Instead, he quit his job and spent his savings to enroll at Dev Bootcamp, a new San Francisco school that teaches students how to write software in nine weeks. The $11,000 gamble paid off: A week after he finished the program last summer, he landed an engineering job that paid more than twice his previous salary.

"It's the best decision I've made in my life," said Shimizu, 24, who worked in marketing and public relations after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. "I was really worried about getting a job, and it just happened like that."

Dev Bootcamp, which calls itself an "apprenticeship on steroids," is one of a new breed of computer-programming school that's proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These "hacker boot camps" promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation.

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The UC Board of Regents, meeting at UC San Francisco, will consider Thursday a proposal to raise student fees by 8 percent next fall while expanding financial aid to more students.

If approved, student fees for California residents would increase by $822 to $11,124. The figure doesn't include individual campus fees or room and board. The increase would raise an estimated $180 million in annual revenue, with $64 million set aside for financial aid.

Students at Wednesday's demonstration called on the regents to reject the tuition hike, which would follow a 32 percent fee increase that went into effect this fall.

"Students every year are paying more and more for an education that they're getting less and less from," said Jared McCreary, 23, a fourth-year student majoring in history and political science at UC Riverside. "You still see a lot of students struggling, having to take out loans, working multiple jobs. That's the reality of the situation."

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Across the country, mass layoffs of teachers, counselors and other staff members -- caused in part by the drying up of federal stimulus dollars -- are leading to larger classes and reductions in everything that is not a core subject, including music, art, clubs, sports and other after-school activities.

Educators and others worry the cuts could lead to higher dropout rates and lower college attendance as students receive less guidance and become less engaged in school. They fear a generation of young people could be left behind.

"It's going to be harder for everybody to get an opportunity to get into college," said Chelsea Braza, a 16-year-old sophomore at Silver Creek High School in San Jose. "People wouldn't be as motivated to do anything in school because there's no activities and there's no involvement."

The library at Silver Creek High is open for only an hour a day. The career center is closed. There is no more summer school. And student athletes must pay $200 each.

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County officials recorded 81,054 notices of default -- the first step in the formal foreclosure process -- during the January-to-March period, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick.

The number is down from 84,568 default notices in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 135,431 in the first quarter of 2009, when the filings peaked.

The number of default notices among homes worth at least $500,000 rose 1.5 percent in the first quarter of this year but remained low relative to the overall market, the firm said.

"There are increasingly signs that the problems are migrating up the price ladder, and maybe we've seen the worst in the lower-cost neighborhoods," said MDA DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage.

"They may be off their peaks in terms of foreclosure activity, but the levels are still high historically, and they're still having a real impact on people in those areas," he added.

The 4 percent decline in default notices in the first quarter followed a 24 percent drop during the previous quarter.

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Protesters at the University of California, Santa Cruz surrounded the car while its driver was inside.

The uninjured driver was not trying to get onto campus and appeared to have been singled out at random, Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark said.

University provost David Kliger said there were reports of protesters carrying clubs and knives, but Clark could not confirm those reports.

No arrests had been made at the school.

An advisory posted on its Web site urged people to avoid the campus because of safety concerns. It also said protesters had photographed the license plate of a staff member trying to enter the campus.

Marches, strikes, teach-ins and walkouts were planned nationwide in what was being called the March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education.

Organizers said hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and parents were expected to participate in the demonstrations.

Some university officials said they supported the protests as long as they remained peaceful.

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