UC should recruit higher-paying students from out of state over the next five years to take the place of thousands of in-state students, an influential commission that advises the UC regents decided Tuesday in San Francisco. The commission said that UC enrolls about 15,000 California students beyond what the state pays for, and the university would do better financially with more out-of-state students. "This could be done without displacing students for whom the state is providing funding," said UC Provost Larry Pitts, who serves on the UC Commission on the Future. [Article]
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle. 2010-09-01
According to June 2010 statistics, Americans owe more money in student loans than they do on their credit cards. As of two months ago, student loan debt was at $829.785 billion, while credit card debt was at $826.5 billion... Another reason behind this depressing milestone could be because of changes to the federal bankruptcy law in 2005 which has made it “nearly impossible to discharge student loans in a bankruptcy,” according to Robert Baker, director of education at Housing and Credit Counseling Inc. [Article]
by Staff, College Scholarships.org. 2010-08-31
The University of California is standing at the threshold of the brave, new world of cyber-teaching with a pilot project to put 25 to 40 undergraduate courses online as early as 2011... But the UC Academic Senate special committee on remote and online instruction, in recommending the move, added a caveat, emphasizing that it sees no "broad evidence that the nurturing of critical thinking, the teaching of research skills ... and development of community and global values can be cultivated outside the framework of face-to-face interaction between student and teacher." [Article]
by Cynthia Lee, UCLA Today. 2010-08-31
The vast problem now facing the UC began in 1990 with the decision by the UC Board of Regents to stop paying into the system altogether. With California struggling to bridge billion-dollar deficits during that recession, both UC and state leaders decided to save money by ceasing payments, instead banking on the assumption that the program - which had been so well managed in previous decades that it was significantly overfunded - would continue to pay for the thousands of pensions. [Article]
by Jordan Bach-Lombardo and Javier Panzar, The Daily Californian. 2010-08-30
The money spent on the house came from a private endowment. It was a relatively small sum for a $20 billion, 180,000-employee public university that supports 10 campuses, five medical centers and a national laboratory. But the lavish spending and the numerous hours spent by university officials managing Mr. Yudof's personal affairs have chafed some members of his team. "He essentially turned the Office of the President into his personal staff," a university official said. Much of the activity took place out of public view. The Office of the President filed at least six reports of "interim actions" related to the house that took place between public meetings of the Board of Regents. [Article]
by Steve Fainaru, The New York Times. 2010-08-21