Jason Sisney of LAO reports on his blog that there is as yet no deal. He also reports a deal is likely by June 29 in time for much of the actual budget to be passed before July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, although some clean-up legislation will follow over the summer.
From the Daily Californian: Faculty advocating for the reinstatement of SAT and ACT requirements are criticizing the timeline produced by the UC system’s Academic Senate to revisit its standardized testing policies, saying the process is moving too slowly. The UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, approved a roadmap June 5 outlining its plan to research potential changes to admissions policy. The committee formed two work groups: One will study the efficacy of standardized testing in first-year admissions, and the other will look at the UC’s “A-G” course requirement for California first-year applicants. If approved by the UC Board of Regents, changes would affect fall 2028 applicants at the earliest, one year later than called for in a petition signed by more than 1,500 UC STEM faculty...
Electrical engineering and computer sciences chair Jelani Nelson argued the process was redundant, and the topic was already thoroughly researched by UC faculty on the Academic Council’s Standardized Testing Task Force in 2020... Nelson said the proposal felt “tone-deaf” given the urgency of UC faculty’s calls for more rigor in the admissions process...
From the NY Times: The videos are all over social media, making students an irresistible offer: Go ahead and let A.I. do your homework — with the latest technology, you won’t get caught. These kinds of tutorials are now pervasive on TikTok and YouTube. They show students how to use tools known as humanizers and autotypers, which make it easier than ever to cheat. The videos — sometimes labeled ads, sometimes not — target college and high school students.
Humanizers rewrite A.I.-produced text to make it sound less robotic, formulaic and trite. Autotypers slowly drip words and sentences into documents, making it appear as if papers were typed at a human pace when in fact, they were produced by A.I. They even fabricate typos, deletions and revisions. Both tools can help students evade software designed to detect A.I.
Colleges and K-12 schools are trying to keep up, with A.I. detection becoming a significant expense. But educators attempting to restrict the technology, worried about students failing to develop basic skills, are often lagging in what tech-industry leaders are calling a detection arms race. In some cases, the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat, including by writing papers for them or rephrasing text written by others. The apps promise to help them avoid accusations of misconduct by scanning their work before they submit it, allowing them to rewrite passages identified as A.I. Even honest students are often willing to fork over $10 to $20 per month for premium tools, since A.I. detectors sometimes flag legitimate work...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/ai-apps-students-cheat.html.
Both bonds would require legislative approval and then voter approval. And the housing bond in particular might or might not have included UC funding. But now it apparently does. As part of an $11 billion housing bond, there is this provision:
Three hundred fifty million dollars ($350,000,000) to be appropriated by the Legislature for new affordable student housing projects. This funding shall be split evenly among the University of California and the California State University. Funded student housing projects shall meet the terms specified in subdivision (f) of Section 17201 of the Education Code. For these projects, the University of California and California State University shall meet the accountability and reporting requirements specified in subdivisions (i) and (o) of Section 17201 of the Education Code.
Full text at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB417.
Medicare Advantage plans often offer extras such as gym memberships to attract participants. But the issue is what happens when someone has a serious health issue and needs expensive care. Newsweek finds high denial rates in Medicare Advantage plans, but persistent appeals will often reverse the denial:
Private Medicare plans are denying requests for specialized medical care at widely varying rates. In some cases, denial rates were strikingly high, especially for some of the largest Medicare Advantage companies: CVS Health/Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, according to a new inspector general report.
Some of these insurers, while being some of the most prominent in the U.S., routinely reject requests for post-hospital care such as rehabilitation and long-term treatment
Full story at https://www.newsweek.com/medicare-plans-compared-based-on-denial-rates-for-specialized-care-12075121.
What this story is saying is that when a health crunch occurs under a Medicare Advantage plan, you may get treatment denial - although after a hassle, the negative decision might be reversed. It would be worth tracking whether that has been the experience under the Medicare Advantage offerings of UC.
From the Daily Princetonian: Clinicians in the University’s mental and behavioral health Exclusive Provider Network (EPN), a network of local clinicians subsidized by the University to provide counseling to Princeton students, will see cuts to their rates for their services. Starting August 1, rates will decrease by 48 percent for psychiatric diagnostic evaluations, and by 7 percent for 60-minute follow-up sessions. The reduced rates will be lower than 2019 EPN rates for most services and treatments.
This decision comes amid budget cuts driven by lower endowment return projections. Of the roughly 228 clinicians currently in the EPN, 76 percent have confirmed they will remain in the network for the upcoming year...
California has a budget reserve often referred to as the "rainy day" fund. The state legislature is now considering a bill that would allow more money to be deposited into the rainy day fund.* That sounds like a prudent idea. But as we have pointed out in prior budgetary analysis, there are several reserves associated with the state's general fund. What matters is whether total reserves are rising or falling.
Thus, when politicians point to putting money into the rainy day fund as a Good Thing, it is always necessary to find out what is happening to total reserves since the rainy day fund is only a part of the total. If the rainy day fund goes up while the total is going down, that is a deficit.
Just keep that in mind. And note that it would take a two-thirds vote of both legislative houses to pass the bill and put the issue on the ballot. Voters would then have to approve it.
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*https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260ACA20.
