The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

Traditional College Summer Semester Is In Jeopardy For California's Public Institutions

Johnnica Hababag planned to take two classes this summer so she could transfer from Los Angeles Valley College to a four-year school. But those plans were upended when she learned that the community college had all but canceled its summer session because of budget cuts. She is one of thousands of students up and down the state shut out of classes this summer as funding cuts force many of California's public colleges to cancel or severely reduce offerings. Summer school has traditionally provided an outlet for students to help speed progress toward a degree or to transfer — or just to stay on track. But budget reductions this year have forced many public colleges to shift priorities. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-college-summer-20120527,0,5544208.story

Public Universities Look To Online Education To Deal With Shrinking Resources

Budget cutbacks to state universities appear to be speeding ongoing efforts to increase online education as resources shrink and timely access to prerequisite classes becomes more difficult. Educators are increasingly looking to online courses as a way to handle more students with less funding.The development of hybrid online courses, in collaboration with faculty in recent years, has helped more students move past "bottleneck courses" - classes in which there aren't enough faculty to handle large numbers of students. Read more:
http://www.sbsun.com/ci_20714014/public-universities-expand-web-education-offerings#ixzz1wGeQNZGp

 

California's Community Colleges Might Be Facing The Knockout Blow

The drain of education dollars from California's community colleges has raised the specter of campus closures or receiverships, a state college budget officer says. The comment came as the local colleges look at the uncertain fate of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax measure on the November ballot. A defeat there could become a knockout blow for some campuses that have been absorbing cuts and dipping into reserve funds over the past three years. All of California's interlocked higher education systems — the University of California, the California State University and the community colleges — have been hit hard by the state's fiscal problems, but community colleges perhaps most of all. Tasked with job training, remedial education and transferring students to universities, the schools receive less money per student than either the universities or K-12 schools. Read more at:
http://www.montereyherald.com/state/ci_20725733/budget-official-fate-community-colleges-fragile

While Public Higher Education Funding Is Slashed For-Profits Grow On Student Loans

The volume of federally guaranteed student loans to students at so-called proprietary colleges — the ones that intend to operate at a profit and get nearly all their revenue from the government — continues to grow. At the same time, state and local governments across the country are slashing spending on higher education, and community colleges — the ones most likely to offer alternatives to the students recruited by the far more expensive proprietary schools — are suffering some of the largest reductions. That trend has been welcome news to the proprietary colleges. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/business/us-subsidies-to-for-profit-colleges-keep-growing.html?ref=business 

 

The Libraries Are Transforming To The Library At UC San Diego

Thousands of students, faculty, staff and community members use the UC San Diego Libraries every day.  The Libraries provide more than 7 million digital and print volumes, journals and multimedia materials, and its resources and services are accessed on the Web almost 90,000 times a day.  Ever-evolving shifts in user needs and the continuous decline in state funding, have led the Libraries to implement a number of changes, including the consolidation of some library buildings and collections.  Brian E. C. Schottlaender, who joined the campus in 1999 as University Librarian and is the first holder of The Audrey Geisel University Librarianship, talks about the challenges and opportunities that come with organizational change, and how the Libraries will be transitioning over the next year. Read more at:
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/features/qa_with_brian_schottlaender/

Higher Ed Is Wasting Money On 'Keeping Up With The Joneses'

Competition, we are constantly told, encourages individuals, institutions and companies to take the risks necessary for innovation and efficiency. But in higher education, competition often discourages risk taking, leads to overly cautious short-term decisions, produces a mediocre product for the price, and promotes excessive spending on physical plants and bureaucracies. It’s about “keeping up with the Joneses,” an official at Wright State University said in a Dayton Daily News article last fall detailing why colleges in Ohio were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on student centers and other nonacademic attractions in a down economy. Read more at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-17/competition-is-killing-higher-education-part-1-.html

Out-Of-State College Students Are One Solution For State Budget Cuts

Pinched by state budget cuts, the University of California system has set its sights on a lesser tapped resource: well-off students from beyond the Golden State. The system accepted nearly twice as many non-California freshmen for this fall as it did two years ago, opening its doors to students willing to pay a premium to attend the state's top universities. UC officials are aggressively courting non-resident students through college fairs and highschool counselors.  The UC Students Association says the push robs in-state students of access and prioritizes affluent families who can afford private-school tuition levels. Read more at:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html#storylink=cpy

Linking Funding To Performance May Improve Graduation Rates

At a time when American higher education is under fire for dismal graduation rates that have eroded the nation's leadership in college degree-holders, this public university in western Pennsylvania will graduate a record number of students, and do so more quickly than in years past. That's because Slippery Rock has built in aggressive new measures to help students succeed — and eliminated many obstacles that make success so elusive almost everywhere else. Slippery Rock may be the poster child for a resurgent idea called "performance funding," which pays public universities to meet goals set by increasingly results-conscious state legislatures.  Read more at: 

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2113097,00.html#ixzz1tGQWjfEs

New Jersey's Colleges Have A Huge Deferred Maintenance Problem

Leaky ceilings raining down on chemistry equipment. Power failures. Classrooms originally built for elementary-school students. Steam plumes exploding out of the sidewalks. The infrastructure woes of New Jersey's public universities have emerged as a serious problem for the 467,000-student system, causing state schools to lose students and top professors to other states. But the higher-education money has snagged on an issue roiling New Jersey politics: a proposal by Gov. Chris Christie to merge two public schools in the Philadelphia area, Rutgers University-Camden and nearby Rowan University. Read more at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577322150982685224.html?mod=ITP_newyork_0

Public Universities Should Shift To An Entrepreneurial Path As Funding Erodes

Many would argue, and we would agree, that despite global competition, the system of higher education in the U.S. remains the best in the world. As state funds continue to diminish, public universities can select a strategic alternative: They can choose to follow an entrepreneurial path to become “public no more,” with more financial self-reliance and less dependence on entitlement and internal subsidy. As business schools and other areas of the university have shown, this path can lead to academic excellence in a financially sustainable framework, but it requires making some tough choices. Read more at:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-30/public-no-more-why-the-b-school-model-works