As the midnight-Thursday deadline came and went, steep federal spending cuts were set in motion, leaving college students, administrators, and researchers bracing for the effects of impending reductions in financial-aid, research, and job-training programs… Although the Pell Grant program is exempt from cuts for the first year of sequestration, programs like the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and Federal Work-Study would be cut by millions of dollars, eliminating more than 100,000 students from participation. But most students won’t see the effects of cuts in those programs until July 1, when the financial-aid program year begins. Most colleges send out their financial-aid award letters to students in March and April, but many institutions will have to do so with an asterisk or a caveat until they are notified of new allocations of federal funds from the Department of Education… Universities’ research leaders have estimated that federal research spending will be trimmed by more than $12-billion in 2013, and by nearly $95-billion over the next nine years, which they say the economy cannot afford.

Read full article [here].
by Allie Bidwell, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: March 1st, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Gov. Jerry Brown and California university officials say it’s inevitable. Targeting a tech-savvy generation, they are paving the way for more students to pass courses and obtain degrees without ever going to class. Given budget constraints, they say boosting online programs is the only way to accommodate more students without expanding campuses and making higher education even more expensive. “There’s not a luxury of sitting in the present trajectory, unless you don’t mind paying ever-increasing tuition,” Brown told the University of California regents last month.

Read full article [here].
by Jim Sanders, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: February 19th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

What was discussed at the regents meeting was a hodgepodge of goals and ambitions. The university’s online efforts would: expose people across the world with no access to higher education institutions to the wonders of higher learning; enable high school students and community college students to take online classes for credit and thus arrive at the university with credits in their pockets; put 10 percent of every UC student’s education entirely online; put two years of a UC education entirely online; and enable the university to save money or make money in such enormous amounts that it would bridge that gap between what the governor can provide in state appropriations and what the university needs to be fully funded.

The discussion was not grounded in the good work of campus-based efforts.

Read full article [here].
by Jonathan Stein, The Daily Californian.

Posted: February 12th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

From the moment the American Council on Education announced in November that its College Credit Recommendation Service would assess the creditworthiness of a set of massive open online courses, there seemed to be little doubt that such approval would be forthcoming. And indeed, Coursera’s announcement today that five of its courses have earned credit recommendations from ACE felt just a little bit anticlimactic. But the decision — the latest in a series of remarkably fast-unfolding developments around MOOCs in an industry that historically moves at a glacial pace — nonetheless has significant implications that are likely to reverberate on campuses around the country. It represents the initial clearing of what could be the widest pathway yet for students enrolled in MOOCs to cash in “certificates” earned from those courses for credits on college campuses. The credit recommendations for the courses could also create headaches for colleges, though, as they will almost certainly speed up the rate at which current college students ask their institutions for credit for free courses they’ve taken elsewhere.

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

Posted: February 7th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ruled that the University of California must disclose how its investments in two of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms have performed. A lawsuit filed last year by Reuters alleges that UC — by allowing Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers to provide only partial information on their financial returns — is flouting a state law requiring disclosure of how public investments fare… UC officials argued, as had CalPERS, that to disclose those results would lead many venture firms to turn them away as investors. Indeed, Olson said Sequoia at one point threatened to cut the university system out of future funds. After a judge ruled against the university and the California Supreme Court declined to hear its appeal, UC and CalPERS officials reached out to Simitian, then a freshman state senator. He crafted a bill that clarified how much investment firms that take public money must disclose.

Read full article [here].
by Peter Delevett, San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: February 6th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

…the 2013 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers finds evidence that in some areas of higher education (MOOCs or massive open online courses, for example) provosts aren’t yet ready to jump on the bandwagon, and relatively few see these offerings playing a positive, transformational role in higher education. In other areas (tenure), provosts see established practice as the norm at their institutions, but an apparent skepticism for tenure shows up in the very high percentage who are open to the idea of long-term faculty contracts in its stead. And while provosts appear to be well aware of the extent to which most colleges and universities today rely on non-tenure-track faculty members, two-thirds of provosts are skeptical that this will change — and of those who expect change, CAOs are nearly twice as likely to anticipate increased reliance on adjuncts as they are to envision growth of the tenure track.

Read full article [here].
by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: January 23rd, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

…when Brown claimed this week that university research is part of the problem rather than something to celebrate and encourage, he was simply wrong. Research is what separates, and properly so, the UC campuses from, say, our community colleges, where teaching is the only responsibility. The suggestion came during a Regents meeting this week in which Brown properly hammered away at fellow overseers of the university about the need to cut costs and avoid new tuition increases. With scholarships included, for middle-class families, it’s cheaper to send a kid to Harvard or Brown than it is to UCLA. That’s a California tragedy, and everyone who knows what the UC and California State University systems have meant to building the greatness of this state needs to work to reverse this trend.

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Los Angeles Daily News.

Posted: January 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

If colleges and universities thought they could ride out the current revenue challenges by becoming more like some other institution, Moody’s Investors Service has a bit of bad news for them: The grass isn’t greener on anybody else’s quad. Not even Harvard University’s. In a report released Wednesday, the ratings agency outlines how every traditional revenue stream for colleges and universities is facing some sort of pressure, a finding Moody’s uses as grounds for giving the whole sector a negative outlook. The agency has been pessimistic about much of the sector since its annual outlook in 2009 after the economic downturn began, but Wednesday’s report contains a downward shift in how analysts view even market leaders, the elite institutions with high demand and brand recognition.

Read full article [here].
by Kevin Kiley, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: January 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Tuition hikes for undergraduate students at the University of California are off the table for next year, Sherry Lansing, chairwoman of the UC regents, said Thursday. But Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Assembly Speaker John Perez were not satisfied with the university’s budget proposal. The politicians implored the regents to consider broader and more radical budgetary changes, including cutting executive compensation and lowering teaching costs… The speaker suggested UC leaders change their tone before asking the legislators for more… Lansing said UC is not looking to the state to solve all of its budgetary problems. She noted that the regents would examine faculty teaching loads in March.

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by Katy Murphy, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: January 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Mr. Brown wants to get kids out of school quicker and with less debt by offering courses online and charging “super seniors” an unsubsidized tuition rate when they exceed 150% of the units needed to graduate (which would free up space in required courses and allow more students to graduate on time). He also aims to slash administrative positions and increase teaching relative to research. “I’ve got a whole book showing how the University [of California] is spending money it doesn’t have to. Certain kinds of research, sports, gardeners, a lot of things,” Mr. Brown said last year. Of course, the universities by design operate independently from the state and regents don’t have to do what the governor asks. Then again, they probably can’t afford not to.

Read full article [here].
by Allysia Finley, The Wall Street Journal.

Posted: January 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.