Congress is scrambling to show that it understands voter concerns about AI data centers and their potential impact on electricity rates. But answering the question of how much of those costs will be shouldered by residential utility customers is surprisingly difficult to answer.
Why now: On Capitol Hill this week, Republicans have been trying to push through the Ratepayer Protection Act, sponsored by Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted. The bill would have state utilities consider holding "large-load" customers responsible for the increased costs. Several other data center and AI-related bills are at various stages in the legislative process.
Ahead of the midterm elections, Congress is scrambling to show that it understands voter concerns about AI data centers and their potential impact on electricity rates. But answering the question of how much of those costs will be shouldered by residential utility customers is surprisingly difficult to answer.
That uncertainty is at the heart of a growing fight on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers advance competing proposals aimed at protecting ratepayers in a debate that often belies the complexity of the underlying economics.
On Capitol Hill this week, Republicans have been trying to push through the Ratepayer Protection Act, sponsored by Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted. The bill would have state utilities consider holding "large-load" customers responsible for the increased costs.
Husted is in a heated reelection campaign against Democrat Sherrod Brown, who lost his Senate seat in 2024. Brown has made Husted's past support of data centers in Ohio a major campaign issue. The bill easily passed the House in September with strong bipartisan support.
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer opposes the measure, saying its protections for ratepayers are voluntary. Instead, Schumer is promoting the GRID Savings Act, a similar bill authored by New Mexico Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich, which he says has more teeth.
The question of how much of the energy and grid costs are being borne by ratepayers is a complicated one and has no universal answer, experts tell NPR. They say it varies by utility and state, but that in the end residential electricity customers will pay for a share of the AI buildout.
By one estimate, Maryland customers, for example, pay somewhere around $168 to $216 more per year on their electricity bills primarily due to the data center boom.
"We're talking tens to hundreds of millions of dollars [of infrastructure] that are being built by these local utilities," says Connor Waldoch, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Grid Status, which focuses on making electricity-market data easier to access and understand. "In many cases, it is just ultimately going to end up in customers' bills."
Tracking the impact of data center growth on residential bills isn't easy, however. How much of the increase is passed on to residential customers and when, depends on utilities' power-purchasing contracts, retail rates and regulatory decisions about who pays, according to Lucy Qiu, a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.
PJM is a regional transmission organization that coordinates the electricity grid and wholesale power market across 13 states and the District of Columbia. It supplies power to Northern Virginia, home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world. PJM's Independent Market Monitor estimates that data centers have cost their 67 million ratepayers about $29 billion over roughly the past two years.
"Everyone pays those costs," says Ari Peskoe, director of the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative. "They're spread across the region to every business and resident that has an electricity meter."
An Amazon Web Services data center is shown situated near single-family homes in Stone Ridge, Va.
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Nathan Howard
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How to determine who the grid infrastructure benefits?
Data center growth can push up wholesale costs of energy by increasing demand. This determines how much generating capacity utilities and regional grid operators need to secure, Qiu says. There are also costs with building new power lines, substations and other infrastructure to connect data centers to the grid. Determining how much of that exclusively serves data centers — and how much also benefits other customers — is part of the difficulty in determining who gets the bill, she says.
"It really depends on the scale of the upgrade and also how utilities are doing the accounting of that different share, whether it's being used solely by the data centers or also being shared by other customers," Qiu says.
No "single, clean number"
Even so, "a single, clean number" that applies nationwide is just not possible, Harvard's Peskoe says, because "a lot of the data about how much particular data centers are paying is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements."
Those NDAs have become a major sore spot on the local level, as residents opposed to new data centers call out local officials for the secrecy that has surrounded many deals. A study last year by the University of Mary Washington found that NDAs had been signed in 80% of Virginia localities where there were existing, approved or proposed data centers.
In an email to NPR, Jeremy L. Slayton, a spokesman for Dominion Energy, which serves Loudoun County, Va., home to about 250 data centers, said, "We recover costs for distribution and transmission infrastructure from customers."
"These assets are core to the reliable electric service we provide our customers. All costs we recover from customers are reviewed and approved by the Virginia State Corporation Commission," he said, referring to the independent state agency that regulates public utilities.
Added costs of building out in a hurry
There is still another factor at play, University of Maryland's Qiu says. The data center industry is in a hurry and waiting for new power-generation technologies doesn't seem to be in the cards. As a result, to meet the demand, utility companies will likely need to opt for less efficient power plants and those costs will be passed onto consumers over time, as well.
One other consideration is optics, Waldoch of Grid Status says. Big customers like AI data centers pay less per kilowatt hour for power than residential customers do. Think of it as a volume discount. In the current environment where 70% of Americans are worried that data centers will increase their electricity bills, Waldoch says, "If you're saying, hey, this data center is actually paying a lot less for electricity than you are, even though it matters much less to them ... it's not like that's palatable for a lot of people at this point."
Benefits of the AI buildout
But not all price increases in recent years are linked to data centers, Qiu says.
"The fuel cost ... is a very important factor," she says and some of those new substations and power lines were going to need to be replaced anyway due to things like extreme weather events.
Qiu also notes that the U.S. power grid needs upgrades to accommodate higher demand for things like electric vehicles. The AI boom "can accelerate the upgrade of the grid infrastructure," she says.
There's also evidence, Qui says, that resiliency — the ability to survive high-impact events such as extreme heat and to recover from outages — is better for people living near data centers due to the robust infrastructure those facilities require. "So if there's a data center, it actually helps … improve the local grid reliability [and] reduce the power outages," says Qui.
Long Beach Unified announced Thursday it expects to close Gompers and Edison elementary schools at the end of the school year, saying the campuses are underenrolled.
Why now: It’s the district’s latest effort to consolidate resources as enrollment continues to fall districtwide. LBUSD enrollment dipped below 60,000 students this year, the first time it crossed that thresholdsince the early 1980s.
Why it matters: As enrollment declines, so does school funding, and LBUSD is taking drastic measures as operating costs exceed revenue.
Long Beach Unified announced Thursday it expects to close Gompers and Edison elementary schools at the end of the school year, saying the campuses are underenrolled.
It’s the district’s latest effort to consolidate resources as enrollment continues to fall districtwide. LBUSD enrollment dipped below 60,000 students this year, the first time it crossed that thresholdsince the early 1980s.
Why the district wants to close schools
As enrollment declines, so does school funding, and LBUSD is taking drastic measures as operating costs exceed revenue. In a recent budget report, the district said it expects to draw nearly $45 million from its reserves this school year — the third year of deficit spending. Already, the district has reduced library support, mental health resources, and certificated and classified staff. Hoover Middle School closed last year due to low enrollment, the district said. Both LBUSD and the school board have signaled that more tough cuts are on the horizon; some are already here.
“It feels like a big loss,” said school board member Juan Benitez, whose district includes Edison Elementary. Yet he added that low birth rates will continue pushing enrollment down. The district and board have a fiscal responsibility to take action — not only to balance the budget, but to ensure students receive the best learning environment possible, which is difficult to maintain at schools with low capacity, he said.
Where students and teachers would go
If the school closures are approved by the board of education, the Gompers attendance boundary will be consolidated with three nearby Lakewood elementary schools: Cleveland, Holmes and MacArthur, according to a letter the district sent to families. Edison students would attend Chavez and Oropeza elementary schools, both within a mile of Edison’s downtown campus.
If families wish to send their children to different schools, they will receive priority in the school choice process, the letters added.
The campuses will not remain vacant, Benitez said. Edison may be used as a temporary site while other schools undergo modernization projects, and additional uses will be proposed for Gompers, he said. The Child Development Center currently housed at Edison will remain there for at least the next several years, he said.
Teachers on permanent contracts at Gompers and Edison will keep their jobs in the district, said Peder Larsen, president of the teachers union, and they will get precedence in school reassignments. But they may not learn their new school sites until April, once the school transfer and assignment process is underway, he said.
Families push back
The news has hit hard for families. Ashlee Napalan, an LBUSD teacher and a parent of three children at Gompers Elementary, said the news was “heartbreaking” and surprising, especially because Gompers underwent a significant remodel last year, including the installation of a new HVAC system, as well as fresh paint and new playground equipment, she said.
She described a tight-knit community at Gompers and said her children walk to school and play with other kids at the park across the street. When she told her son, a kindergartener, the news, she said he cried all night. “We’ve been really heavily involved with the school for seven years,” she said. “It’s a huge part of our lives.”
What happens next
Some parents have already begun organizing to oppose the move. A petition to keep Gompers open accrued more than 600 signatures in one day. Some parents said they plan to speak at the school board meeting on Oct. 7 when the issue will be presented to the board as an information item. The board is expected to vote on Oct. 21. Parents at each school have been invited to informational meetings in the coming month, according to the letters sent by the district.
Benitez said he is pushing for “ongoing, constant, clear responsive communication” to the families affected by these proposed changes. “The recommendation is not being taken lightly,” he said, adding that he — and the district — will be listening closely to students’ and families’ concerns.
Josie Huang
is a reporter and Weekend Edition host who spotlights the people and places at the heart of our region.
Published October 3, 2026 5:00 AM
George Van Tassel with an architectural model of Integratron he said was inspired by guidance from beings from Venus, now housed at the Huntington.
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McKinney Collection of George W. Van Tassel Papers
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The Huntington
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Topline:
The Huntington has acquired its first ufology collection, tracing the Integratron's origins and the desert flying saucer movement that its creator, George Van Tassel helped lead.
Backstory: A pool contractor, a historian and a podcaster joined forces to help the archive find a home at the Huntington.
Long before it drew sound bath seekers from around the world, the Mojave Desert’s Integratron was one man’s bid to extend human life, guided, he said, by beings from Venus.
A collection tracing the history of the white-domed landmark built by George Van Tassel and the postwar UFO movement he helped lead has now found a home at the Huntington.
The Mojave Desert became a major hub for UFO contactees after WWII.
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McKinney Collection of George W. Van Tassel Papers
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The Huntington
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How a ufology archive reached an institution best known for its manicured botanical gardens and classical portraits is a story decades in the making, bringing together a pool deck contractor, a historian and a podcaster.
“This isn’t just a UFO collection,” said Jack Wager, the L.A.-based host of Otherworld, a popular podcast examining the paranormal. “This is connected to the history of the desert, aerospace, and Southern California in general.”
Who was George Van Tassel?
In the 1950s, the Mojave was becoming an important gathering spot for those who claimed contact with extraterrestrials.
Get a first glimpse at the Integratron archive at the Huntington's Strange Science event
When: Oct. 30–31, 2026, 6–10 p.m. Where: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino Cost: $90 More infohere
Van Tassel had left a career as a flight inspector in Southern California's burgeoning aeronautics industry for the desert community of Landers where his family operated the Come On Inn cafe by an airstrip, and he organized UFO conventions.
George Van Tassel and his wife Eva ran the Come On Inn cafe in the Mojave Desert.
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McKinney Collection of George W. Van Tassel Papers
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The Huntington
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In a 1964 TV interview, he described a close encounter of his own with a crew of humanoids from Venus.
“They were about five foot six,” Van Tassel said. “They came about to my eyebrows, and they could have walked in our clothes down any of our streets, and we would not have paid any attention to it.”
Van Tassel said one of the beings, named Solganda, gave him the idea to bathe people in electromagnetic energy to recharge their cells and live longer.
He began building the Integratron a few miles from his home in the late 1950s, funded by proceeds from his publications and conventions, along with donations. It was rumored that Howard Hughes, for whom he worked as a flight inspector, had contributed $40,000 — worth about half a million today.
The building took its unique shape over the desert but was not fully done by the time Van Tassel died of a heart attack in 1978, said La Crescenta-based architectural historian Daniel Paul.
“I sometimes wondered if he was starting to try certain things on himself, and maybe that messed up his heart a little bit,” Paul said.
Paul dug into Van Tassel’s life after the Integratron’s current owners — sisters Joanne, Nancy and Patty Karl, who transformed the dome into a destination for sound baths — hired him to secure a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Integratron is known for today as a destination for sound baths after it was purchased in 2000 by its current owners including Joanne Karl, seen here.
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Robert Gauthier
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Los Angeles Times
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In his application to the National Park Service, Paul said he credited the Integratron design to the architect Howard P. Hesse, Van Tassel and, in parentheses, Solganda, “because that's what George Van Tassel always said where this guidance came from.”
The Park Service officially listed the Integratron in 2018. Afterward, Paul got a voicemail from a stranger complimenting him for citing Solganda.
A watercolor illustration of the Integratron
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McKinney Collection of George W. Van Tassel Papers
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The Huntington
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How a pool deck contractor ended up with the Van Tassel archive
The caller was Don McKinney, a contractor from Morongo Valley who resurfaced pool decks and, as a side quest, had amassed a vast collection of Van Tassel memorabilia.
Donald McKinney collected the items of Integratron creator George Van Tassel for decades.
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Otherworld Instagram
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“I thought that Van Tassel was the most colorful person that I ever knew,” McKinney said.
McKinney said he met Van Tassel in 1969 when he was 19 and, with friends, visited the older man’s home by a massive boulder called Giant Rock. They went to an underground room where Van Tassel said he received communications from outer space.
“I pulled a book off the shelf and saw a flying saucer in it and asked, 'George, if these were real?'” McKinney recalled. “And he says, ‘Absolutely.’”
McKinney hasn’t seen a UFO in the years since, but believes those who say they have.
In the early 2000s, a potential pool job brought him back into Van Tassel’s world.
Giant Rock, the boulder by where George Van Tassel worked and lived.
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Jack Wagner
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A Van Tassel associate named George Riddle was seeking construction quotes and, in the course of talking, revealed he had a trove of Van Tassel belongings, everything from a model of the Integratron to a photo McKinney remembered seeing at the Come On Inn cafe.
“I just fainted, practically, and bought as much stuff as I could," McKinney said.
Archival materials from the post-war ufology movement in the Southern California desert are now part of the Huntington collection.
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McKinney Collection of George W. Van Tassel Papers
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The Huntington
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By the time McKinney called Paul, he had spent a dozen or so years storing the items in the high-desert home he shares with his wife, Dayle. He later invited Paul to come see it all.
“I drove down there and met him, and I thought, 'Oh my gosh,'” Paul said. “I knew right away Don was the real deal.”
A podcast taping and a race to save the tapes
Several years later, Paul brought the story to a new audience.
On a May 2025 episode of the podcast Otherworld, he joined Wagner to talk about the Integratron. When Paul mentioned McKinney’s desert archive, Wagner wanted to know more.
After the taping, he called McKinney and found out that he had 120 reel-to-reel tapes of Van Tassel's channelings. Wagner was instantly worried about their survival.
“They don't have a huge lifespan, and the Eaton fires had just happened,” Wagner said. “I remember thinking, ‘Man, like, there should at least be a digital copy of these tapes.’”
Wagner headed to McKinney’s house to preserve the audio and flew in his producers Theo Schafer from New York and Theo Krantz from New Mexico.
Otherworld producers Theo Krantz and Theo Schafer joined host Jack Wagner at the home of Don McKinney to preserve his reel-to-reel tapes and other recordings owned by George Van Tassel.
The trio discovered much more than tapes. They also found Integratron blueprints and materials from Van Tassel’s career in aeronautics. They document their trip in a video posted on Otherworld's Patreon.
What happens to the collection now
Wagner told Paul the collection belonged in a museum. Paul agreed and reached out to a friend at the Huntington, Anne Blecksmith, associate director of the library, who then told her colleagues.
A pair of Huntington curators went out to the desert to see the collection themselves. An appraisal followed, then a purchase for an undisclosed amount.
Aside from audio recordings, the Otherworld team were floored by the amount of other items chronicling the desert's UFO history.
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Jack Wagner
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For Erin Chase, the Huntington's associate curator of architecture and photography, said the collection has strong cross appeal.
“Maybe it's about cultural history. Maybe it's about desert ufology. And maybe it's about alternative spirituality,” Chase said. “The hope is that someone will find something in there that's meaningful to them.”
Huntington's associate curator of architecure and photography Erin Chase (l.) examines the Integratron model with library director Sandra Brooke Gordon.
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Linnea Stephan
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The Huntington
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Today, the newly named McKinney Collection of George W. Van Tassel Papers is housed in climate-controlled rooms under tight security as staff prepares it for public access.
Selections, including the Integratron model, will be spotlighted at the Huntington’s Strange Science event on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31. Paul and Wagner will share the stage on both nights to talk about Van Tassel.
In May, Donald McKinney (bottom right) visited the archive he'd kept in his desert home for more than two decades with historian Daniel Paul (bottom right), Otherworld podcaster Jack Wagner and his wife Dayle.
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Donald McKinney
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The Integratron’s current operators welcomed the archive’s arrival at the Huntington. They’ve worked to share the landmark’s history with visitors, but “we cannot be the museum,” said Kristine Atkinson, who helps run the Integratron for her mother, Nancy Karl, and aunts.
“We absolutely know that we couldn't possibly be the end-all, be-all about George Van Tassel,” Atkinson said. “It's too much. It's too big.”
As for McKinney, he got to visit the Huntington for the first time in March with his wife, along with Paul and Wagner, whom he now counts as friends.
The collection’s new home brings relief and joy.
The leather band Don McKinney hand-crafted will stay on the Integratron model at the Huntington. He points to the "F = 1/T," the formula he said was behind the Integratron.
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Jack Wagner
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“We can go to the store and not worry that there's going to be a fire or theft,” McKinney said. “It's just a major blessing all the way around because such good people have control over it.”
His own handiwork is now part of that history. A leather band that McKinney, a skilled leatherworker, crafted still wraps around the base of the Integratron model for visitors to see.
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For more than 20 years, California has levied taxes on health insurers to help fund Medi-Cal, the state’s insurance program for low-income people.
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Jose Carlos Cerdeno Martinez
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Getty Images
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Topline:
Doctors and health insurers filed a lawsuit Friday alleging Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature violated the law when they approved a healthcare tax that could substantially increase insurance premiums for Californians.
The lawusit: The California Medical Association and California Association of Health Plans say in a new lawsuit that the tax violates Proposition 35, passed by voters in 2024. It claims the recently passed tax on health plans, known as the managed care organization tax or MCO tax, circumvents the 2024 initiative that limits healthcare taxes and directs revenue toward specific purposes. The California Medical Association and California Association of Health Plans filed the complaint with the California Supreme Court.
The backstory: For more than 20 years, California has levied taxes on health insurers to help fund Medi-Cal, the state’s insurance program for low-income people. The state historically taxed private health plans at a lower rate than Medi-Cal insurers, but in June, the Legislature passed a bill substantially raising the tax on private plans. Health insurers said they will pass the cost directly on to consumers, spiking premiums by about $100 per person each year. That means a family of four could pay a $400 annual increase. That would come on top of the rate increases people typically see year to year.
The lawsuit claims the recently passed tax on health plans, known as the managed care organization tax or MCO tax, circumvents a 2024 initiative that limits healthcare taxes and directs revenue toward specific purposes. The California Medical Association and California Association of Health Plans filed the complaint with the California Supreme Court.
“California voters passed Proposition 35 and made it law. The state does not get to ignore that law simply because following the law is inconvenient,” medical association CEO Dustin Corcoran said in a statement.
Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance, said in a previous statement to CalMatters that the state wanted to balance the affordability concerns of privately insured patients against large-scale federal Medi-Cal cuts.
For more than 20 years, California has levied taxes on health insurers to help fund Medi-Cal, the state’s insurance program for low-income people. The state historically taxed private health plans at a lower rate than Medi-Cal insurers, but in June, the Legislature passed a bill substantially raising the tax on private plans.
Health insurers said they will pass the cost directly on to consumers, spiking premiums by about $100 per person each year. That means a family of four could pay a $400 annual increase. That would come on top of the rate increases people typically see year to year.
“California is breaking the law by blowing through a tax limit voters put in place to protect Californians and businesses from higher health care costs,” said Charles Bacchi, CEO of the health plans association.
Doctors, hospitals, clinics and Medi-Cal insurers have argued for many years that the revenue from the tax should go toward improving Medi-Cal. They said that the state was inappropriately using the money to replace general fund spending, and that many providers were being paid far less than their services cost. In 2024, they asked voters to approve a limited tax that would be reserved for Medi-Cal improvements.
But Congress last year changed the rules on taxes used to generate revenue for healthcare, including the ones imposed on health plans. Rather than lose the money generated by the tax, Newsom proposed and the Legislature agreed to submit two taxes to the federal government for approval: one that complied with the 2024 initiative but would be rejected by the feds, and one that complied with federal regulations and largely disregarded the initiative.
Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.
By Felicia Mello | Berkelyside via Associated Press
Published October 2, 2026 4:00 PM
A student makes their way to Wheeler Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, on Feb.19, 2026.
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Christina House
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Topline:
California could create its own multi-billion-dollar science and health research agency under a bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday, helping to fill a gap left by the politicization of science under the second Trump administration.
Why it matters: The bill places a $7.5 billion bond measure on the March 2028 ballot to pay for the creation of the California Foundation for Science and Health Research. The new state agency would provide grants and loans for projects in public health, climate science, agriculture and other areas. Panels of scientists would review proposals, and the agency would develop rules allowing the state to share in some of the profits from inventions made with its support.
The backstory: The Trump administration canceled nearly $2 billion in research grants to the University of California beginning in early 2025, later acknowledging in court that officials searched for keywords such as “health equity” and “sexual orientation” in order to decide what to cut. While a court order restored much of the money, the National Science Foundation has since slowed grantmaking nationwide, and President Trump has proposed giving political appointees more power to veto National Institutes of Health grants that don’t align with his agenda.
What's next: Voters will decide in a year and a half whether to fund the idea, which the University of California has championed.
California could create its own multi-billion-dollar science and health research agency under a bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday, helping to fill a gap left by the politicization of science under the second Trump administration. Voters will decide in a year and a half whether to fund the idea, which the University of California has championed.
Approved by state lawmakers at a time when federal science funding has become increasingly unpredictable, the bill places a $7.5 billion bond measure on the March 2028 ballot to pay for the creation of the California Foundation for Science and Health Research. The new state agency would provide grants and loans for projects in public health, climate science, agriculture and other areas. Panels of scientists would review proposals, and the agency would develop rules allowing the state to share in some of the profits from inventions made with its support.
“Scientific advancements are curing and preventing diseases, improving the lives of people living with chronic conditions, protecting our communities from wildfires, lowering the cost of food, and powering our economy,” the bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, said in a statement. “We cannot allow the federal government to throw away that hope for a better future.”
Newsom joined Wiener to sign the bill Wednesday atop the Golden Gate Bridge, a landmark built with voter-approved bond money in the 1930s that his press office described as a symbol of California ingenuity. He said the proposed science agency “does the opposite of what Donald Trump is doing (and) will allow us to double down on what makes this state great.”
It was a dramatic comeback for a measure that almost died in the Legislature earlier this year, when a more ambitious $23 billion version of the plan failed to make it onto the November ballot despite bipartisan support.
Researchers from UC Berkeley and elsewhere had joined with UC leadership to lobby for the bond, hosting rallies and inviting lawmakers to a science fair highlighting projects that had seen their funding stalled or canceled by the federal government.
This spring, the National Science Foundation canceled an additional $21 million in grants to UC Berkeley, accusing the projects’ lead researchers of accepting foreign funding without disclosing it, a charge some of those scientists denied. UC President James Milliken has called the disruption of federal research funding “one of the gravest threats to the University of California in our 157-year history.”
Lawmakers nevertheless declined to move the science bond forward this spring amid worries about competing demands on state funds – including a housing bond on the November ballot and the possible need to backfill other federal cuts. But negotiations among bill supporters, legislative leaders and the governor over the summer led to the scaled-down version that Newsom signed Wednesday.
Along with the University of California, California State University, private universities, and independent labs would all be potentially eligible for grants from the new state fund. A $7.5 billion state fund would not by itself make up for the instability in federal grants – the UC alone received nearly $5 billion in federal research funding in fiscal year 2024-25. But supporters say it could be especially helpful to researchers in fields such as climate science that are critical to the state’s future but have run afoul of Trump administration priorities.
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Berkeleyside partners with the nonprofit newsroom Open Campus on higher education coverage.
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This story was originally published by Berkeleyside and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
