Daily Report: Higher Ed

Thor Swift/The Bay Citizen

California has more diploma mills than any other state in the nation, but it is not doing enough to protect students from the unaccredited colleges and vocational schools that issue worthless degrees, state lawmakers said at hearing yesterday.

“The increasingly diverse array of substandard education robs students of their time and money,” said Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, chair of the Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review. “The most serious consequences occur when people are hired for positions for which they are not qualified. The challenge for the Legislature is to establish an oversight structure that prevents predatory practices."

Among the measures Dickinson will press legislators to consider: providing state regulators with additional resources to undertake more investigations, requiring more thorough reviews to identify diploma mills, and encouraging California's attorney general and local district attorneys to prosecute more diploma mills...

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In addition to a controversial 10 percent pay raise, incoming CSU Fullerton President Mildred Garcia will receive another benefit when she arrives on campus: a $300,000 remodel on the eight-bedroom historical house where she will live.

In March, the California State University Board of Trustees voted to give Garcia – the outgoing president of CSU Dominguez Hills in Carson – the maximum pay raise allowable under a new executive compensation cap approved by trustees in January. In addition to her base salary of $324,500, she gets free housing at the presidential estate and a $12,000-per-year car allowance.

The decision stoked outrage among some faculty and students, who said the raise sent the wrong message at a time of devastating budget cuts at CSU...

Thor Swift/The Bay Citizen State regulators in February shut down the Institute of Medical Education after finding it had violated education laws. Complaints about the school were featured in a Bay Citizen investigation. 

Today, Laura Metune became the new chief of the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, the beleaguered state agency charged with overseeing the state’s vocational and for-profit colleges. Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Metune to the $110,580-a-year post earlier this month.

Metune's appointment comes after a Bay Citizen investigation revealed the bureau had failed to properly oversee the state's 1,300 technical, vocational and other private postsecondary schools.

The investigation found that the bureau failed to vigorously investigate complaints, monitor the quality of educational programs, and track or penalize unaccredited schools. The Bay Citizen also found more than 130 postsecondary schools operating with expired state approvals...

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All eyes are on Santa Monica College, where a controversial plan to offer a tier of higher-priced courses has been met with pepper-spray-tainted protests and legal questions.

Less noticeably, California State University officials have been mulling their own brand of higher-priced classes. In 2010, officials began exploring whether they could offer more remediation classes and high-demand "bottleneck" classes through Extended Education – a self-supporting program that provides online and face-to-face CSU classes to students without the university admissions process.

Because it operates without state subsidies, Extended Education offers classes that are pricier than the standard CSU fare, and students can't use Cal Grants or CSU State University Grants to help pay for them.

Prices for Extended Education classes vary. But in 2009-10, the average annual tuition for an Extended Education undergraduate degree completion program was $7,290 – about 51 percent higher than the $4,827 average annual tuition at CSU at that time, according to a CSU report [PDF]...

Sprachcaffe Düsseldorf/FlickrSan Diego State University

Several state lawmakers are pushing for a tougher crackdown on California State University executive compensation in the wake of trustees' decision to approve the maximum allowable pay raises for new campus presidents.

CSU trustees in January approved a new executive compensation policy [PDF] that caps the amount of base pay new campus presidents can earn at no more than 10 percent above their predecessors' pay. In the first application of the new policy, trustees last week signed off on full 10 percent pay raises for two new presidents at CSU East Bay and CSU Fullerton.

The move came as CSU officials announced that they would limit spring admissions to all but a few hundred students due to state budget cuts, shutting out tens of thousands of would-be college-goers. If Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed tax measure fails, the system also might deny admission to up to 25,000 qualified...

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In the first test of the California State University system's recently approved executive compensation policy, the presidents appointed to lead CSU East Bay and CSU Fullerton are slated to each receive the maximum salaries allowable under the new rules.

After CSU trustees approved a large pay increase for the new San Diego State University president last summer on the same day that they raised student tuition, the university system faced a chorus of criticism from legislators, the media and the public. Trustees approved a base salary for SDSU President Elliot Hirshman of $400,000, including $50,000 from the university foundation. That's $100,000 more than his predecessor's salary.

In response, the CSU trustees in January approved a new executive compensation policy [PDF] that limits new presidents' base pay to no more than 10 percent above their predecessors.

In a pay package [PDF] slated for review at this week's Board of Trustees meeting, newly appointed CSU Fullerton President Mildred Garcia will get $324,500 in base pay, plus housing and a $12,000-per-year car allowance. That's exactly 10 percent more than her predecessor, Milton Gordon, who in 2011 had a base salary of $295,000...

Ed Yourdon/Flickr

The California Student Aid Commission last week explored at a hearing whether, at a time of limited funds for college financial aid, the state should allow Cal Grants to cover all online degree programs.

The commissioners held the meeting in part because they have been seeing an increasing number of colleges and universities entering into agreements with outside groups to provide online education, such as the now-defunct partnership between Kaplan University and the California Community Colleges, said Diana Fuentes-Michel, executive director of the commission.

The panel is reviewing proposed changes to its Institutional Participation Agreement, the contract between the commission and the colleges that are eligible to receive Cal Grants. Fuentes-Michel said Thursday's hearing was the first of several that could lead to recommendations for changes to the agreement – or proposed statutory changes to increase the quality of education at Cal Grant institutions.

Some of those changes might deal with online education, but Fuentes-Michel said it's too early to speculate on what they'll be. She said, however, that the commission will begin to ask institutions to report their...

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California's recently formed Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education has significant weaknesses in its oversight of for-profit colleges, advocacy groups told lawmakers at a hearing this week.

The agency's lax approach limits its ability to police abuses in the for-profit sector, said Jamienne S. Studley, CEO of Public Advocates Inc., a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group in San Francisco.

During the joint information hearing of the Assembly Higher Education Committee and Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development, Studley recommended that the bureau strengthen its approval process, demand more disclosures from approved institutions, verify information received from colleges and more.

Nationally, for-profit colleges have the highest share of students who default on their student loans. The sector enrolls 1 in 10 college students in California, but receives more Cal Grant dollars from the state than all the community colleges combined.

A 2010 report from the College Board shows the six-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time students is 22 percent at four-year for-profit colleges, compared with 55 percent at public four-year institutions and 65 percent at private four-year colleges...

Flickr/Columbia_Admissions

California State University and University of California campuses are taking new steps to limit what students can do with their class notes: At least one CSU Chico student recently was reported to judicial affairs for selling notes to a website, while a newly updated UC Berkeley policy restricts how students share their notes with others.

The policies raise questions about whether instructors or students have copyrights to the notes students take in class. While the California Education Code prohibits students and others from selling class notes – and many campuses have policies that also ban unauthorized note-selling – critics say students, not instructors, own the copyright to their own notes. 

Some university officials say faculty members have the right to protect their professional reputation – they don't want inaccurate or low-quality notes to be attributed to them. But others say the university policies are restricting students' free speech.

"Given the amount of money students are paying to go to school right now, to ... confront them with these policies and say, 'You don't even have the right to use your own notes any way you want,' seems to be the wrong message to be sending," said Jason M. Schultz, assistant clinical professor of law at UC Berkeley and director of the...