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How do you spell tuition relief?

Byuclafaculty

Apparently, M-I-D-D-L-E  C-L-A-S-S  S-C-H-O-L-A-R-S-H-I-P:

From the Contra Costa Times: With the governor’s signature this week, California college students from middle-income families will soon be in line for a tuition discount. The state-funded Middle Class Scholarship will buffer tens of thousands of students from UC’s and Cal State’s frequent and unpredictable fee hikes… When the program begins in 2014 it will bring some relief to California’s middle-class families who have watched helplessly in recent years as public tuition and fees have nearly doubled since 2007. It will offer sliding-scale discounts of up to 40 percent for families who earn $150,000 or less and don’t qualify for Cal Grants, which support lower-income students. It was a separate bill signed Monday as part of the state budget… About 130,000 public university undergraduates each year will be eligible, according to the state’s estimate…

(O)bservers note that the scholarship is just another patch on the state’s education finance predicament… Even at the maximum discounted rate of 40 percent, a student pays more than in 2008-09. The scholarship covers only systemwide tuition and fees — not room and board, living expenses, textbooks or campus fees, which average nearly $20,000 a year. And, given the state’s perennial budget gyrations, the scholarship could prove an unreliable financial aid. If the governor’s May budget proposal shows a deficit, the program’s funding — $305 million when fully implemented in 2017 — could drop by as much as one third…
Full story at www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_23607228/california-middle-class-scholarships-soon-available-college-students.

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Spotlight on Speech Codes, 2022

Byadmin

Fire (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has just released its yearly summary of the state of free speech at 481 public and private colleges and universities in the United States. FIRE defines free speech as “the overwhelming majority of speech protected by the First Amendment.” Few exceptions exist. The survey addresses a wide variety of issues with relevance to free speech, including: Free Speech Zone PoliciesPrior RestraintsSecurity Fee PoliciesPolicies Governing Speakers, Demonstrations, and RalliesPolicies on Bias and Hate SpeechInternet Usage PoliciesPolicies on Tolerance, Respect, and CivilityBullying PoliciesThreats and IntimidationHarassmentPolicies on Bias and Hate SpeechObscenityIncitement The report is both disappointing…

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Report: Affordable Public Higher Education is Possible Today

Byuclafaculty

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…

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Listen to Part of the Regents Afternoon Session of 1-22-2014

Byuclafaculty

As we have noted in numerous prior posts, the Regents refuse to archive their meetings beyond one year.  So we dutifully record the sessions in real time.  Below is a link to part of the afternoon session of Jan. 22.  This segment is mainly the Committee on Educational Policy.  Gov. Brown was in attendance.  We will separately (later) provide links just to certain Brown segments.  But for now, we provide a continuous recording. There was discussion of designating certain areas of UC-Merced as nature reserves, followed by discussion of a new telescope.  The discussion then turned to online ed and…

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Tradition!

Byuclafaculty

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…

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Oversize Load?

Byuclafaculty

From the Sacramento Bee: …(T)the University of California’s academic student workers union recently filed a complaint against the UC Office of the President demanding that discussions about class size be a part of their contract negotiations. The union has been bargaining with UC since last summer, and its contract expired at the end of the year… The UC Student-Workers Union, which represents more than 12,000 teaching assistants, tutors and readers across the UC system, is seeking a regular forum to talk about class size with faculty and UC management, said Josh Brahinsky, a Ph.D. candidate in the history of consciousness…

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Contemplating Tuition, Motherhood, and Apple Pie

Byuclafaculty

Tuition is being studied up in Oakland by the UC prez, according to yesterday’s Daily Bruin: …“I want tuition to be as low as possible, and I want it to be as predictable as possible,” Napolitano said at a UC Board of Regents meeting in November.   In a recent Google Hangout with students from various UC campuses, students asked Napolitano to talk about her current work in reforming the UC’s tuition policy.  They also asked Napolitano how she plans to include student ideas in the reorganization of the tuition plan. Napolitano did not specify how student input would be…