More than a year into President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, undocumented students at Cabrillo College are increasingly avoiding campus services and financial aid programs due to fear of exposing personal information. College staff report declining participation and heightened anxiety among students, even as the school expands resources to reassure and support them.
Higher Ed
Posted inEducation
UCSC hires UC Berkeley administrator as new second-in-command
UC Santa Cruz has appointed UC Berkeley executive dean Jennifer Johnson-Hanks as its next campus provost, with a start date of Jan. 1, 2027, Chancellor Cindy Larive announced last week.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
When leadership fails: Here’s what my Cabrillo students learned at our latest board of trustees meeting
Cabrillo College professor Skye Gentile says recent meetings of the school’s board of trustees have offered students a real-time lesson in poor communication and bad leadership. The meetings, she writes, have allowed students to see examples of tokenism and microaggressions and to discuss the importance of timing, apologies and public accountability. Effective leadership depends less on intent and more on listening, reflection and awareness of impact. Her students, she writes, have been left wondering if the current board represents their interests and values.
Posted inEducation
UCSC to reduce number of provosts by half, with each leading two of its 10 colleges instead of one
UC Santa Cruz will cut the number of college provosts in half next academic year, shifting to a model where five full-time provosts each oversee two colleges instead of one, a change administrators say will improve coordination and expand access to programs. The move has sparked concern among alumni who fear it could weaken college identity and student relationships, though university officials and current provosts say it will strengthen the system rather than diminish it.
Posted inHealth & Wellness
This new California law will offer college students rehab before discipline for overdosing
College students who seek help for substance use after an overdose face disciplinary action by their campus. A new California law, written in part by students themselves, will require colleges and universities to offer rehabilitation services to students rather than discipline.
Posted inEducation
UC and graduate worker union reach agreement, averting strike
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.
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 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.
