Dick Walker & Gray Brechin have written a provocative op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle on the need for the Obama Administration to launch another New Deal, well beyond what has yet been done. Food for thought. Walker&Brechin-New DealCA-OpEd
The Master Plan at 50: Assessing California’s Vision for Higher Education We’ve added a link to a new report from the state’s Legislative Analyst Office on the state’s master plan for higher education. It provides a brief but succinct overview of the plan, talks about how out of alignment the system now is relative to the plan, then throws out some rather alarming suggestions for rethinking the plan. Good lord! Forget about access and affordability and do more testing! No student left behind – unless you can’t get in or can’t afford to come! Faculty need to think through these things before they get thought through for us! Chris Rosen
Where Does UC Tuition Go? by Bob Meister, President, Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) Professor of Political and Social Thought, UC Santa Cruz UC feels free to use Educational Fees however it pleases without accountability. That’s why it can pledge “ed fees” as collateral for construction bonds and use them to pay debt service.[1] In the past week, I have discovered another, equally disturbing, consequence of UC’s refusal to be accountable for its use of “ed fees:” It has allowed (or perhaps more accurately used) the rapid growth in “ed fees” to dramatically increase the disparities in the per student funds it provides to each campus. As tuition rises, students are not getting what they think they are paying [...]
From CUCFA President Bob Meister: SUPPORT ACCESSIBLE HIGH QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA California’s public higher education is at a turning point due to the state’s systematic defunding of the Community College, Cal State, and University of California systems. Most immediately, the University of California Regents will vote at their November 17-19 meeting on a proposal to increase student fees by 32% over the next year. This fee increase would be in addition to the 9.3% increase that took effect at the beginning of the 2009/2010 academic year. UC student fees have more than doubled in the last decade, and with the proposed increase the cost to attend the UC will have tripled since 2000/2001. Meanwhile, in all three systems, [...]
SAVE created a petition to the Regents, who are meeting Nov. 18-20, to delay the fee hikes to consider all possible alternatives. http://www.saveuc.org/petition_fees.php