Back in the old days, one didn't need a college education to have a good job or to get far in society. Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, never even went to college. But nowadays getting a degree is imperative to getting a decent job. In America, college students often pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to get this all-important degree so they can basically live a comfortable life and probably also live out that mythical American Dream. What kind of investment is a University of California education in this day and age and how is it being treated by those who, in effect, administer it?
In the past decade, University of California tuition has more than tripled. For the 2011-2012 school year, a UC student living on campus is expected to pay over $31000. This is for one year's worth of education and using the University's resources (dorms, food, etc). Presuming a student spends four years at a UC for college, they could be paying $124000 total for this education. The education, experience, and degree one gets from college, especially a UC, is invaluable, but $124000 is a boatload of money to pay (often with loans) just to be able to become an educated, competitive citizen. Although, in my opinion, it is much better to go through with that six-digit payment than not to, something as fundamental as a good education shouldn't cost such a huge amount of money; it should be basic right that the people of the United States are entitled to. Making college free is obviously impractical, but the cost is way more than what is fair. If the US could get its financial house in order with better priorities, we could probably achieve properly priced university education.
But unfortunately education isn't a top priority in this country, at least to our politicians. This is especially true in California. Politicians like to tell the public how important education is because our future is in the hands of the youth who are being educated now. The "adopted solutions" in the 2011 Budget Act, which was passed by the same politicians who laud the importance of education, enacts a $650 million reduction for UC funding (and another $650 million reduction for the Cal States). WTF? The State of California shows its support and appreciation for higher education by cutting the amount of money the universities can spend on it. That's a shorter academic year for learning, fewer available supplies to enrich the students' education, fewer classes, and most of all, higher tuition and fees that the students have to struggle to pay in order to make up for the state's misplaced priorities. Of all the places in the budget that the state legislature chooses to cut it's its own future. Mildly higher taxes on the wealthy who can easily afford to help a little bit more would do much to ease the need to cut important sections of the budget, but apparently simple, reasonable solutions don't come easy to the people in charge of allocating state funds.
So how does the University cope with less funding? With stuff like this. The UC regents, the governing board for the system, approved huge salary increases for administrators and attorneys. Not the professors who work with the students, but the people who are not directly involved with educating. UC President Mark Yudof claims its to help retain staff for the University. But after seeing UC Davis' shady chancellor try to come off innocent in the pepper spraying incident several days after it happened, I really don't feel inclined to believe an explanation from a UC administrator. As a very good article in UCSB's November 23rd edition of Daily Nexus points out, the UC regents are businesspeople, not educators. Not only are they not very connected with the education of their system's students, but they probably don't care to be. The University is currently being run like a business in unfavorable economic conditions. The employees being laid off are the students paying more and getting less. I don't see a reason for students to put their trust in high-end administrators when they're charging us more money just so they can have higher salaries. That's not what UC students went to college for.
With the regents being the highest authority in the University of California system, it's hard to imagine this trend being reversed easily or very soon. The students don't have the power to fire them nor call something like a vote of no confidence. So we do what we do best (at least what Berkeley does best) and protest the unfair decisions made by the UC authorities. On probably every campus, most notably Berkeley and Davis, students peacefully protested these unfair tuition increases and were met with police brutality in the form of baton beatings and pepper spraying. The very people who the UC is around for cannot even peacefully protest the regents' decisions. While the regents can give unnecessary pay raises to business-like admins with quickly decreasing state funds, students aren't even allowed to get openly pissed about massive tuition hikes.
There's no easy solution to the misplaced priorities of the UC president and regents. But to get the ball rolling to fix it, the students themselves, the most important component to the system (even if the regents and state legislature disagree), need to send a clear and powerful message. We excel at protesting and given the reluctance that was hopefully instilled in the campus PDs and admins after their assaulting us, won't beat and pepper spray us again for doing so. Further up the hierarchy, professors and other education-oriented faculty should put pressure on the regents, the president, and any student-aloof chancellors to get their priorities straight. The University of California should not be run by people who don't have the students best interests at heart. The students should have some sort of effectual say in how the regents govern them and there needs to be some method of firing a regent (or a chancellor - I'm looking at you Linda Katehi) who clearly doesn't know how to run a student-oriented university system. At the very top, in the government of California itself, politicians need to finally wake up and smell the coffee and realize that screwing over its own future is not a great idea and will not help solve the severe budget issues the state government has gotten itself into. There are ways of keeping adequate funding for university education, even if they don't appeal to politicians' instant gratification complexes.
With the insanely high price for a UC education and the corruption and misplaced priorities of the state and regents, is it worth it to still invest in the system? As we saw at the beginning, of course it is. But it is a chance and more importantly a responsibility of those of us fortunate enough to get this kind of education and experience to fix the problems that hang over us and to make the system better for future students wishing to get that life-enhancing degree. As the politicians tell us, we are the future.
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