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Community colleges get boost under governor’s revised budget
Community colleges will receive millions more to begin to restore cut classes, rebuild flagging enrollment and strengthen student support services under Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised budget released Tuesday. Brown would add an additional $30 million to the system’s 2013-14 apportionment, raising it to $226.9 million from the Proposition 98 school funding guarantee. Unlike the January budget proposal, however, when Gov. Brown left it to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors to decide how to spend … Read entire article »
Filed under: California Colleges, Community Colleges, Featured, Jerry Brown, Reporting & Analysis, State Budget
Bonds would fund business investment in schools under Steinberg proposal
The leader of the California State Senate says the way to encourage more and stronger bonds between industry and education is through, well, bonds. With California facing a shortage of qualified workers for 21st century jobs, Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg wants to entice businesses to become more involved in job training by asking them to invest in a new type of school bond that would fund programs that infuse career education into traditional academic courses. Businesses … Read entire article »
Filed under: Career Technical Education, College and Career Preparation, Community Colleges, Featured, Internships, Service Learning, Legislature, Bills, Multiple pathways, Multiple Pathways, Partnership Academies, Reporting & Analysis, Twenty-first Century Learning, Workforce preparation
Brown’s efforts to restrict community college financial aid rejected
State Senate and Assembly committees have rejected several controversial elements of Gov. Jerry Brown’s recommendations on financial aid and financing of the state’s community colleges. The Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance on Wednesday voted down one proposal that would have required all community college students seeking a Board of Governor’s fee waiver to first complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA, and another plan that would have required students with more than 90 credits to pay the full cost of community college courses. On Thursday, the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee concurred on two of those actions, holding open a vote on the FAFSA requirement. Nearly 1 million community college students receive a fee waiver at a cost of about $783 million this academic year and, according … Read entire article »
Filed under: College Enrollment, College Loans, Grants, Community Colleges, Jerry Brown, Quick Hits
New scorecards show challenges for state’s community colleges
Students who start community college prepared to take college-level courses have a better than 70 percent chance of earning a degree or certificate or transferring to a four-year college within six years. The outcome is significantly worse for students placed in remedial math or science, with barely 41 percent achieving those goals, according to the first-ever student success scorecards released Tuesday by the systemwide chancellor’s office. The scorecards provide in-depth information for each of the state’s … Read entire article »
Filed under: California Colleges, College and Career Preparation, College Completion, College Remediation, Community Colleges, Featured, Reporting & Analysis, Workforce preparation
Promising signs, potential lessons from Long Beach College Promise
A new way of determining students’ readiness for college courses could be the missing link that will allow the much heralded Long Beach College Promise to fulfill its promise. The College Promise, which celebrated its fifth birthday with the release of a report last week, is a model of cooperation between a K-12 district – Long Beach Unified – and the public colleges it feeds: Long Beach City College and California State University, Long Beach. The … Read entire article »
Filed under: A to G Curriculum, California Colleges, College Completion, College Enrollment, College Remediation, Community Colleges, Reporting & Analysis, UC and CSU
Budget cuts create unprecedented stress on community colleges
A decline of 24 percent in per-student funding over five years has led to a record decline in access to community colleges and has jeopardized the services to those students who are enrolled, an extensive study by the Public Policy Institute of California concluded. Even though there are more potential students who should be served by community colleges, “funding shortfalls throughout the community college system have led to significant reductions in staff, considerably fewer course offerings, and severely restricted enrollment,” write the researchers of “Impact of Budget Cuts on the California Community Colleges,” which was released on Monday. Although, the state’s 112 community colleges were protected more than four-year universities from cuts as a percentage of their budgets, they are more dependent on state revenue because fees comprise a tiny piece of their … Read entire article »
Filed under: California Colleges, College Completion, College Enrollment, Community Colleges, Featured, Quick Hits
UC faculty reject shared online course network
The University of California’s Academic Senate is dead set against a bill by State Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg that would open access to hard-to-get required courses through a statewide network of online courses, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle cites an open letter to UC faculty from Academic Senate Chair Robert Powell and Vice Chair Bill Jacob, saying they have “grave concerns” about Senate Bill 520, which Steinberg unveiled last week. Steinberg wants to expand the authority of the Open Education Resources Panel, which consists of three faculty members from each of the state’s three public college and university systems, from its current role of selecting online textbooks, to allow the panel to approve online courses for the 50 most oversubscribed lower-division classes. … Read entire article »
Filed under: California Colleges, College Enrollment, Community Colleges, Quick Hits, UC and CSU
City College of San Francisco report tells why it should stay open
The day of reckoning is drawing closer for City College of San Francisco. The embattled community college on Friday submitted its final report to the regional accrediting agency detailing what it has done and what it’s continuing to work on to fix the fiscal, structural and governance issues that landed the campus on “show cause” status, the most severe sanction before losing accreditation. “Our desire is that the commission looks at that report and says, ‘Wow … Read entire article »
Filed under: Community Colleges, Reporting & Analysis
Questions surround bill proposing online course network at colleges
California could lead the charge in developing a network of online public college courses open to all students enrolled in the University of California, California State University and the California Community College system. Senate Bill 520, introduced by Senate president pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), would allow the thousands of students shut out of required classes due to budget cuts to enroll in an online version of the course in order to stay on track to … Read entire article »
Filed under: California Colleges, College Completion, College Enrollment, Community Colleges, Featured, Jerry Brown, Legislature, Bills, Reporting & Analysis, UC and CSU
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