Hundreds of thousands of applicants to California State University campuses this year will be receiving a warning instead of the typical warm note thanking them for their interest. The spots they are hoping to fill next year, the prospective students will be cautioned, could evaporate if the governor’s push to raise taxes in November fails. The letter also will say no admissions decisions will be made until a few weeks after the election, a departure from the usual policy of notifying applicants beginning in October… Anti-tax advocates say CSU is using government resources for a political campaign, which is illegal. On Friday, Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Assn., sent a letter to university officials asserting that their plan appeared to run afoul of the law.
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by Evan Halper, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: September 15th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Students have long contended that the $22 billion university has enough hidden caches of money to stop its steady tuition increases. UC insists it doesn’t. Yet the brainstorming session showed there are ways to squeeze more from the sponge. Tuition was not on the table. But Yudof has said a hike is all but inevitable if voters reject Proposition 30, a tax measure on the November ballot that would trigger a $250 million cut to UC if it fails. The university did not release its ideas in advance, so few students or employees showed up to weigh in. Yudof noted that student Regent Jonathan Stein and the student regent-designate, Cinthia Flores, helped develop the recommendations. “Needless to say, they don’t endorse all of them,” he said. Especially distasteful to the students was the idea of allowing up to 20 percent of undergraduates to come from outside the state. The current cap is 10 percent.
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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: September 14th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Like many college students in California, Nichols is worried there will soon be fewer open slots at public universities for a certain kind of student — California residents… Wendy Brown, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley, said the enrollment caps and nonresident recruitment are both part of a “cascade of side effects” from disinvestment at the state level. In addition to the more publicized battles over tuition hikes, Brown said there’s a deeper transformation happening at the university, and she worries it will erode public support.
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by Tyler Kingkade, The Huffington Post.
Posted: September 13th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
When states cut funding to public higher education, universities usually raise tuition. That’s nothing new. What is new is the trend of administrators deciding to seek more out-of-state students to shore up their revenue. States have long been slicing away higher ed appropriations, which has declined nationwide since 1985 and has led to a 559 percent increase in the cost to attend college. However, there’s only so much they can raise tuition. Now state colleges are increasingly looking for non-residents, who pay a tuition bill sometimes as much as three times higher than in-state residents who are subsidized by state dollars.
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by Tyler Kingkade, The Huffington Post.
Posted: September 12th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
A powerful committee of the UC system’s faculty senate recently voted to suspend its review of the Anderson School of Management’s plan and raised questions about the proposal’s budget, its effect on educational quality and affordability for students, and possible undue influence by donors. The panel also said that current UC rules for starting self-supporting programs would not allow such a change for a pre-existing, full-time master’s degree in business administration. UC officials said it was unclear what the next step would be. Some said UC President Mark G. Yudof could in theory still approve the funding change but that he was unlikely to do so without faculty support.
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by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: September 5th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The California State University faculty has overwhelmingly approved a new four-year labor contract, ending more than two years of contentious bargaining with the administration, the union said Tuesday. Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association, said the contract, which largely preserves current working conditions and contains no salary raises, won 91 percent of approval by voting members. About 45 percent of the union’s 12,500 voting members cast ballots over several weeks last month. Many faculty members were out of town on research assignments, Taiz said. The contract, which must still be ratified by the university’s board of trustees at its meeting later this month…
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by Christina Hoag, The Press Democrat.
Posted: September 4th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The recent surge of interest in MOOC’s suggests that some colleges hope that offering such courses is a kind of inoculation against the effects of technological disruption, and many institutions are feeling tremendous pressure to join the elite group of colleges that has staked a claim in this area. It is not clear, though, whether every college has weighed the costs and benefits of membership in what is now, at least, a particularly exclusive club. The speed with which announcements of new MOOC initiatives have emerged in the last few months seems reminiscent of the period in 2007-8 that saw a number of colleges follow the lead of Princeton in eliminating loans from their financial-aid packages. The need to become a “no-loan” institution was suddenly talked about at board meetings across the country, and every month another prestigious college proudly announced that its financial aid would consist entirely of grants. There was much less fanfare when, following the recession of 2008, a number of colleges had to eliminate their no-loan policies.
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by Alison Byerly, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: September 3rd, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Professors say students are desperate even for a seat on a lecture hall floor. “One student broke into tears because she couldn’t get a class to meet the minimum requirements for financial aid,” said Jonathan Karpf, an anthropology lecturer at San Jose State University, where his classload has increased from 40 students to 60, and he still can’t accommodate the demand. The crunch has forced some students to alter their academic aspirations… Students are also frustrated with changing admissions policies. While CSU is not admitting most in-state students for the spring, it will admit non-California residents, who pay higher tuition. Similarly, UC has allotted more slots to non-California residents for the same reason. Out-of-state UC students pay almost triple the in-state tuition rate. University officials say the out-of-state students help subsidize in-state students, but local students say they feel betrayed.
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by Christina Hoag, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: September 1st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
In his resignation letter and in an interview with The Bee, Van Alfen said the end of his tenure as dean was prompted by Katehi’s decision in late July to start her search for a new dean two years before Van Alfen’s current term was to expire. Katehi “indicated what her intentions were,” Van Alfen said. “It was up to the provost (Hexter) and I to have a discussion and reach a resolution.” Van Alfen said Katehi asked him to serve until a replacement was found, but he declined… MacDonald, in a separate letter Tuesday, announced he was walking away in protest of Katehi’s move to find a new dean for the college. He will resign today. “I was frustrated with the push for an early end to (Van Alfen’s) term,” MacDonald said in an interview Thursday, adding that he had a “fundamental disagreement” with Katehi’s decision.
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by Darrell Smith, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: August 31st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Nearly a half million students have been shut out of California community colleges since 2008 – a 17 percent drop in enrollment – as budget cuts have forced schools to limit the number of courses they can offer, a new survey of the campuses shows. “We’ve lost more students than are enrolled at all California State University campuses combined,” said Chancellor Jack Scott, who presides over the state’s 112 community colleges. The survey this month of California’s colleges by the chancellor’s office showed that, since 2008, the number of courses has declined by 24 percent statewide as the system was drained of $809 million, 12 percent of its funding.
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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: August 29th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
