California Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills allowing community colleges to offer between 2 and 12 new bachelor's degrees annually starting in 2028, with caps tied to graduation and transfer rates. The laws address tension with Cal State and UC systems by permitting degree programs even if similar offerings exist nearby, provided the Cal State program rejects over 25% of applicants for three consecutive years. Community colleges initially opposed the final versions, citing unclear provisions and concerns that graduation-rate metrics would penalize districts serving low-income students.
A backtest of Connors and Alvarez's 2008 mean-reversion trading strategy on SPY from 1993–2026 found that no parameter variant beat buy-and-hold, and the strategy's low drawdown reflects low market exposure rather than skill. The analysis demonstrates that backtests can pose unanswerable questions within their own data and that adversarial review is essential to catch methodological errors that bias results.