Mikhail Zinshteyn

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s initial 2024-25 budget is “optimistic” on revenue and has strengths and weaknesses on spending. The LAO offers guidance to state lawmakers on their version.

Gov. Newsom says the deficit is far smaller than what the Legislature’s analysts projected, and proposes only $8.5 billion in cuts by delaying spending and taking $13 billion from the state’s main reserves.

After months of negotiations, university officials offer a 5% pay raise. The union is seeking 12% and plans to strike systemwide at the end of January, including at Cal Poly Humboldt and Chico State.

The financial aid application for undocumented students is cumbersome and confusing, and many students aren’t completing the forms. A new law streamlines the process.

Cal State officials offered a 5% increase for each of the next three years, although those raises are not guaranteed. The union plans to strike at four campuses. CalPoly Humboldt and Chico State are not among the initial targets of the labor action.

With the growing use of AI, campus officials are trying to set clear guidelines for college application essays.

The tuition increases were forecast earlier this year, when a Cal State task force concluded the system needs at least $1.5 billion annually in new revenue to afford student services and bolster its academic offerings.

A budget deal between lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsmon includes $227 million more for the state’s Middle Class Scholarship, part of a commitment to eventually remove any reason for public university students to take out loans to pay for their education. The revised program debuted last year, sending an average of nearly $2,000 to 300,000 students.

Breaking from over a decade of traditionally not raising tuition for its students, Cal State leaders on Thursday released a proposal that would start annual increases in fall 2024. They say it’s the only way to make up a shortfall between operating costs and revenues.

Though voters soundly rejected an effort to legalize affirmative action in California in 2020, state Democrats are trying again, proposing a limited version that would allow state agencies to consider race if academic research shows evidence those race-based programs could work. Familiar political battle lines are forming.

Enrollment is down at the University of California and the Cal State, which has frustrated lawmakers who gave both systems more money to increase their number of students.

Most college students don’t qualify for CalFresh, California’s food stamps program, despite high rates of food insecurity. A pandemic-era rule that made it easier to get aid ends soon.