The University of California and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative four-year contract agreement covering more than 40,000 graduate student workers and staff, averting a planned strike following months of dispute over alleged unfair labor practices.
Education
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Teens walked out of school to protest ICE. Police are investigating the adults who helped them
High school students all over California walked out of class in protest over the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement. Police in two cities, conservative Clovis and liberal Los Angeles, issued warnings about potential arrests to adults who helped them.
Posted inEducation
UCSC projecting a slightly higher deficit, still has $99 million in cuts coming
Officials at UC Santa Cruz say the campus now projects an $81 million deficit for the 2025-26 fiscal year, slightly higher than the previously estimated $79 million, driven by rising costs, higher-than-expected student aid spending and lower revenue from international students and federal funding.
Posted inLatest News
Salmon survival: Betting on the right fish
By studying salmon bones, scientists have uncovered that for thousands of years, Chinook salmon returned to California rivers at a range of ages. Today, habitat loss, overharvesting and conventional hatcheries have narrowed the age diversity of returning fish, a critical factor in efforts to save the species in Santa Cruz County and beyond. They are working with tribal partners to restore that diversity, protecting wild stocks and the rhythms that keep rivers alive.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
UCSC’s college system and core courses are humanities’ best defense
UC Santa Cruz historian Kiva Silver is worried about the future of the university’s college system and the core courses at UCSC. He believes the courses, usually taken in students’ first year on campus, are essential to preserving a human-centered liberal arts education as a bulwark against AI. The courses, he writes, should not be sacrificed as the campus works to overcome a structural deficit of about $87 million. The courses and living-learning communities are part of UCSC’s original 10-college system and, he argues, foster critical thinking, belonging and the type of intellectual community that has always nurtured humanity. If students never ask “who am I?”, he writes, how will they be able to differentiate themselves from machines?
Posted inLatest News
New report by UCSC researchers examines financial, social and legal hardships faced by farmworkers
A new report by UC Santa Cruz’s Institute for Social Transformation and the Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueño examines the harsh conditions faced by farmworkers and how immigration fears contribute to the severity of their challenges.
Posted inEducation
UCSC faculty pressing administrators to pause parking fee increase, conduct formal review
UC Santa Cruz faculty are urging campus administrators to pause planned parking fee increases and conduct a formal review after saying they were not consulted before the changes were announced.
Posted inLatest News
Longtime philanthropist Pat Rebele dies at 96, leaving a legacy of community and arts advocacy
With her late husband, Rowland Rebele, who died in late 2023, Pat Rebele donated tens of millions of dollars to local charities, nonprofits, arts groups and scholarship funds in Santa Cruz County and beyond.
Posted inEducation
California teachers ‘tread lightly’ for America’s 250th as they navigate competing narratives
California is strengthening civics education as America marks it 250th birthday. Teachers have to navigate a polarized political environment as they guide lessons on the Constitution.
Posted inEducation
New Cabrillo College president Jenn Capps’ No. 1 goal is to increase access
Cabrillo College’s new president, Jenn Capps, says her top priority is expanding access to higher education as she begins her tenure amid declining enrollment, a budget deficit and campus concerns about racism and immigration enforcement.