The University of California consistently attracts the country’s best and brightest, pays those professors well, and rarely sees any of them quit to take another job, a pattern that hasn’t changed despite the recession and years of budget cuts, according to a nonpartisan state report released Thursday… Now it’s up to the state Legislature to decide whether to back a UC budget that not only includes raises for those folks, but also funding for a lot more faculty to accommodate increased student enrollment while also reducing faculty-student ratios, the report found. “We chose this topic because the faculty is central to the university’s education and research missions, and there have been concerns about their recruitment/retention due to budget cuts and the recession,” said Paul Golaszewski, who prepared the report.
Read full article [here].
by Jill Tucker, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: December 13th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
A week after imploring California’s universities to resist another round of tuition hikes, Gov. Jerry Brown focused his plea for frugality on another target Tuesday: a $50,000 pay hike for UC Berkeley’s incoming chancellor. Brown’s objection to the salary for Berkeley’s new chancellor, Nicholas Dirks, failed to sway UC regents who approved the Columbia University dean’s appointment with a $486,800 base salary and a nearly $9,000 annual car allowance… UC Regent George Kieffer said that while he disagreed with Brown that Dirks’ pay package was too high, he felt it was appropriate for the governor to dig into the issues and ask tough questions. “I think he is as much focused, if not more focused, on other issues in the university: Where is higher education going, and can higher education sustain itself on the kinds of revenues we’ve had before?” Kieffer said. “I think he’s trying to lead carefully in that area, recognizing that he doesn’t want to do damage to what’s perceived to be the greatest public higher education system in the world.” Dirks was making about $500,000 at Columbia, Yudof said.
Read full article [here].
by Katy Murphy, The Oakland Tribune.
Posted: November 27th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
University of California regents drew criticism from Gov. Jerry Brown today as they hired Nicholas Dirks to be the next chancellor of UC Berkeley and agreed to pay him a salary $50,000 higher than outgoing chancellor Robert Birgeneau. “The $50,000 increase above the incumbent, even though that incumbent has not received a pay raise, does not fit within the spirit of servant leadership that I think will be required over the next several years… We are going to have to restrain this system in many, many of its elements and this will come with great resistance,” Brown said. Regent George Kieffer said the salary was appropriate for the leader of the “number one public university in the world” and that UC has demonstrated a commitment to keeping salaries down. UC officials provided a salary survey of the nation’s top universities showing that its chancellors are paid in the bottom third of the group. “We’ve already begun to attempt to draw down this disparity in incomes and this growth of compensation at the executive level,” Kieffer said.
Read full article [here].
by Laurel Rosenhall, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: November 27th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
University systems in Arizona, California, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire have proposed to hold the line on tuition for state residents in exchange for a steady or increased stream of tax dollars. State legislatures will meet in January to consider the plans. The strategy follows years of increases. Tuition and fees jumped 15% between 2008 and 2010, led by increases of more than 40% at universities that include those in Arizona and California, according to a 2012 U.S. Department of Education report. In California, where tuition was frozen this fall, voters approved a temporary sales and income tax increase, avoiding a possible 20% midyear tuition hike. Sandy Baum, author of the College Board’s annual report on tuition trends, argues a moderate, predictable rate of growth in tuition over the long term helps students more than a short-term freeze. Schools may have to start freezing tuition, regardless of state funding, because middle-class families are increasingly vocal about college costs, adds Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor who has studied the issue.
Read full article [here].
by Jens Krogstad, USA Today.
Posted: November 11th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The ostensible aim of the fees – providing “incentives” to students not to take too many courses or repeat courses, so slots can open for other students – can be handled through enrollment priorities and other policies. In reality, the proposed fees are an “ambition penalty” on students who want to graduate early or on time or pursue a double major or high-unit major (such as engineering). Even worse, these fees favor wealthier students who can afford to pay, creating differential access to courses. And the proposed fees do nothing to deal with the real problem, which is that students often cannot get classes they need for their major – so they take whatever classes they can get in order to keep financial aid. That is the problem the new chancellor will need to tackle. Reed’s proposed fees are simply an insult to Californians, a thumb in their eye after they voted to pass Proposition 30.
Read full article [here].
by The Editorial Board, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: November 11th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Proposition 30, the statewide tax measure backed by Gov. Jerry Brown, will prevent automatic spending cuts to higher education, public schools and other state programs. Failure would have immediately cost City College $10.3 million in state funding, college officials said. The measure needed a simple majority, and clearly surpassed that with 99 percent of state precincts reporting. San Francisco’s Prop. A will assess $79 per parcel on property owners to raise about $14 million a year for the college, expiring in eight years. The measure exceeded the necessary two-thirds vote of approval… The threat of bankruptcy is just one of the critical problems City College faces. The school could be forced to close next year unless it can correct a list of deficiencies and operating problems, including a pattern of overspending, that threaten its accreditation.
Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: November 7th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
After four consecutive years of appropriations cuts, tuition increases, constricted enrollment, and concern that one of the best systems of higher education was suffering a death by a million cuts, higher education leaders in California got a bit of good news Tuesday night when state voters passed a tax hike that averts what many called potentially disastrous cuts… The measure’s passage is not a panacea for the problems California higher education faces. Because the measure was designed to address previous cuts, and because the state is still struggling with multiple fiscal challenges, including entitlement and public safety costs, there is a a chance that the state’s colleges and universities could see further cuts in coming years.
Read full article [here].
by Kevin Kiley, Inside Higher Education.
Posted: November 7th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Democrats were long expected to gain a two-thirds advantage in the Senate, but Assembly Speaker John Pérez had downplayed expectations that the party could win a supermajority in the lower house. The party’s apparent capture of at least 54 seats in the Assembly and 27 in the Senate would mark the first time in nearly 80 years that one party controlled two-thirds of both houses, according to Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg. The win not only hands Democrats control of the executive and legislative branches, but gives legislative leaders far more power, including the ability to override vetoes by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
Read full article [here].
by Marisa Lagos, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: November 7th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Proposition 30 had an 8 percentage point lead Wednesday morning, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Seventy-two percent of voters handily rejected a rival measure, Proposition 38. Brown’s tax measure has been his central focus since his election two years ago and will have major implications for the state’s finances. If it had been defeated, nearly $6 billion in automatic spending cuts, falling almost entirely on public schools, would have been automatically enacted under the budget approved by lawmakers earlier this year… “I know some people had some doubts, had some questions – can you really go to people and ask them to raise their tax?” Brown said. He added that he believes California is the only state where voters said, “Let’s raise our taxes for students, for our schools, for our California dream.”
Read full article [here].
by Wyatt Buchanan, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: November 7th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
After dodging the deep budget cuts to higher education prevented by passage of the Proposition 30 tax measure, relieved administrators are already looking to next year’s budgets – and possible price hikes at the University of California and California State University. Votes on fee increases are expected next week by each governing board… The UC regents will vote next week in San Francisco on whether to raise fees for seven professional degree programs on top of basic tuition, including a 35 percent increase for nursing students. Four other programs, including “translational medicine” at Berkeley and San Francisco, could see extra fees for the first time. The regents will also vote on a 2013-14 budget that would raise overall tuition by an unspecified amount unless the state augments UC’s budget by $126.5 million… CSU trustees will vote in Long Beach on whether to raise fees on three groups of students: those who linger at school after being eligible to graduate, who take extra classes, or who take the same class multiple times. CSU said it has had to turn away many students and hopes to free up space by encouraging thousands to move steadily through school.
Posted: November 7th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
