Tuesday, 10 February 2015

Harvard University

Harvard University, the most seasoned instructive organization in the United States, was established sixteen years after the entry of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Created by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 and later contracted in 1650 in what is presently the most seasoned company in the Western Hemisphere, Harvard University was named after its first advocate, John Harvard of Charlestown, Massachusetts, who, on his passing in 1638, left his library and a parcel of his home to the school. In 1640 Henry Dunster turned into the first president furthermore constituted the whole employees. For more than fifty years Harvard remained the main school in America.

It has been said that "when Harvard talks, the nation tunes in," and all through its history Harvard, as the nation's chief college, formed the course of instruction in the United States. John Harvard's inheritance was the first of the private endowments for training in America, and the demonstration of the settlement in 1636 imprints the start of state help to advanced education in the United States. New England's First Fruits, an unnamed tract commending the foundation of advanced education in the settlements, was distributed in London in 1643. Among the persuasive pioneers were various Cambridge (henceforth Harvard's city name) and Oxford graduates who were anxious to recreate the English school in the American wilderness. Amid its initial years, Harvard College offered an exemplary scholastic course focused around the English college model combined with the predominating Puritan rationality of the early settlers. Harvard College was approximately subsidiary with the Congregationalist church; as anyone might expect a large portion of its first graduates got to be pastors all through New England, while different graduates entered taxpayer supported organization or private business.
Educational program
Harvard College's course of study was like the curricula of Cambridge and Oxford colleges. Dissimilar to the English model, Dunster initially made an educational program for Harvard that just endured three years, yet in 1652 a fourth year was included. The Harvard central subject turned into a model for American training establishments to take after universities as well as syntax schools and institutes that arranged understudies for higher learning and university studies. The educational program from its establishing through the eighteenth century was religious; early nineteenth-century studies extended the educational program to incorporate Latin, Greek, arithmetic (counting stargazing), English creation, logic, philosophy, common rationality, and either Hebrew or French. This recommended course of study created an example for American liberal expressions schools. The most well-known types of direction were oral exercises?the address, the declamation, and the question.

Charles W. Eliot, who served as president from 1869 to 1909, changed the school into a current college, a deed finished fundamentally by changing the educational program. Albeit course electives existed at Harvard all through the nineteenth century, Eliot turned into an unrelenting promoter of the elective framework, which thusly allowed him to start institutional change where school studies could suit more extensive and additionally more particular diversions of understudies. The elective framework allowed Harvard to end up more receptive to the numerous developing law based, mechanical, and professional necessity of community. After  twentieth century, Harvard's selective framework was the freest in the nation with no subject prerequisites for studies past the first year.



Friday, 6 February 2015

US Education Support


EducationUSA is a system of several prompting focuses in 170 nations, where a large number of worldwide understudies every year discover precise, far reaching, and current data about how to apply to licensed U.S. universities and colleges. The EducationUSA system is backed by the U.S. Branch of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), which strives to cultivate common seeing between the populace of the United States and the populace of different nations. EducationUSA consultants and staff work with U.S. advanced education experts to advance worldwide understudy enlistment. EducationUSA likewise helps advance study abroad open doors for U.S. nationals. U.S. what's more worldwide understudies alike can plan for authority parts in today's reality through an universal instruction.

EducationUSA Advising Centers may be spotted in U.S. government offices and departments, or in an assortment of accomplice foundations, including Fulbright commissions; bi-national social focuses; U.S. nongovernmental associations (NGOs, for example, AMIDEAST and American Councils/ACCELS; and remote NGOs, colleges, and libraries. These focuses offer a typical objective: supporting understudies in getting to U.S. advanced education opportunities. Prompting focuses are staffed by EducationUSA guides, a large portion of whom have direct experience mulling over in the United States. Guides hold fast to EducationUSA moral models, comply with the EducationUSA approach to avoid working with commission-based enrollment specialists, and have U.S. State Department-sanction preparing about the U.S. advanced education framework and application forms. Territorial instructive exhorting facilitators (REACs) give direction, initiative and preparing to counselors. The U.S. Division of State accomplices with the Institute of International Education (IIE) to help EducationUSA exercises.

Notwithstanding giving print and online materials at EducationUSA Advising Centers, consultants reach prospective understudy groups of onlookers through fairs and effort occasions at neighborhood schools, colleges, and other open venues. Augmenting effort past individual association, the system achieves a great many understudies through sites, webinars, and social networking stages. Clarifying the amazingly differing U.S. advanced education scene and decentralized confirmation process for a large number of U.S. establishments is a grand assignment. EducationUSA has improved the way a prospective universal understudy takes to achieve his/her objective of mulling over in the United States with " following guides to U.S. course": (1) Research Your Options, (2) Complete your process, (3) support economically for Your Studies, (4) Apply for Your Student Visa, and (5) Prepare for Your Departure.

The U.S. advanced education group works together with EducationUSA to pull in qualified worldwide understudies to U.S. grounds. EducationUSA helps U.S. school and college enlisting and confirmations staff by giving data on patterns in advanced education abroad, remote training frameworks, the significance of selecting universal understudies, how to use the system to enroll successfully, and how to keep up a worldwide understudy inviting grounds and site. The U.S. Bureau of State supports the yearly IIE Open Doors Report, which gives insights about rates of tertiary global understudy versatility to and from the United States. Guides host school and college visits to their focuses and at EducationUSA school fairs. More than 1,000 licensed U.S. foundations get to an extensive variety of administrations and apparatuses for enrollment guidance through the EducationUSA site.

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) likewise advances contemplate abroad for U.S. understudies and study abroad program advancement for U.S. advanced education establishments. The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program gives grants to U.S.-subject college understudies of restricted money related means and different foundations to seek after scholastic studies in non-conventional study abroad ends. The EducationUSA site offers study and work-abroad assets. ECA has financed awards to improve the limit of U.S. advanced education foundations to fabricate economical study abroad projects with outside establishments. The www.educationusa.info site is kept up by the Institute of International Education for the benefit of the U.S. Branch of State.

Cornell University

Cornell University is an American private Ivy League and government area award research college found in Ithaca, New York. Established in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, the college was planned to show and make commitments in all fields of information ? from the classics to the sciences, and from the hypothetical to the connected. These goals, unpredictable for the time, are caught in Cornell's adage, a popular 1865 Ezra Cornell rule: "I would discovered an establishment where any individual can discover direction towards any kind of study.

The college is comprehensively composed into seven undergrad universities and seven graduate divisions at its fundamental Ithaca grounds, with every school and division characterizing its own confirmation measures and scholastic projects in close self-rule. The college likewise regulates two satellite medicinal grounds, one in New York City and one in Education City, Qatar. Cornell is one of three private area stipend universities.[note 1] Of its seven undergrad schools, three are state-upheld statutory or contract universities, including its farming and veterinary universities. As an area gift school, it works a helpful expansion effort program in every region of New York and gets yearly subsidizing from the State of New York for certain instructive missions.[7] The Cornell University Ithaca Campus embodies 745 sections of land, however in fact, is much bigger because of the Cornell Plantations (more than 4,300 sections of land) and the various college possessed grounds in New York.[8]


Since its establishing, Cornell has been a co-instructive, non-partisan establishment where affirmation is offered independent of religion or race. Cornell tallies more than 245,000 living graduated class, 34 military graduates, 29 Rhodes Scholars and 44 Nobel laureates as associated with the university.[5][9][10] The understudy body comprises of almost 14,000 undergrad and 7,000 graduate understudies from each of the 50 American states and 122 countries.

Thursday, 5 February 2015

Ocean of knowledge:the light of life

       "Education" the term in itself is as vast as ocean. Education is the key factor to this modern day civilization from the ancient uncivilized civilization. Education has no boundary, it is limitless. That's why this is the very vast term. Every person can dive into this boundless ocean of knowledge to broaden their mind and to be what we are. Education is such a magical term, if we flow through its pace it can change the life of every individual. So, everybody should understand the importance of education to live this beautiful life with happiness and prosperity.

        Education is the pillar of success in everyone's ones life whether they agree upon it or not, the fact is fact. Nobody can deny this truth. Even taking the reference from world history, we see the power of education. Through the medium of education, great scientists have been produced in different era who have given precious inventions to the world. The only thing is how we utilize this ocean. Through the education, our dumb world has been transferred into this golden age of prosperity. Our world was sick, education cured this sick world and reverted into the prosperous world. 'cause of education, the world has invented many things and there is a lot more to be invented. It was just the dream to people to step on moon but for them who understands the education it was a dream to achieve and they have done it by stepping on moon. Many more researches have been going on to meet more inventions. Education brings curiosity and this brings new technology and inventions to the world which makes our life easier and faster. Almost everyone are getting education in this present generation. Education has brought prosperity in the world.

Education shows the right path path and guide us in every difficult situation bringing the suitable solution. In this today's world everybody are well known about the importance of education and every individual wants to be educated to live a civilized life. We, "the human society " should agree upon the fact that this huge transformation of the world is only because of the education. Therefore, education is the light of the life.

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto has accumulated one of the toughest research and showing workforces in North America, introducing top understudies at all levels with an erudite situation unmatched in expansiveness and profundity on some other Canadian grounds.

U of T personnel co-writer more research articles than their associates at any college in the US or Canada other than Harvard. As a prevention of its effect, U of T reliably positions nearby the main five U.s. colleges whose revelations are frequently refered to by different specialists around the globe. The U of T staff are additionally broadly perceived for their showing qualities and responsibility to graduate supervision.

U of T draws in undergrad, graduate and expert project understudies from crosswise over Canada and abroad. Our understudies have exceptional chances to gain from top specialists. Off grounds, they can appreciate the exceptional pleasantries and attractions of the Toronto locale, Canada?s superior urban group. On grounds, understudies have the capacity specialty cozy learning groups inside a novel undergrad school framework, partake in more than 1000 clubs and extra-curricular exercises, and exposed on a broad mixed bag of intra-wall painting and between university games groups.

Built in 1827, the University of Toronto today works in downtown Toronto, Mississauga and Scarborough, and also in ten famous scholastic healing centers

Oxford University

In organization with the other twelfth-century colleges of Paris and Bologna, Oxford can claim to be among the most seasoned of the European colleges. Its establishment date, regularly a matter of incredible hypothesis, stays indistinct. All that can be said is that Oxford unmistakably turned into a college somewhere around 1192 and 1200. Found in a stream valley encouraged by tributaries of the Thames River, the town and the college were named for the waterway crossing (bulls portage). Since no new college was built in England (albeit four or five in Scotland) until the development of the University of London in the 1820s, Oxford and Cambridge (aggregately termed Oxbridge or less as often as possible Camford) long held a duopoly on the training and preparing of driving lawmakers, Roman Catholic and a while later Church of England pastorate and clerics, common administration chairmen at home and abroad, and agents of expressions of the human experience and sciences. Indeed the Scots, with their own particular fine college customs, went to the aged colleges keeping in mind the end goal to exploit their associations and systems. 

Oxford in the twenty-first century stays one of a modest bunch of world colleges accurately depicted as university. It is a league of approximately seven perpetual private lobbies and thirty-nine regulating toward oneself and supplied schools scattered about the city of Oxford. A decent number of these are twentieth-century establishments, overhauling aged conventions to exploit new subjects and new sorts of understudies. The principal universities showed up in the thirteenth century, however most were established later. Generally connected with showing and understudy living arrangement, the first school to really concede students was New College in the fourteenth century. Ladies' schools date from the 1860s. Scandalously, then again, ladies did not get degrees until 1920 (or 1948 at Cambridge). Just Saint Hilda's College, established in 1893, is confined to ladies. 

Obligation regarding showing and grant is separated in the middle of schools and the college, between guides (called wears from the Latin dominum or expert) and educators, yet from the sixteenth century (the early cutting edge period) up to this point the universities were predominant. That was mostly, if not so much, an outcome of the Protestant Reformation, extended imperial government, and worldwide exchange and competition. Dedicated and decently instructed heads were needed for administration in chapel and state. The little size of the schools and their frameworks of individual direction and train in a private setting were appropriate for the instruction of potential pioneers. The new elites were vigorously drawn from built families. The university college essentially offered its gifts on those effectively supported; specifically, the scions of arrived society impacted the tone of the college by their frequently thoughtless additionally glitzy propensities well into the nineteenth century. 

In late decades, extensive insightful consideration has been coordinated to the social sythesis of Oxford through the ages, an impression of current worries about access to advanced education. In any case, owing to the unlucky deficiency of college registration records, appraisals of the social piece of Oxford are harder to accommodate the period before 1565. Sections a while later are recorded by progressive status rankings, as opposed to by social or word related groupings, as is available practice, and students of history differ on the best way to decipher them. The prior records kept by universities are frequently deficient or confounding. 

In the broadest terms, it can be said that until as of late riches and benefit were constantly concurred a warm gathering at Oxford. The quantities of volunteers from the poorer segments of English society, importance the offspring of homestead workers in the soonest hundreds of years or modern laborers in the later ones, were by and large hard to find. To give an illustration from Lincoln College from 1680 to 1799, of 972 concedes, over half originated from arrived or honorable families and an alternate 266 from pastorate, to incorporate the higher positions. Just 155 were recorded as plebeian, a catchall classification hard to refine. A more finish examination of the whole college for the 1901?1975 period, embodying 3,512 sections, all the more unmistakably shows the progressions. Proficient families represented 1,564 concedes; 1,059 were from trade, money, and industry, and 217 from desk families. No one but 182 can be called gifted laborers, and just a few dozen fit the portrayal of incompetent or manual specialists. 

As a speculation, it can be wandered that Oxford's social change from a college serving mostly the children of arrived and administrative families started to move from around 1850, when expert and business families began to wind up overwhelming. This was the example that could be anticipated from most world class foundations. Slowly yet solidly Oxford stopped to be a college of the generally advantaged and got to be rather the end of new eras of exceptional students from middleincome families, befitting the monetary changes that had happened as an aftereffect of industrialism and the extension of the urban callings. 

As a focal point of learning and grant, Oxford's notoriety declined in the Age of the Enlightenment. Enlistments fell, educating was disregarded, and one popular undergrad, the future student of history Edward Gibbon (1737?1794), described the wears of his day as dependent on "port and preference." More as of late, antiquarians have revealed proof for more noteworthy scholarly essentialness than already assumed. Yet it is the situation that a genuine and very nearly add up to instructive change of the college and its schools did not happen until the following century. The primary venture around 1800 was a requesting and in this way celebrated respects examination in the subject of literae humaniores (called "Greats"). Made out of traditional dialects, reasoning, and history, it turned into the model of later aggressive examinations

Friday, 9 January 2015

The UC-AFT Plan for Enhancing Affordability, Access, and Quality at the University of California


The University of California has been a leader in providing students with a high-quality education that is affordable and accessible, but the funding structure of the university is showing signs of breaking down.  The following plan describes how this great system can be saved by increasing financial aid to many students who are now forced to go into debt in order to afford their education.  We call for a tuition freeze, an additional 6% increase in state funding (2% beyond the governor?s proposed 4% increase), an increase in UC budget transparency, and the use of internal UC funds for financial aid and increased funding for instruction.

Moderate Tuition/High Aid
A central part of this plan is to use the current Moderate Tuition/High Aid model in a more equitable manner.  In 2014-15, the UC will not only receive $2.6 billion in direct funding from the state, but state financial aid will be over $1 billion due to increases in CAL Grants and the new Middle Class Scholarship.[1]  UC students will also receive over $450 million in federal Pell Grants next year, and many families qualify for federal tax breaks related to higher education.  This large amount of aid allows over half of UC students to pay no tuition, and the system enrolls a large number of low-income students: however, many low- and middle-class students still have to pay a large amount to cover the total cost of attendance (rooms, board, books, and living expenses).  While in 2014-15, tuition for undergraduates is just over $12,000, total cost of attendance is over $32,000.[2]  Students then are forced to take out loans and work in order to make up for the growing difference between their grant aid and the total cost of attendance.     
            
Using the campus financial aid calculators, we can see how the parents of UC students are often asked to pay a quarter of their yearly income to support their children?s education.  For example, here are some specific aid scenarios: 1) if a student comes from a family of two parents with a combined annual income of $50,000, the student will be asked to contribute $8,600 through work study, and the family will be asked to take out a loan for $3,912 each year.  If the student does not take a work study position, the gap between the aid and the total cost of attendance equals close to 25% of the annual family income; 2) in the case of a family with total earnings of $79,000, the student and the family are expected to cover $18,301; and 3) in the case of two parents earning $90,000, the annual cost is $23,198.[3]  These situations show that in a state with a very high cost of living, free tuition often means a financial aid gap of close to 25% of parental income.

Increasing Graduation Rates
The UC financial aid is better than most universities, but it still has major problems.  One related issue is that the more students have to rely on loans and work study to support their own education, the longer it takes them to graduate.[4]  The inverse of this situation is that if students did not have to take out loans or work while in school, UC could increase its current four-year graduation rate of 63% and provide more places for new students without spending more funds or building more dorms and classrooms.[5]  It is clear that this desire to move students through the system in a more efficient and cost-effective manner is a major desire of the governor, but the state often thinks this can be accomplished though the use of online classes, streamlined degrees, and a downsizing of the university?s research mission.[6]  However, all of these strategies outlined in the governor?s new initiative will only serve to lower the quality of education in the UC system.

Investments for Aid
To expand financial aid to students, our plan recommends using investment returns from its endowments and working capital funds ? the Short Term Investment Pool (STIP) and the Total Return Investment Pool (TRIP) - for educational purposes.  In 2014, the combined UC endowments contained over $13.2 billion and had a 10-year investment rate of return of 7.7%.   If the university used 3% of the endowments each year for financial aid, $300 million of additional funds could be used so that thousands of students would no longer have to take out loans or work while in school to afford the total cost of attendance.[7]  Meanwhile, the university also invests its working capital (unused grant money, state money, tuition, medical center revenue) in two funds called TRIP and STIP, and these funds now hold over $14 billion.[8]  If the UC used 5% of these funds for educational purposes ($700 million), the quality of education could be enhanced as more students from California could gain admissions and students could graduate at a faster rate leaving room for more transfer students from community colleges. [9]

At the September 2014 Regents meeting, the possibility of using these funds to prevent a tuition increase was discussed, but it was quickly rejected because the university did not want the state to think that it had enough funds.[10]  President Napolitano argued that these investment funds cannot be relied upon, and several regents said that if the word got out that the UC was sitting on so much cash, the state would not increase its funding for the university.  Of course, there is a risk that investment returns will decrease; however, what good is it to have an endowment or investment pool if it cannot be used for educational purposes? Although much of the endowment is restricted by the donors of the gifts, the investment returns are not necessarily restricted, and their average returns are well above 7%.  Moreover, UC could develop a policy that all new gifts set aside a certain percentage for the general fund. The idea here is to use the financialization of the university in a progressive way by directing investment profits towards core educational functions.

Fixing the Campus Funding Problem
The UC-AFT plan also confronts a growing problem in the UC system, which is the inequitable distribution of funds among the campuses.[11]  As a state audit showed, the university has been for decades secretly redistributing state funds and tuition dollars from the smaller campuses with a high number of under-represented students to the larger, wealthier campuses.[12]  Although the UC has recently stopped this system of redistribution, the problem has been made worse by the fact that the wealthier campuses are bringing in a higher percentage of high paying non-resident students.  Our plan calls for 50% of all nonresident tuition to go into a pool to be redistributed to help rebalance the funding among the campuses.  We also believe that UC should cap the total number of nonresident students at 15%, and proceed with its plan to increase state enrollments by at least 1,000 each year.  Furthermore, the UC should rethink its admissions referral system.  Last year 11,200 qualified Calfornian students who did not apply to UC Merced were admitted only to Merced, but only 2% of these students decided to enroll at the campus.[13]The UC is clearly using the Merced referral system to comply with its obligation to accept all qualified California students, but since UC knows most students will reject the referral, this practice has to be modified. 

The university has claimed that the historical underfunding of particular campuses will be corrected by the new rebenching model, but this model is highly flawed and only redistributes $37 million a year of $2.6 billion state general funds.[14]Moreover, the rebenching model relies on augmenting the funding to campuses that increase their doctoral students, but according to its own logic, these students cost at least three and a half times more than undergraduates to educate.   Of course, the reality of the situation is that UC does not know how much it costs to educate different types of students because it has thus far resisted making this calculation even though AB 94 now requires the system to report on the different costs of educating undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

Transparency for the Core Mission
The UC-AFT plan calls for the university to comply with the state?s reporting requirements, and this new transparency will be used to make sure that state funds and tuition dollars find their way into the core education mission.  In order to help this process, our plan pushes the university to increase the number of small undergraduate courses and decrease the use of ineffective large lecture classes.  This transformation can be a key to increasing graduation rates and educational quality.  Following UC?s own long-term budget plan, the university should document how it is using $60 million of new funding next year toward ?improving the student-faculty ratio; funding for startup packages for new faculty (a major obstacle for many campuses seeking to hire new faculty); augmenting graduate student support to ensure that the level of support offered by UC is sufficient to attract the best graduate students; enhancing undergraduate instructional support (including instructional technology, libraries, instructional equipment replacement, and building maintenance); and reducing faculty and staff salary gaps.?[15]Instead of the state, students, and concerned citizens being told what the UC would like to do with new funds, the UC should prove that it is actually using this money to improve the quality of education.   

The UC budget has also asked for $32 million to continue the academic merit program and $55 million of permanent deferred maintenance funding.  The state should include these costs in its general fund appropriations with the provision that UC documents how these funds will be used to improve the performance of the core mission.  UC would like to see its total funding increase next year by $459 million.  Besides the above mentioned support for the academic merit program, deferred maintenance, and educational enhancements, the UC argues it needs $50 million to fund the state part of the pension plan,  $125 million for additional compensation costs, $22 million for resident enrollment growth, $28 million for non-salary price increase, and $73 million for financial aid.  The UC desires these additional costs to be funded through a combination of a 5% tuition increase ($137 million), a state funding increase of 4% ($120 million), tuition and fees for financial aid ($73 million), non-resident tuition ($50 million), and other alternative revenue ($80 million).[16]Since we believe that tuition should be frozen, we ask for the state to increase its support for UC by 6% (the planned 4% plus an additional 2%). The 6% increase would bring the state increase to $180 million and would buy down close to 40% of the 5% tuition increase. The other $279 million would come from the investment profits from STIP and TRIP, nonresident tuition, and alternative revenue sources.     

Why Not Eliminate Tuition?
In response to our plan, some might ask why don?t we propose simply eliminating tuition and make the UC free again.  The problem with this solution is that tuition is only a part of the reason for a student?s financial burden.  Moreover, if the UC eliminates tuition, it cannot utilize Cal Grants, Pell Grants, and federal higher ed tax breaks.  Furthermore, if done correctly, the Moderate Tuition, High Aid model serves as a progressive tax since wealthier parents pay more to support the education for non-wealthy students.  Unless UC wants to get behind a new tax that would dedicate funding for the UC system, it is unclear how the system can force the government to increase funding for the university.  However, central to this plan is that the state increases its support by 6% each year in return for a tuition freeze. We are also asking that the state agrees that it is responsible for its share of the employer contributions to the pension, once the UC clarifies which employees are supported by state funds.[17]
For far too long, the UC has increased it core mission budget without spending more funds on its core mission. According to the UC 2014-15 budget report, a lack of support for the core mission in recent years has had the following effects: ?Another aspect of the fiscal uncertainty is how students and their families in recent years have been hit with large, frequent, and unpredictable tuition and fee increases, while also feeling the effects of budget cuts on the instructional program through reduced course offerings, increased class sizes, and curtailed student services. Instability of the University?s budget promotes uneasiness among students and their families about whether the high-quality education to which students work hard to gain access will be available in future years.?[18]From the university?s perspective, the reduction in funding from the state has resulted in a decrease in the quality of undergraduate education. Our plan will reverse this situation and return the university back to its core mission.








[1]For the increase in Cal Grants and the middle-class scholarship, see:
[2]For the total cost of attendance, see: http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/paying-for-uc/tuition-and-cost/

[3]The cost calculator can be found at: https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/financial-aid/forms/calculator.html

[4]The UC four-year graduation rate goes down 10% if a student works more than 20 hours a week, see http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/index.php?in=3.4.2&source=uw.

[5] UC four-year graduation rates: http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/index.php?in=4.1.1&source=uw.

[6]The governor?s plan can be found at: http://gov.ca.gov/docs/Regents_Select_Committee_Agenda_Request.pdf

[7]Information on UC endowments and working capital funds can be found at http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept14/i2attach2.pdf.  The ten-year average return rate for the $8.2 billion shared endowment (GEP) is 7.7% (p. 16).  The shared endowment does not include $4 billion in campus endowments.  For the campus endowments, see http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept14/i3attach.pdf.

[8]The STIP account held $8.3 billion in June 2014 http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept14/i2attach2.pdf(p. 20) and the TRIP account held $7.5 billion (p. 21).  During the last five year period when STIP was returning 2.2% and TRIP was returning 11%, over $2 billion was transferred from these accounts into the pension, which earned 12.7%.  It therefore would be possible to spend 5% each year of these combined funds to pay for increased financial aid without decreasing the principle in these accounts.  Meanwhile, the pension is now funded at 86%, and if it continues to increase its funding ratio, the state and the system might be tempted to call for another contribution holiday. 

[9]Currently, the UC graduates 63% of students in four years (http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/index/4.1.1).  If the UC could increase this rate to 80%, the system could educate 5,000 students with no additional cost and the cost for each student would go down significantly since students would be paying for four years instead of five or six.

[10]The discussion of the UC investments can be found at minutes 34-37,  42-47 of: http://lecture.ucsf.edu/ets/Play/d02bc147971844f7b5514225b33842291d?catalog=333992fe-1405-4d6b-ae39-512a30188f34

[11]For a discussion of the funding imbalances, see http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-uc-campus-funding-imbalance.html

[12]The state audit is at: https://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2010-105.pdf
[13] http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82390956/

[14]The rebenching model can be found at: http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/Rebenchingreviewpacket.pdf

[17]If the state supports 50% of the core budget, and UC spends $400 million on pension contributions each year for core mission employees, then the state should commit to dedicating $200 million next year as part of the total general fund appropriation.