Pro-business in a dismal economy helps, but Hickenlooper faces budget-slashing nightmare

For somebody often awkward in his public speeches, prone to stutter-stepping his way through sentences, Governor-elect John Hickenlooper has superb skills as a salesman. Maybe it goes back to his days as a barkeep in Denver’s LoDo, bantering for a moment before moving onto the next table. Now he’ll be using those same skills as a street-savvy, business-friendly Democrat who will also become the most public face as state government faces the need to quickly cut $1.1 billion from the state budget.

Gardner backer Armey would end federal student loan programs in Colorado

Influential and controversial national conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks started the Tea Party movement last year and is endorsing conservative candidates across the country this year, including Colorado 4th District congressional candidate Cory Gardner. FreedomWorks chairman, former Texas congressman and House…

Hickenlooper calls for integration among college programs

Democratic candidate for governor Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper told the Colorado Independent today that colleges, like divisions in corporations, do best when there is competition between programs, but that the overall success of the company is paramount.

Bold bipartisan bill will rework Colorado higher ed funding

DENVER– The Higher Education Flexibility Act passed the Senate last week and is scheduled to make it to the House Monday. It’s a bold bill that would rearrange the relationship between public universities and the government. It would mean greater autonomy for university administrations which, for example, would be free to levy tuition hikes under 9 percent per year. Current higher education funding in low-tax recession-wracked Colorado has become unsustainable. The new bill seeks to buffer universities against a likely $300 million funding cut next year.

Judge orders CSU to release recordings of chancellor search meeting

A Larimer County judge this afternoon ordered the Colorado State University Board of Governors to make public further recordings of a closed-door session last month during which it secretly interviewed candidates for the university’s new chancellorship and decided to select its vice chairman Joe Blake as sole finalist for the position.

Judge Stephen Schapanski’s ruling comes in a case brought by The Colorado Independent, the Fort Collins’ Coloradoan and the Pueblo Chieftain, which argued the university violated state open meetings laws in its search for a chancellor.

CSU set to appoint chancellor, shrugs off watchdog coalition concerns

The Colorado State University board of governors is moving to install its own former vice chairman, Joe Blake, as system chancellor this month after making little effort to directly address concerns about the lack of transparency that marred the chancellor search process this spring.

The business of higher education: Extracting profit impoverishes purpose

In recent years, colleges and universities have encountered increasing pressure to operate like businesses. As the logic goes, businesses must survive in a cutthroat climate of unfettered competition and, thus, their organizations need to be leaner, more efficient and more responsive to the needs of their customers than not-for-profit organizations, such as colleges and universities.

Scenester Joe Blake preps for CSU chancellorship

The Denver Post celebrity sighting column caught soon-to-be Colorado State University Chancellor Joe Blake already beginning some of the work he has been hired to do for the school.

According to the Post, 73-year-old Blake stepped out Tuesday night in Denver for cocktails and dinner with local movers and shakers — exactly the kind of people the board at CSU is depending on Blake to summon out of the depths of his Rolodex and tap to help solve the ongoing funding crisis at the land-grant university.

CSU lawyers file lawyerly defense in open-meetings suit

In papers submitted to a Larimer court last night, Colorado State University attorneys argue that CSU board members did not break state transparency laws when they voted in private to make board Vice Chair Joe Blake CSU chancellor because Blake had recused himself as Vice Chair roughly a week before the vote.

Recession education: Tuition and enrollment up across state

It’s a bad time to be raising university administration costs. It’s a good time to be streamlining administration and expanding recruitment efforts and student-funding options.

On Friday, Colorado officials formally asked the federal government for $760 million in stimulus money to save education programs and jobs threatened by this year’s record budget shortfalls.