This story was reported for San Diego News Network on December 1, 2009.
Roughly 191,000 students attend a University of California campus, while 417,112 students attend a California State University campus – and all will experience major changes in the following months until the state government is back on its feet. But some students aren’t taking the changes quietly as protests have filled nearly every campus across California. And amid the many demonstrations and angry students throughout UC and CSU campuses are opinions of the budget cuts to education.
UC’s Board of Regents voted earlier this month to increase tuition by 32 percent next school year. The move was made because of a $1.2 billion spending gap due to the state’s budget crisis. The California State University system saw a $600 million cut in funding with about $55 million affecting SDSU – forcing SDSU to cut 300 classes, 700 workers and increase student fees by 30 percent.
This CBCD (California Budget Crisis Diaries) entry will focus on what some are saying about the changes to the system.
Teach-in please: John Fensterwald writes in the San Jose Mercury News that those in the UC community could benefit from an “all-day teach-in” on what’s happening at the Capitol, education-wise.
Fernsterwald, whose daughter is a student at UC Davis, said he isn’t happy with the tuition increases but believes the system took the appropriate approach.
Fernsterwald writes that he is “statisfied with the efforts of [UC] President Mark Yudov and the regents to mitigate the impact. A third of the $505 million raised by higher fees will go toward financial aid.
Students from families earning less than $70,000 — 30 percent of undergraduates — won’t pay them [tuition]. Expanded Pell Grants and tax credits should soften the impact for some middle-class families.”
Effects on California workers: Jonathan Kaplan writes in the California Progress Report that the decreasing number of students will affect the state’s overall working industry.
“Recent budget cuts to higher education call into question the state’s commitment to provide its residents with access to a high-quality, affordable college education. In the absence of additional funding, not only will fewer Californians have the opportunity to earn a college degree at the state’s public universities, but the state’s employers may have an even tougher time finding the highly skilled workers they need to compete successfully in the global economy.”
Unnecessary protests: SDNN’s own political columnist Beth Barber thinks student protestors need to take a second look at who is paying for their education. She writes that federal funding will still cover tuition for many students.
“In truth, UC is not balancing its budget on the backs of students – not even financially-needy students whose families knock down $180,000 a year. UC is balancing its budget for undergraduates on the backs of state and federal taxpayers.
In school year 2008-09, they were major contributors to the more than $1.6 billion in financial aid divvied up among 63 percent of UC undergraduates.”
Barber than asks Californians to remember three points:
“Three things to remember as the billion-dollar battles brew.
One, academic success isn’t the product of just money. An analysis of states’ per-pupil spending on K-12 in 2007 (the latest available from the U.S. Census) found that Utah and Idaho, with the lowest spending per pupil, graduated far more students than New York and Washington, D.C., with more than double spending per pupil. And that inverse ratio holds throughout the country.
Two, study after study finds that how educational institutions spend their money is more important to their students’ success than how much they spend.
Three, the 2,000 protesters at the UC regents’ meeting last week are one percent of the system’s undergraduates. The rest, we can hope, had better things to do — like study and work — than storm a meeting.“
A good thing: Ian Ayres writes in The New York Times that the tuition increases may be “a good thing.” He reflects on what he previously wrote for the publication along with his colleague, Aaron Edlin.
“The truth is that increasing public college tuitions are not a problem at all. Indeed, the biggest problem in pricing tuition at public universities is not that the poor pay too much, but that the rich pay too little.
Tuition increases are actually a good idea — as long as they are matched with financial aid, including scholarships, for poor students.”
A mother’s point of view: Sandy Banks shares her thoughts, as a mother of a CSU student and a community college student hoping to transfer, in The Los Angeles Times.
Banks writes that she attempts to explain the budget matters to her kids but feel she has let them down.
“I do my best George Skelton impression – explaining about falling revenues, spending mandates, our state’s screwy budgeting system. But I am the ‘they,’ like everyone else. Saying our hands are tied feels to me like an admission of failure, and sounds to my daughter like a cop-out.”
She ends her column posing a question to readers.
“Now, as they scramble from class to class, begging professors to let them in; break down crying after hours hunched over the computer, when every class they sign up for says ‘already filled’; let their love of music fade when the department is cut because the school can’t afford it. . . what message do they take from that?”
Finally, amid my search for varying opinions on the budget crisis hitting California’s education system – I found this opinion piece in New York Magazine comparing New York to Louisiana. The writer, Chris Smith, discloses his disappointment with New York’s government but adds, “At least we’re not as bad as California.”
Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.