Enrollments

The parent company of Anthem Blue Cross, California's largest health insurer, posted an eightfold increase in profit for the fourth quarter and projected solid earnings for this year despite a recent softening in enrollments and revenue from premiums. WellPoint Inc., the nation's largest health insurer by membership, earned $2.7 billion, or $5.95 a share, for the final three months of last year, compared with profit of $331.4 million, or 65 cents a share, for the same period the previous year.

Galaxy goalkeeper Josh Saunders, who left the team a month ago to enroll in Major League Soccer's substance abuse and behavioral health program, was back on the training field Tuesday. But it's unclear how long it will be before he can play again. Saunders, who held the Houston Dynamo scoreless in last November's MLS Cup final, said he was not being treated for drug or alcohol abuse, attributing his absence to personal issues. "I was under some stress," said Saunders, 31, who started this season as a starting keeper for the first time in his eight-year MLS career.

Finally, the Ventura County Community College District Board of Trustees and administrators are waking up to the disaster of declining student enrollments that have been plaguing higher education for the past 18 months. Forgotten by them is the basic fact that our students are the lifeblood of the educational industry. Simply, more students mean more money. Therefore, when we begin to treat our students less like tokens and more like customers, our enrollments will start to increase.

Re "Fewer in state enter CSU, UC campuses," May 10 When I started teaching high school in California 30 years ago, I thought my students had it pretty good. Now I feel sorry for students. They're pushed and tested, spending days of the high school year taking so many exams, most of which have no significance for them personally. They're cajoled and threatened that they must go to college, even if it means taking on big debt. And now we're refusing to accommodate our own California residents, increasingly favoring out-of-state students because they pay more.

Students concerned about remedial courses at Cal State Northridge should demand a massive cutback in their so-called general education requirements. Today those requirements have grown to almost 70 units, and the funds produced by GE freshman-sophomore enrollments now support a dizzying variety of politically oriented special-interest academic departments. CSUN's explosive growth in GE requirements has been paralleled by an equally explosive increase in tuition during the last 12 years.

Nearly 18 months after passage of the national healthcare overhaul, American employers say they are providing health benefits for growing numbers of people as they extend coverage to their workers' adult children, a new survey finds. The federal healthcare law allows young adults up to age 26 to stay on their parents' health plans. As a result, employers say they have seen an average 2% increase in insurance enrollments, with some saying the figure has jumped by 5% or more, according to the survey by benefits consulting firm Mercer.

Angelica Garza and Amy Abraham are spending the weekend at Virginia Military Institute to learn what life will be like as "Sister Rats." VMI's first male-female open house since deciding to admit women a month ago included a tour of the 157-year-old campus, a night spent on wooden cots--and television cameras, of course. "I don't see what the big deal is," Abraham said. "We're just normal people who are wanting to look at a great college." The U.S.

Facing uncertain budget prospects, California State University officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at most campuses and to wait-list all applicants the following fall pending the outcome of a proposed tax initiative on the November ballot. The university is moving to reduce enrollment to deal with $750 million in funding cuts already made in the 2011-12 fiscal year and position itself for at least an additional $200-million cut next year if the tax proposal fails.

Alabama set a new national standard for get-tough immigration policy Thursday with Gov. Robert J. Bentley's signing of a law that surpasses Arizona's SB 1070, with provisions affecting law enforcement, transportation, apartment rentals, employment and education. The new law, combined with legislation passed in May by neighboring Georgia, has arguably made this swath of the Deep South the nation's hottest immigration battleground, with the region's troubled racial history fueling the fire.

Facing a state funding cut of up to 10%, California's community colleges will enroll 400,000 fewer students next fall and slash thousands of classes to contend with budget shortfalls that threaten to reshape their mission, officials said Wednesday. The dire prognosis was in response to the breakdown in budget talks in Sacramento and the likelihood that the state's 112 community colleges will be asked to absorb an $800-million funding reduction for the coming school year — double the amount suggested in Gov. Jerry Brown's current budget proposal.

The number of eligible California high school graduates entering the state's public four-year universities has plunged in the last five years, as budget-strapped institutions increasingly adopt practices to reduce enrollment, a new study has found. At University of California and California State University campuses, enrollment rates dropped by one-fifth, to fewer than 18% of all state high school graduates in 2010, from about 22% in 2007. The report, released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that these declines have occurred even as demand has risen: The number of high school graduates in California reached an all-time high of 405,000 in 2010; the number of seniors who completed college admission requirements increased dramatically, as did the number of students taking and passing Advanced Placement exams.

Goalkeeper Josh Saunders will be lost to the Galaxy for an indefinite period after being enrolled in Major League Soccer's substance abuse and behavioral health program. The Galaxy was informed Friday that Saunders would be unavailable to play until he completes a treatment protocol. Team officials insisted Tuesday that Saunders did not fail a league-administered drug test but have been evasive in explaining his absence. Saunders missed Saturday's tie with FC Dallas and is unavailable for Wednesday night's match in Seattle, with Galaxy Coach Bruce Arena saying only that the keeper was missing for "personal reasons.

Health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. reported an 8% drop in first-quarter profit, hurt by lower enrollment and rising costs. The nation's second-largest health insurer — after UnitedHealth Group Inc. — runs Anthem Blue Cross in California and plans in 13 other states. It reported net income of $856.5 million, or $2.53 a share, for the three months ended March 31, compared with net income of $926.6 million, or $2.44 a share, a year ago. Revenue grew 4% to $15.42 billion in the quarter.

For the last decade, USC has enrolled the largest number of international students of any college in the country: 8,615 last year. The Los Angeles university worked hard to achieve that - recruiting students from China, India and South Korea, among 100 countries in all, and providing services for the foreign students once they get here. Now campus officials are faced with the slayings this week of two graduate engineering students from China in a shooting about a mile off campus.

USC landed one of the class of 2013's top quarterback prospects when Max Browne announced last week that he would join the Trojans. The junior from Sammamish, Wash., is working toward finishing high school in December so he can enroll at USC in January, in time to participate in spring practice a year from now and compete for an opportunity to become Matt Barkley's successor. Browne's plan is a familiar one for the Trojans: Barkley and redshirt freshman quarterbacks Max Wittek and Cody Kessler — who will play Saturday in USC's annual end-of-spring scrimmage — all left high school halfway through their senior years to jump-start their college careers.

Sporting goods stores might want to stock up on sleeping bags, mosquito spray and hiking boots. And grocers may want to boost their marshmallow supplies. With an improving economy, enrollment in summer camps nationwide is surging, forcing some camps to hire extra counselors and build bigger facilities. And many camps are filling up much faster than in previous years, with the remaining spaces going quickly. The growth in enrollment ranges from 5% to more than 30% among Southern California camps, with some camp directors saying they expect to reach capacity in the next month or so - nearly a month earlier than previous years.

Spring semester registration for Garden Grove Unified School District's adult education and Regional Occupational Program classes will run from Jan. 27 to 31. The semester starts Feb. 3, district officials said. Students can enroll between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. at Lincoln Education Center, 11262 Garden Grove Blvd., and Chapman-Hettinga Education Center, 11852 Knott Ave. Both sites will be open for evening registration Jan. 27 to 29, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Lincoln Center and 6 to 9 p.m.

Anti-drug tactics Re "Crackdown to target skid row drug dealers," April 8 When I see the Los Angeles Police Department make a public spectacle of addressing the "drug problem" by going after a handful of retail dealers in the poorest neighborhood in our city, I am reminded of the therapeutic value of putting a Band-Aid on a sore created by metastasized cancer. Drug dealing is organized at an international, national and statewide level. Focusing on the bottom rung of the distribution ladder demonstrates only the incapacity of the LAPD to address a much more deeply rooted problem.

California is beginning the process of shifting 1.1 million of the state's sickest and poorest patients into managed care, which healthcare officials say will cut costs and improve treatment. The move is part of a broader state plan to continue moving residents with publicly funded health coverage into managed care, prompting concerns among critics who fear that patients could lose their current doctors. State officials announced Wednesday that Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Mateo will be the first counties to provide managed care to the patients, who are enrolled in both the federally run Medicare and the state-federal Medi-Cal program.

Jamaa Fanaka, who emerged as a dynamic black filmmaker with his gritty independent 1979 film "Penitentiary" and later made headlines with his legal battles alleging widespread discrimination against women and ethnic minorities in the film and television industry, has died. He was 69. Fanaka was found dead in his apartment in South Los Angeles on Sunday, said his daughter Tracey L. Gordon. The cause of death has not been determined, but she said it probably was the result of complications of diabetes.