This is today’s reality at California State University, Sacramento: Classes are so packed and hard to come by that students have little chance of graduating within the traditional four years. Just 8 percent of first-time, degree-seeking Sacramento State students who started classes in 2007 graduated in 2011, the lowest four-year graduation rate in a decade, according to data from the college… Sacramento State’s four-year graduation rate has long been low, but it was improving before the school, in response to state funding cuts, became stingy about class offerings. Sacramento State has seen a $58 million reduction in state funding over the past five years… The trend greatly affects the finances of students and their parents. Each year at Sacramento State costs about $24,000 for students living on campus, according to university estimates. Lost wages during an extra year in school can range from $20,000 to $50,000, depending on a student’s career path.

Read full article [here].
by Diana Lambert and Phillip Reese, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: August 5th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

A common theme among higher education’s critics is that shared governance is to blame for colleges’ profligate ways, because faculty have too much influence over how money is spent. And the critics are right: Shared governance does play a role. But it is not the “shared” part of “shared governance” that has failed; quite the opposite. The fault lies in the withering away of the shared part. Reason and data alike suggest that the largest part of the problem is that it is administrators and members of governing boards who have too much influence over how resources are used… if it were true that faculty members have too much influence, then all full-time-faculty increases would have been in tenure-track positions, and academic costs would have risen faster than overhead costs. In fact, overhead costs grew faster than academic costs, and institutions economized on the use of tenure-track faculty and spent heavily on overhead staffing.

Read full article [here].
by Robert E. Martin, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: August 5th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The internal affairs investigation into last November’s pepper-spraying controversy at UC Davis concluded that Lt. John Pike acted reasonably, with a subsequent review concluding he should have faced demotion or a suspension at worst, according to documents obtained by The Bee. Despite those recommendations, Pike was fired Tuesday after UC Davis Police Chief Matthew Carmichael rejected the findings and wrote in a letter to Pike that “the needs of the department do not justify your continued employment,” according to the documents… Experts differ on whether a law enforcement leader’s decision to overrule a disciplinary recommendation from an internal affairs panel is common. Former Sacramento Sheriff John McGinness, who said he has overseen more than 100 such investigations, said such moves are extremely rare. “That would be most unusual,” he said. But Michael Risher, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who is suing Pike and the university on behalf of students who were pepper-sprayed, said there are numerous instances where internal affairs investigations have failed to properly discipline officers. “The idea that police departments adequately police themselves has been shown again and again to be a complete fallacy,” said Risher…

Read full article [here].
by Sam Stanton, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: August 2nd, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The Senate under Lockyer also rejected other Wilson appointees to the regents, something the Senate never had done until Lockyer became its leader. The Senate also repeatedly blocked tuition increases, equating them with back-door tax increases. But that happened long ago, when today’s entering college freshmen were still in diapers. Because of term limits, old pols don’t hang around the Legislature forever. But they don’t fade away. Some win statewide offices. Some get sweet appointments. Former Sen. Jack Scott headed the community college system after his time in the Legislature. But unlike Lockyer, Scott had come from the community college system, where he served as president of Pasadena City College. Lockyer’s appointment would take the concept to a new level. He would bring political savvy and knowledge to the job, but no academic training, and that would be a problem

Read full article [here].
by Dan Morain, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: August 1st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California’s community colleges have always operated with an open door, welcoming students of all abilities and aspirations. But that is changing. Over the past few years, the door has been swinging shut because of budget cuts. Classes have been reduced, and space has been limited. In 2009-10, about 133,000 first-time students were unable to register for a single course because of a lack of space at the state’s 112 community colleges… Senate Bill 1456… will be among the proposals legislators consider when they reconvene Aug. 6. One element of the bill is to establish new requirements that community college students must meet to be eligible for a waiver of student fees…

Read full article [here].
by The Editors, The Fresno Bee.

Posted: August 1st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

California State University and its faculty union announced a tentative agreement Tuesday on a four-year contract that provides no pay raises but averts the potential for strikes this fall at the system’s 23 campuses. The deal culminates two years of often contentious negotiations over salary, class sizes, faculty stability and other issues, punctuated by one-day strikes at two campuses in November. Those were the first walkouts since the union was formed in 1983.

Read full article [here].
by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: August 1st, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Moody’s Investors Service’s U.S. Higher Education Mid-Year Outlook, released Thursday, paints a grim picture for higher education in which existing challenges of heightened competition for students, declining revenue sources, and backlogged maintenance get worse, while new problems emerge… The agency says public colleges and universities will have to shift toward a more market-driven approach rather than continuing to act as state agencies, “which means accelerating the pace of tuition increases or enrolling a higher percentage of out-of-state students, and adjusting their operating models to allow for surpluses that can be carried over as cash reserves.”

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

Posted: July 27th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

For a chilling look at what the University of California would look like if it were run by unprincipled economic ethos, look no further than “Public No More.” The title of this new book from business school deans Gary Fethke of the University of Iowa and Andrew Policano of UC Irvine provides an apt summary of the book’s libertarian call to privatize most of what public universities do. That is, it is a call to run these universities much like corporations, and to do so for private benefit rather than the public good.

Read full article [here].
by Peter Navarro, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: July 25th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

UC Berkeley announced Tuesday that it is joining the new online education website founded by Harvard and MIT that offers free, not-for-credit courses to a worldwide audience. The addition of UC Berkeley will give edX its first expansion into a prestigious public university and a foothold on the West Coast away from its Cambridge, Mass., base, officials said… Birgeneau said he did not think joining edX would undercut the University of California system’s own early steps into online education because those concentrate on for-credit courses for tuition-paying UC students, not the worldwide audience that edX seeks… Birgeneau said that UC Berkeley professors could still link their courses to Coursera, a for-profit rival to edX that was founded by two Stanford University professors.

Read full article [here].
by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: July 24th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

With some professors grumbling over the University of California’s expanding online presence, UC Berkeley is joining two of its top competitors to bring free college courses to the masses. The university will offer two free online classes this fall as part of the edX collaboration, which also includes Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. UC Berkeley employees were told about the partnership Monday. The edX venture is Berkeley’s latest foray into the MOOC, or massive open online course, arena. The school already offers classes with Coursera, another free program that also includes Stanford, Princeton and the University of Michigan.

Read full article [here].
by Matt Krupnick, The San Jose Mercury News.

Posted: July 24th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.