California State University

Leaders of California's public college and university systems announced Wednesday that they are launching a joint task force to boost the number of community college students who transfer to the state's four-year universities. Only 14,000 of the 2.7 million students enrolled in the state's 110 community colleges transfer to University of California campuses, and 55,000 others move on to California State University campuses.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday proposed two sets of budget revisions to deal with the state's financial troubles. They contain an array of grim options: Education The governor's cuts would start at $3 billion and rise to $5.3 billion if voters fail to pass the package of ballot propositions in Tuesday's special election. More than $1 billion would come from the current school year, which is nearly over.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to slash higher education funding by about 10% would deny education to tens of thousands of qualified students and have a devastating long-term effect on the state's economy, university and college leaders said Wednesday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to dismantle the Cal Grant program would make California the first state in the recession-battered nation to eliminate student financial aid while raising college tuition, experts said this week. "Other states are cutting back, but not a complete phase-out," said Haley Chitty, communications director for the National Assn. of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

In the spirit of the New Reality of today's world, I'd like to propose a change in the California state motto. Instead of "Eureka (I have found it)," which lately has been sounding a little threadbare, how about this one, derived from the glide path of our public systems of higher education: "California -- penny-wise, pound-foolish"?

California's two enormous public university systems could face student fee increases, enrollment caps, reduced class offerings and possible layoffs of part-time instructors if the governor's deficit-cutting budget is adopted. The plan calls for most student fees to rise by 10% at the 23-campus Cal State system and by 7.4% at the 10-campus UC system.

The chancellor of the Cal State University system announced Wednesday that he would allow seven campuses to extend by one month an unusually early application deadline that was initially imposed on potential freshmen because of the state's budget crisis. Charles B. Reed, head of the 23-campus system, earlier this month had ordered all the schools to close their freshman application windows on Feb. 1 as a way to reduce enrollment growth that would not be funded under Gov.

Tens of thousands of Los Angeles students could be on the brink of being qualified to apply to the state's four-year universities, according to a report made public Monday. The report's authors asserted that huge numbers of students could, with the right advice and academic assistance, become bound for the University of California and Cal State University systems. The bad news is that, in too many cases, they aren't getting this help.

Jaime Ulloa Jr. is going to make it -- his deadline, that is. The 17-year-old Carson High School senior made sure Tuesday that he electronically filed his Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a final step in his college application process. But thousands of other California students could miss an important deadline -- and that's what state officials apparently want them to do.

A Quaker math instructor who was fired by Cal State East Bay after she refused on religious grounds to sign a state loyalty oath has been reinstated, university officials said Friday. Marianne Kearney-Brown, a pacifist, was concerned that signing the oath to "support and defend" the California and U.S. constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic" could commit her to take up arms. She was fired Feb.