Uc System

It wasn't so long ago that the biggest worry facing college-bound students was simply getting into their school of choice. Flush with revenue, states like California spent prodigiously on public higher education. Tuition was cheap, ample financial aid was available and class offerings seemed boundless. And all the while, skyrocketing enrollments were being accommodated. Unfortunately those days are gone--maybe for good.

After much debate that brought the passions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to campus, UC Riverside's student government has reversed itself and revoked a resolution that urged the UC system to divest from companies that have contracts with Israel's military. The student leaders moved to drop the controversial divestment policy after approving it just a month ago because they came to see how it made Jewish students feel "marginalized," according to Armando Saldana, the Associated Students' executive vice president.

For the second straight year, the University of California has admitted a greater proportion of underrepresented minority students than at any time since a ban on affirmative action in admissions took effect. But the overall percentage of underrepresented minorities -- and African Americans in particular -- declined this year at UC's most competitive campuses, UC Berkeley and UCLA. The drop was most significant at UCLA, where African Americans represent 2.

UC Merced, the newest addition to the University of California system, wants to dramatically alter its expansion plans by constructing taller and more densely placed classroom buildings and dorms on less acreage and move some offices off campus, officials said Wednesday. In a presentation to the UC regents, Merced administrators said the proposal could save at least $500 million that otherwise would be spent extending electricity, water and sewage lines under grazing lands that comprise the bulk of the university's unused property.

On the University of California's quiet campus here and throughout the UC system Monday, friends and colleagues of Denice Dee Denton struggled to find answers to a question that may ultimately be unknowable: What factors might have driven Denton, the 46-year-old chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, to take an apparent suicide leap from a San Francisco skyscraper Saturday, falling to her death on a rooftop below?

The University of California announced Tuesday that it has accepted a record number of Latinos and has significantly increased admissions among African Americans for next fall's freshman class. But numbers for the two minority groups remain depressed at the two most competitive campuses, UC Berkeley and UCLA. Across its eight undergraduate campuses, UC admitted 46,130 California high school seniors, a 10.4% rise from last year, according to annual freshman admissions figures.

Should an education at UC Berkeley cost more than one at UC Santa Cruz? Should a student pay $11,000 in tuition at UC Riverside while his friend is billed $16,000 at UCLA? Leaders of the 10-campus University of California system are considering such questions as they grapple with state budget reductions that already have led to tuition increases, staff layoffs and cuts in class offerings. Advocates of allowing undergraduate tuition to vary by campus say that the change would raise funds the schools could share and that consumer demand should play a bigger role in setting tuition.

Despite strong opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown, the UC Board of Regents on Tuesday gave the incoming chancellor of UC Berkeley a $50,000 - or 11.4% - pay raise over the current campus head. The extra money will come from private donations, not state funds, the regents said. Nicholas B. Dirks will be paid $486,000, which officials said is $14,000 less than his current salary as a high-ranking administrator at Columbia University. Brown, who is a regent, described Dirks as an excellent choice but said he would not vote for the salary given the austerities that the state and the 10-campus UC system still face.

A national accrediting agency has approved UC Riverside's long-embattled plan to open a full medical school and to start enrolling future doctors next summer, officials announced Tuesday. It would be the sixth medical school in the University of California system and the first to open since the late 1960s. Last year, the same panel rejected the proposal because it looked too risky after the state refused to fund the school. But UC Riverside officials have since secured enough other public and private financing for a program that they say will help ease a doctor shortage in the Inland Empire and improve public healthcare there.

Freshman applications to University of California schools for the 2013 school year reached a record high of more than 174,700, with Latinos making up the largest portion of applicants for the first time. All nine undergraduate campuses saw an increase in freshman applicants from the previous year, with a systemwide increase of 10.7%, according to figures released by the UC system Friday. Latino students accounted for 32%. The number of out-of-state and international freshman applicants surged, 15% and 34% respectively, while the number of California students who applied for admission as freshmen grew by a more modest 6.2%.