Getting In - Part 7

From EdSource: ...While several other UC campuses turn away tens of thousands of qualified students annually, Merced faces the opposite challenge and has struggled to find students willing to enroll.  The campus wants to grow enrollment, but despite doubling its physical size this decade with more housing, classroom space, laboratories and other facilities, its enrollment has hovered around 9,000 students for each of the past seven years. Its yield rate — the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll — is the lowest in the UC system at 4%. 

Merced, which opened its doors in 2005, once hoped to reach 15,000 students by 2030, but officials now speak of a more modest goal: reaching 10,000 within the next few years. Achieving that will be important not only for Merced but also for the UC system, which is relying on the campus to enroll more in-state residents and satisfy pressure from lawmakers to get more Californians into UC. Campus officials believe they will see growth beginning this fall. Based on the number of freshmen and transfer students who have indicated intent to enroll, Merced is tracking above where it was at this point in 2025. The campus is continuing to build and expand programs, including a new partnership with UC San Francisco that allows students to work toward a bachelor’s degree at Merced and then an MD at UCSF’s Fresno campus.

UC Merced last year also achieved R1 status, the top research designation awarded by the Carnegie Foundation — and one that officials hope will improve the campus’s reputation with prospective students...

Full story at https://edsource.org/2026/how-uc-merced-is-trying-to-attract-students-after-years-of-slow-growth/755196.

Straws in the Wind - Part 315

From the Yale Daily News: Long days in the nation’s capital are not uncommon for Yale President Maurie McInnis. When McInnis traveled to Washington, D.C., last month, “a primary topic of conversation” was the Financial Accountability in Research, or FAIR, model, she said, for which she was advocating to increase transparency in federal funding of research administrative costs. McInnis’ ongoing lobbying efforts have been a focus of her presidency since President Donald Trump took office. “I was there for 22 hours last week,” McInnis said in an interview on March 31. “Flew down late one night, had meetings all day and then flew back late that same night.”

During her trip, McInnis said she met with “a variety of senators and members of the House of Representatives.” McInnis added that she does not “usually like to say which lawmakers we meet with” and that the recent trip included meetings with lawmakers who were “generally receptive.” 

“The big topic on the table,” McInnis said, “relates to facilities and administrative costs, or the things that are sometimes called indirect costs.”

...Several organizations — including the Association of American Universities, on whose board of directors McInnis sits — came together to form a group to develop a new model in response to the cuts. The Joint Associations Group on Indirect Costs is made up by experts including former government officials and university administrators. The group developed the model and proposed FAIR as a replacement for the current reimbursement system that uses negotiated rates for individual universities.

The FAIR model splits research costs into three categories, separating the costs currently categorized as indirect into two buckets. One of those buckets would include costs specific to each research project, and the other would cover institution-wide operational costs necessary for research, according to an Association of American Universities webpage about the proposed model...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/mcinnis-latest-lobbying-priority-was-a-new-research-funding-model.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 142

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 offered a measured defense of former University President Claudine Gay’s widely criticized House testimony in a Monday interview, suggesting her response reflected a technically correct — if politically maladroit — reading of school policy. In a public interview in Manhattan, Garber pointed to the now-infamous December 2023 colloquy between Gay and Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-NY) in which Gay said that calling for the genocide of Jews could violate University policy “depending on the context.” The remark quickly went viral, drawing sharp backlash from lawmakers, donors, and Harvard affiliates alike, who bashed her for failing to issue an outright condemnation of antisemitic speech.

...Though Gay backtracked, apologized, and clarified in the weeks that followed, the damage was done. She resigned less than a month after the hearing. More than two years later, Harvard is still reliving Gay’s testimony. In an otherwise forward-looking interview, Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief Emma Tucker asked Garber point blank how he would respond if posed Stefanik’s question. He declined to answer directly. Instead, he made an effort to insert the context he said was missing from Gay’s testimony.

...Gay retreated from public appearances following her resignation, only re-emerging briefly in September to criticize Garber of “compliance” with the Trump administration in his ongoing back-and-forth with the White House. She is now slated to teach two courses in the fall term, including a tutorial in the Government department on university governance...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/14/garber-claudine-gay-testimony/.

Regents Behind Closed Doors Today...

...but for a change they are not meeting to talk about you-know-what.

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING

The Regents of the University of California

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS

Date: April 17, 2026

Time: 11:30 a.m.

Locations: UC Center Sacramento, 1115 11th Street, Sacramento

Agenda – Closed Session

Action Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of January 20, 2026

S1(X) Action Recommendations for Election of Officers and Appointments to Standing Committees for 2026-27

Closed Session Statute Citation: Nomination of officers and members [Education Code §92032(e)]

Pursuant to the Charter, Regents who are not members of the Special Committee shall not attend its meetings.

--

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/april26/notice-nominations-april-17-2026.pdf.

Still Pouring In

We have been noting, month by month, that the state has been receiving revenue (mainly tax revenue) running well ahead of estimates made when the current year's budget was adopted. Through March, revenues exceeded forecast values by $16 billion, according to the state controller's latest report.*

When the governor presented his budget proposals in January, he revised up the estimated revenue. Even so, revenues exceeded the revised estimate by $7.6 billion. 

Eyes on the Prize**

Much of the overage in receipts continues to come from personal income taxes which suggests that stock market capital gains are the root cause. The AI boom has likely been an important factor. Estimates of sales tax receipts have proved to be pretty accurate which suggests that the underlying forecast of economic activity has been pretty accurate.

As blog readers will know, the governor did not choose to reflect concerns that the AI boom could go bust when he made his January budget proposals. He said that if some correction was needed, they could always be made at the May revise. AI has busted yet, and now there is also the uncertainty created by the Iran situation. Gasoline prices and other energy-related costs could dampen consumer spending. But the governor - with his eye on the White House in 2028 - probably can gamble that even if Bad Things happen, they will happen on his successor's watch.

Now it's true that when extra revenue comes in, a lot of it is automatically earmarked for K-14 thanks to Prop 98 as amended. But the state has $87.5 billion in unused borrowable resources. So, whatever happens, I would be surprised if the governor comes out with an austere May revise. And even if he did, the legislature would likely not go along with it.

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*https://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-ARD/CASH/March2026StatementofGeneralFundCashReceiptsandDisbursements.pdf.

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**Apparently, they decided not to translate the English title: Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. But at least they didn't call it Sein Kampf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 314

From Inside Higher Ed: After international student enrollment crashed in fall 2025, a report from Shorelight, an international education firm, illuminates one factor that led to that decline: a bump in F-1 visa rejections, especially for students from a handful of countries that typically supply large numbers of international enrollees. Shorelight’s annual report on visa refusals showed that denials reached a decade high of 35 percent worldwide in 2025, exceeding the previous peak in 2020. Those refusals were mainly concentrated in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of all F-1 visa requests from Africans were rejected, up from 43 percent in 2015 and up five percentage points from the previous year. A few countries, including Sierra Leone and Somalia, reached rejection rates over 90 percent. And India, previously the largest provider of international students to the United States, jumped from a refusal rate of 36 percent in 2023 to 61 percent in 2025.

Meanwhile, visa refusal rates for South Americans have actually decreased in the past four years, from a peak of 31 percent in 2022 to 22 percent in 2025—though that rate is still higher than they were a decade ago. The student visa denial rate among European applicants has remained steady over the past 10 years, sitting at 9 percent in 2026...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/international-students-us/2026/04/11/f-1-student-visa-refusals-surged-2025.

Wikipedia Solicitations - Part 3 (flood)

The flow of Wikipedia solicitations - such as the one below - seems to be turning into a flood. Again, if you get one, you can either delete it or report it to Wikipedia at paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org. What you should not assume is that you will get what you are paying for if you engage someone who sends you a solicitation to write or enhance a Wikipedia entry.