fund. Lately, it’s closer to 40%, meaning the system has relied more on tuition hikes.

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by Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters.

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

Three top University of California campuses — UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego — would reduce their share of out-of-state and international students to make way for more local residents, and the UC system would admit 6,230 more freshmen in 2022, under an amended state budget bill posted Friday… The state would provide enough funding to reimburse the campuses for the loss of nonresident supplemental tuition, which amounts to nearly $30,000 per student and $1.3 billion collectively each year.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: June 26th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The California Community College System could get a $170 million boost in state funding to hire full-time faculty members. The system’s budget officers aren’t thrilled about it… “While it’s not surprising that college administrators would like completely unrestricted dollars, California must address the ongoing problem of balancing a college’s books by paying the majority of its faculty poorly and on one semester contracts.” Nationally, about 40 percent of adjunct faculty members struggle to cover basic household expenses, and nearly 25 percent need public assistance, according to a 2020 report by the American Federation of Teachers.

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by Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed.

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

Campus leadership said the decision to scrap the PE program came from a desire to fall in line with other universities. “Offering PE courses for academic credit is no longer considered to be either an appropriate or common practice in higher education,” UC Davis spokesperson Melissa Blouin told The Enterprise last year. The termination of the program caused an uproar among faculty, students and the wider community last fall. Faculty protested, students circulated an online petition that more than 5,000 people signed, the student government unanimously passed a resolution opposing the decision and California State legislators wrote to campus leaders urging them to reconsider.

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by Caleb Hampton, The Davis Enterprise.

Posted: June 10th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The Legislature also proposes to spend big to free up enrollment space at public universities… Because out-of-state students pay much higher tuition, the state would pick up the tab for that lost revenue, totaling $180 million over three years. The ultimate goal is to cap out-of-state undergraduate enrollment at the three coveted campuses at 18% –– making good on a budget deal from several years ago. Lawmakers’ budget proposal also includes $67 million to add 6,200 enrollment slots across the entire UC and $81 million to add 9,400 slots at Cal State campuses. The expansion would take effect in fall 2022. They also want to spend $540 million so that college students would have to borrow less or nothing for college.

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by Laurel Rosenhall, CapRadio.

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

In the early 1990s, California contributed 78 percent of the total cost per student, a number that had shrunk to 37 percent by the 2015-16 academic year… Between 2003 and 2015, the system’s debt more than tripled, from around $5 billion to around $15 billion. A common perspective, summarized by the credit-rating agency Moody’s in 2012, was that the UC could leverage its “powerful student-market position” to “compensate for state-funding cuts by raising tuition dramatically” and by “growing nonresident tuition, differentiating tuition by campus or degree, and increasing online course offerings.” And indeed, what followed were private-market solutions. But that came at the expense of equity goals.

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by Laura Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: June 1st, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Reducing the number of out-of-state students would allow an additional 4,600 in-state freshmen a year to be admitted; close to 30 times that many California applicants were turned away this year. UC suggests that the state simply fund more California students in addition to the out-of-state students it admits, but its campuses already are overcrowded. What the state needs is a buildup of UC capacity.

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by The Times Editorial Board, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: May 28th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

As the University of California faces huge demand for seats — and public outcry over massive rejections by top campuses in a record application year — state lawmakers are considering a plan to slash the share of out-of-state and international students to make room for more local residents. The state Senate has unveiled a proposal to reduce the proportion of nonresident incoming freshmen to 10% from the current systemwide average of 19% over the next decade beginning in 2022 and compensate UC for the lost income from higher out-of-state tuition.

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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.

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

an average annual increase of a bit more than 3¼ percent does not qualify as “the largest state investment in UC history.” It doesn’t justify the “huge budget boost” trumpet blast in this LA Times headline, or the statement cosigned by UC president Drake and board chair Peréz. There are other commitments, all one time, where the main money goes to 2 things: workforce preparedness and student housing… Newsom and Biden see higher education as workforce training for economic growth. They also tie that mainly to community colleges rather than to four-year degrees. Newsom bundles his two biggest one-time programs into an aggregate with a largish headline number that must be shared by the 3 segments, and which treats the segments and their students as the same. Newsom is joining Biden in demoting four-year colleges, which is an anti-progressive trend that universities will need to fight.

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by Chris Newfield, Remaking the University.

Posted: May 24th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.