Each year, yours truly does a chapter on the state budget for California Policy Options. A draft of the chapter for the 2013 edition which takes the story up through the end of August is now available at:
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/fac/hrob/round_two_on_the_Budget_CPO_2013.pdf
The deepening pandemic depression is going to have a profound impact on the University of California budget. Unprecedented unemployment, lagging state revenue, and massive campus losses associated with remote learning make it clear that we are looking at a replay of the 2008 crisis, at least. To stay up to date on the growing crisis,
A report this week from Reclaim California Higher Education (a coalition of faculty and student groups) makes the case that affordable (even free) higher education is within reach for California. The privatization experiment has failed. The harm to a generation of hard-working, high-aiming young people is proven. It’s time to return to what works: the proven Master Plan for higher education in California. California, with its own resources, can afford to restore top-quality, accessible, affordable college and university opportunity to every qualified student. In fact, Californians can afford nothing less. You can read a summary and download the entire report…
Our previous post covered the Jan. 22 meeting of the Regents’ Committee on Educational Policy. As noted, there was discussion of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, considered a major accomplishment of Brown’s father when he was governor. Below is a link to Brown’s comments in which he suggested the Plan was now dated. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RmjI4gVync?feature=player_detailpage]
The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) has issued a report on UC and CSU funding. LAO is usually viewed as a neutral agency. But it is a component of the legislature. So it tends to favor approaches that add to legislative control as opposed to, say, gubernatorial control. This report is no exception. LAO seems to want to return to what it terms the “traditional” approach to funding, but with bells and whistles added to monitor legislative goals. The traditional approach seems to be one focused on undergraduate enrollment. But in fact the tradition – such as it is – has…
The cash statement from the California state controller for the first seven months of fiscal year 2013-14 is out. Revenues are up about 1% from last year at this time. That gain is not very good. However, it may be largely due to an aberration last fiscal year when there was a surge of personal income tax revenue in January 2013. The surge seemed to have something to do with antics back then in Washington over fiscal cliffs, etc., which might have resulted in some tax changes (but didn’t). The current DC crisis de jour is the debt ceiling, but…
[More in our Regents coverage. See earlier posts.] The Regents spent some time on the old Master Plan for Higher Ed. There was discussion, according to news reports, among representatives of UC, CSU, and the community colleges on better coordination. …“This report shines an important light on the need to have a central body whose sole focus is guiding the Legislature, governor and our three higher education segments as we plan and build for the future,” (Assembly speaker John Pérez) said. Full story at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-college-reports-20140123,0,5215408.story Um, does no one remember CPEC, which still exists in ghostly form as a website…
