Higher Education Quick Takes

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education has offered faculty members at its 14 state institutions an early retirement plan, with the goal that 200 choose to sign up. If that threshold isn’t met, The Patriot-News reported, the system will consider retrenchment and cutting positions. So far, 165 faculty members have signed up for the early retirement plan, which allows them to get more unused sick days paid out than is normally available through regular retirement.

Even if the goal is met, retrenchment may still be a possibility, a spokesperson for the system told The Patriot-News. The system’s student enrollment has fallen 20 percent since 2010.

John Arrillaga, a Bay Area real estate developer and Stanford University alumnus, has committed $55 million to the university’s School of Medicine, which, along with other resources, will eliminate a substantial amount of medical school debt for eligible incoming students. The donation was given as a challenge gift, which the university says it plans to match.

Stanford said the gift effectively doubles the amount of aid the School of Medicine can offer to students with demonstrated need over the next decade.

The university says it has long been a leader in alleviating debt. The med school's Class of 2019 graduated with a median student debt of $89,000. The median national medical student debt that year was $200,000, the Association of American Medical Colleges reported.

Amid the ongoing grade and teaching assistant strike on campus over cost of living concerns, the University of California, Santa Cruz, said this week that a $2,500 housing supplement is available to all doctoral students in their first five years of study and to master of fine arts students in their first two years. Previously, the university said the supplement was “needs-based.” That concerned graduate students who worried that the criteria for need were vague, that they wouldn’t qualify for help and that international students would automatically be ruled out. The university also said that it would remove previously administered letters of warning related to the strike from student files after this academic year -- if students resume their duties. Last week’s deadline for turning in undergraduates’ fall grades would be verified on Thursday, Santa Cruz also said. Those who don’t turn in grades from the fall quarter stand to lose spring teaching appointments, but graduate students have threatened a boycott of appointments in return.

Regarding the new aid, there remains a big gap between the $1,412-per-month cost of living adjustment Santa Cruz graduate student employees seek and the $2,500 the university has promised. Striking students say that it is not only difficult to find rental apartments, homes and rooms in Santa Cruz, but that it is one of the most expensive rental markets in the country. Many graduates report spending 60 percent of their pay on rent and believe that the COLA they want would help them spend closer to 30 percent on rent, bringing them out of what’s known as rent or cost burden. Graduate employees at Santa Cruz are unionized in affiliation with the university system’s statewide union under the United Auto Workers. While the statewide union has not authorized the strike, it has urged university administrators to negotiate with graduate workers on several campuses who seek a COLA.

Three senior staffers who were mysteriously fired earlier this month by Wayne State University Press have been reinstated.

Newly appointed interim director Kathryn Wildfong made the call to rehire the staff, Crain’s Detroit Business reports. Former interim director Tara Reeser stepped down from her role last week.

The rationale behind the decision to fire the three staff, including the press’s editor in chief, has still not been explained. The editorial board of the press published a letter last week calling for the decision to be reversed. A petition was also signed by 60 writers, editors and affiliates of the press.