Students

By UC Davis News Service

The University of California at Davis, West Village, the nation’s largest planned zero net energy community, racks up an impressive list of achievements in its initial year of review. The first formal analysis of West Village shows that, even in its initial phases, it is well on the way to the ultimate goal of operating as a ZNE community.

The report released today from UC Davis, and its partner West Village Community Partnership LLC, outlines major milestones including West Village producing 87 percent of the energy it consumed in a one-year period — well in advance of the project’s full completion.

Here we go again.  UC Davis officials are once again putting symbolism over substance.  Reeling from a string of PR hits, the university is now making a very expensive investment in improvement of their image.  This week, they announced the hiring of Luanne Lawrence, formerly of the University of South Carolina, as associate chancellor for strategic communications.

The Sacramento Bee on Monday reported that her salary will be $260,000 – which is more than any other campus communications chief in the entire UC system.

A few weeks after allowing a deadline to pass that would have substantially increased interest rates – from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent – on July 1 for student loans, a bipartisan bill was introduced that supporters say will reduce the cost of borrowing for millions of students.

The legislation will link student loan interest rates to the financial markets.  That means lower rates for students right now, but higher ones down the road.  The measure passed the house 392-31 and will head for President Barack Obama for his signature.

University of California students might be forgiven if they are a bit cynical.  After all, for years now they have been asked to pay an increasingly larger share of the burden of their education.  Much of that money will be repaid later severalfold as students struggle under an avalanche of debt that the leadership in Congress has failed to address and has at times made worse.

Still, I think that most students could probably understand that, as the natural outcome of the worst recession since the Great Depression, this is a state that continues to teeter on the brink of budget crisis and overall malaise – if only that burden seemed to be shared evenly across all comers to the UC System.

While the public and the activist class has weighed in on the appointment of former Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano to become the next president of the University of California, the major newspapers in California are split, sometimes within themselves, on whether it was a good move, a desperate move, or a disaster.

One area of concern was the process, with the LA Times asking how we can tell if this is a good choice or not, based on the limited search process that went on.

Controversial and Polarizing Figure Set to Head Largest Public University System in Late September – The UC Board of Regents on Thursday formalized the move that was reported first last week by the Los Angeles Times and sparked a wave of controversy in both progressive and conservative circles, appointing  Janet Napolitano, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a two-term governor of Arizona, as the 20th president of the University of California.

Ms. Napolitano, the first female president in UC’s 145-year history, succeeds Mark G. Yudof, who steered the university through the depths of California’s financial crisis that led to sharp cutbacks in state support for public higher education.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting this morning that Janet Napolitano, “the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, is being named as the next president of the University of California system, in an unusual choice that brings a national-level politician to a position usually held by an academic.”

The appointment would mean that a woman would head up the nation’s premier public higher education system for the first time in its 145 year history.

Congress failed to strike a deal to keep student loan rates low on Monday, meaning that the subsidized Stafford loan interest rates will soar to 6.8 percent despite increasing concerns that the current generation of college students will be saddled with student loans that they might never be able to pay off.

Congressman John Garamendi, who represents much of Yolo County in Congress, fought hard against these changes and said on Monday he was “outraged by the shameful failure of Congress to stop the subsidized Stafford Student Loan interest rate from doubling.”

Commentary: Scholarships Are Great, But We Need Systemic Reform, Not Gimmicks and PR Stunts – The headline in the local paper is “Students are priority No.1.”

It only gets better from there.  On Monday, the UC Davis News service sent out an announcement that they have created a $1 million-plus matching fund to encourage gifts to help UC Davis students.