The top Republican in the state Senate is challenging a warning from University of Connecticut officials that further tuition hikes may be needed as soon as 2019 to offset declining state funding.
University of Connecticut
Posted inEducation
Susan Herbst to step down as UConn president in 2019
Susan Herbst told the University of Connecticut community in an email Monday she will step down next summer after eight years as the 15th president of the state’s flagship university, a tumultuous time of dealing with budget constraints. UConn will be recruiting a successor in the midst of a gubernatorial campaign.
Posted inPolitics
CT colleges pay to play in Washington
WASHINGTON — Universities across the United States spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year lobbying in Washington, including the University of Connecticut and Yale. A main reason: They are in a tight competition for a dwindling pot of federal research money.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics
Big deficits two years from now could undercut tax cut promises
While the new state budget promises an array of tax cuts two and three years from now, it also leaves the next governor and legislature to close a $4.6 billion projected shortfall — far larger than the deficit lawmakers addressed in the current plan.
Posted inEducation, Health, Money, Politics
After 117-day marathon, Senate passes bipartisan budget
The Senate took a major step early Thursday toward ending Connecticut’s nearly 17-week budget impasse, overwhelmingly adopting a $41.3 billion, two-year plan that closes huge deficits without raising income or sales tax rates, imposes modest cuts on local aid, and provides emergency assistance to keep Hartford out of bankruptcy.
Posted inEducation
The state of UConn in 16 charts
Debate rages at the state Capitol and across Connecticut over how much to cut the state’s share of funding for the University of Connecticut. Here, in graphical form, is an overview of where the public university gets and spends its money, who it enrolls, how many it employs, and how it compares to other universities in research and endowment.
Posted inEducation, Money
State education funding to be a battleground in budget dispute
Huge questions over how state aid for schools and state colleges ultimately will fare will be a critical focus of Democratic and Republican leaders as they grapple with reconciling their vastly different state budgets. Here are the critical differences in funding for schools and colleges that Democrats and Republicans must resolve.
Posted inNews
A Connecticut ‘dreamer,’ committed to the fight, will not return to the shadows
Lucas Codognolla was born in Brazil, grew up as an average American child in Connecticut and is a UConn grad. But President Donald Trump has put his future and that of other undocumented young people in this country on shaky ground. In this Sunday conversation, we talk to him about how he’s handling the end of DACA, a program that has shielded 800,000 undocumented youth from deportation.
Posted inNews
With UConn’s campus now open, Hartford asks, ‘What’s next?’
While plenty of smaller projects are still underway, the grand opening of the University of Connecticut’s new Hartford branch campus means for the first time in more than a decade there is a lull in major redevelopment downtown.
Posted inEducation, Politics
As UConn returns, a chapter in Hartford’s history is completed
HARTFORD — For nearly a half-century, the University of Connecticut has had no place to call its own in the state’s capital city. Today that changes as Connecticut’s flagship university opens the doors of its new $140-million downtown branch campus on Prospect Street.
Posted inMoney
On Day 41 without a budget: New bus service to UConn
New bus service from Hartford to UConn underscores two things: One, going 41 days without a budget has not created a daily sense of crisis in Connecticut, where state offices, parks and beaches remain open. And two, not all spending is jeopardized by ongoing talks seeking sufficient spending cuts and revenue increases to close a $2.3 billion deficit.
Posted inPolitics
On Realtors’ dime, Geno tries coaching at the Capitol
Geno Auriemma stood Tuesday on a Bushnell Park bandstand, down the hill from the State Capitol, to give a motivational speech commissioned by the Connecticut Realtors. It was unclear if his target audience was the 2,000 Realtors seated before him or the two dozen legislators on stage behind him.
Posted inEducation
Salaries, fringe benefits driving tuition hikes at CT public colleges
Top financial officials from Connecticut’s two major public college systems told legislators Friday that rising fringe benefit costs and mandated employee salary increases are key driving forces behind tuition hikes.
Posted inEducation
College leaders warn proposed cuts would have big consequences
The president of the state’s largest public college system offered a particularly dismal outlook, warning the cuts could lead his system to declare its equivalent of bankruptcy.
Posted inPolitics
CT lawmakers hail likely return of reviled earmarks
WASHINGTON – U.S. House Republicans were stopped from bringing back a practice that once funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Connecticut – but the once reviled earmark, or special project, looks like it’s going to make a comeback anyway.