While Arnold Schwarzenegger is making claims to want “economic stimulus” with his demands for gutting environmental and labor laws, he is also undermining one of the core means of economic stimulus and recovery – higher education.

When the economy is in recession many laid-off workers take the time to return to school and finish a degree, or get new forms of training and expertise. This helps keep the workforce skilled and up-to-date on the latest innovations and insights, thereby keeping California workers globally competitive. And it can create jobs at the colleges to meet the demand. At the local community college enrollment is soaring – instructors are finding long waiting lists to get into their classes, which they haven’t seen for a long time.

For all this to work, of course, those students need financial aid, since in a recession they have a difficult time affording a return to school out of pocket. Which is why Arnold’s plan to slash Cal Grant funding is so reckless:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing major cuts in Cal Grants, the state’s main financial aid programfor college students. The most significant change would involve abandoning the state’s commitment to cover any rise in tuition for grant recipients, and it comes as officials at both the University of California and California State University are gearing up for 10% fee increases in response to the yawning state budget gap….

A spokeswoman for the governor said he “understands how difficult these cuts will be” but is responsible for leading the state through the economic crisis. “The governor doesn’t want to cut programs and he doesn’t want to raise taxes, but in the face of a $42-billion budget deficit and with the Legislature’s failure to pass a comprehensive solution, we’re simply running out of options,” she said.

Which is the typical BS being put out by the governor’s office these days, quotes not worth the paper on which they’re printed. The Legislature DID pass a comprehensive solution and Arnold vetoed it. Arnold has been completely unable to get a single Republican vote for his budgets over the last few years, yet continues to insist against all available evidence that the two parties in the Legislature try and work out some agreement, which is impossible as long as Republicans refuse to play.

Cal Grant cuts combined with yet another UC and CSU fee increase will put higher ed out of reach for thousands of qualified students and workers looking to remain competitive. California as a whole will suffer – but perhaps that’s the point, the endgame of Arnold’s term in office: destroying what remains of our shared prosperity so his friends in the elite can grab what is left over.

I will be on KRXA 540 AM at 8 this morning to discuss this and other issues in California politics

In 1960 the state of California made a promise. All students who met eligibility requirements would be given a place in the state’s higher education system, and that education would be provided free of charge (although students would be responsible for room and board and books, they were not to be charged for the cost of instruction). Sure, that place might be at a UC, or a CSU, but under Governor Pat Brown both Republicans and Democrats agreed that for the good of the state, its economy, and its future, affordable higher education had to be guaranteed.

That was the essence of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education and it perhaps more than any other project of the Pat Brown era was responsible for catapulting California to global economic leadership, creating broadly shared prosperity, and making this state a better place to live. Without it we would be much worse off than we are today.

The Master Plan has been betrayed before, starting with Governor Ronald Reagan’s 1967 student fee hikes. Over the decades the promise of free college has eroded, but at least those who met the eligibility requirements could get a place. In recent years that opportunity became more remote and more dependent on debt, but at least it was there.

Under Arnold Schwarzenegger the slow but steady decline of California higher education has dramatically accelerated. Arnold has shown nothing but contempt for higher ed and no interest whatsoever in upholding the promises of the Master Plan or securing a prosperous future for all Californians.

So it comes as no surprise that he is again targeting higher ed for massive cuts, and cuts that are leading the Cal State system to turn away eligible freshmen for the first time ever:

Under one of the cost-cutting proposals, the CSU system may turn away eligible freshmen for the first time in its history. If the proposal from Chancellor Charles Reed is enacted, schools will give priority to freshmen in their “service area,” meaning CSUMB would first admit Monterey County residents. Students from outside the county would be put on a waiting list.

Institutions of higher education statewide stand to face a staggering $464.1 million in combined cuts under the governor’s plan to plug an $11 billion drop in state revenue projections.

During a recession, you want students to attend college. Regardless of age, students get education and job training that will help them grow the economy upon graduation. It is a tried and true form of economic stimulus. Arnold’s cuts are going to forestall this:

The community college system, which would be hardest hit by the cuts, would lose about 10 percent of its state funding under the governor’s plan….

“When unemployment goes up, enrollment at community colleges goes up,” Pyer said. “So we’ll have more students, and we won’t get money for that.”

Tough economic times also force some four-year students to drop down to two-year institutions, Pyer said.

The proposed budget cuts are not the only fiscal adjustment to education bouncing around Sacramento. The state Legislative Analyst’s Office has proposed fee increases that would raise community college tuition by 50 percent by fall 2009…

“It’s the community college’s feeling that it’s the worst time to raise fees when the economy is in a slump,” said Monterey Peninsula College spokesman Rich Montori.

Disclosure: I teach part-time at MPC but do not anticipate being affected by any of these cuts.

Community college cuts are especially pernicious. These schools are the primary location where working-class and lower middle-class Californians get a chance at upward mobility. Even small fee increases can put college and work skills further out of reach, especially since most of these students already work full-time.

As this budget crisis unfolds it is becoming clear to everyone that what is at stake is more than just a fiscal plan for the state government. Our very future is at risk here. I don’t know how to put it more clearly. If these cuts continue, if this overall situation is not reversed, California will simply not be sustainable for most of its residents. The prosperity of the 20th century will have given way to the aristocracy and inequality of the 21st.

Are we going to let the Yacht Party get away with it?

The University of California (UC) has managed the two oldest and largest nuclear weapons labs since their creation nearly 60 years ago. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have been at the forefront of the research and design of all nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. University employees even created the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the last five years, the UC has partnered with such multi-national corporations as Bechtel Group and BWXT to continue managing the labs as a limited liability corporation.

As classes are starting up again on UC campuses across California, the movement for a nuclear free UC is also starting up again. A new avenue to demand accountability from the university is emerging – students & alumni pledging to withhold post-graduate support through an online campaign, until the UC takes action:

http://www.thepoint.com/campai…

Five reasons the UC should sever ties to the labs:

– The UC is implicitly endorsing non-compliance with the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by participating in the creation of new nuclear weapon technologies.

– The nuclear industry is notorious for its devastating environmental and health impacts.

– Nuclear weapons testing and waste disposal from the labs is a major factor in the ongoing genocide of Native American peoples today. The Nevada Test Site and the proposed waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain are both on Western Shoshone land.

– Bechtel Group, UC’s lab-management partner, has a long history of irresponsible environmental practices and human rights violations. Currently, they are one of the largest profiteers of the Iraq War.

– UC holds no real control over research directions or policy at the labs nor does the funding they receive from the Department of Energy go towards anything but the labs themselves. Their management is in name only and simply acts as a stamp of legitimacy for the nuclear weapons, military-industrial complex.

Calling all UC students & alumni – take a stand now against nuclear development and corporatization at your school. Show the UC how you feel about being complicit in the nuclear industry by joining the “No Nukes at the UC” campaign:

http://www.thepoint.com/campai…

A while back I put up a very brief post about a strike at the University of California system for more than 20,000 UC patient care and service workers that AFSCME represents. That strike has been cancelled as both parties seek to move back to the bargaining table.  

We’ll try to keep this story updated. Full letter over the flip.

May 29, 2008

TO:  The Campus Community

FR:  Leslie Sanchez

     Manager of Employee and Labor Relations

RE:  Cancellation of AFSCME Strike Planned for June 4-5, 2008

We have just received the following joint statement from the University of

California Office of the President and the American Federation of State,

County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union regarding contract

negotiations concerning UC Patient Care Technical and Service Unit

employees:

University of California officials and representatives of the American

Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union today (May 29)

jointly announced that they will be returning to the bargaining table to

continue negotiations for new labor contracts for the more than 20,000 UC

patient care and service workers that AFSCME represents.

The State Mediation and Conciliation Service has recommended that the

parties continue bargaining, and negotiations will resume at 10:00 a.m. on

Friday, May 30 with the assistance of a neutral third-party mediator.

Accordingly, the union will not be striking UC medical centers and campuses

on June 4 and 5 as previously announced.

Both UC and AFSCME are committed to bargaining in good faith, and hope to

reach an agreement soon.

UC and AFSCME have been in negotiations for the last ten months for a new

contract for more than 11,000 UC patient care technical employees, and for

the last seven months for a new contract for 8,000 UC service employees.

The 20,000 patient care and service workers include a wide variety of jobs

including, but not limited to, medical technologists who take x-rays, MRIs,

and mammograms; respiratory therapists who operate breathing machines;

medical assistants who clean wounds, bathe and turn patients to prevent

infections and bed sores; cleaners who disinfect medical instruments and

patient areas; custodians who clean the hospitals and campus dorms; and

food service workers who provide cafeteria service to patients and students.

###################

When I was an undergrad at Berkeley in the late ’90s we paid around $4400 in “student fees.” It was higher than it should have been given the cost of living at the time, but the state of California had held UC costs at a fixed level from 1995 to 2001.

Of course, during the 1960s the state and the UC system actually held to the promises of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which included a promise to never charge students for the cost of instruction. In the 1960s when state treasurer Bill Lockyer attended UC Berkeley his total cost – for all 4 years – would have been $880. Figuring inflation and that’s $5,808 in 2007 dollars.

That’s going to be less than the per-year charge under a new UC fee increase plan being floated:

UC tuition will rise $490 to $7,126 plus campus fees, which average $881 this year. The tuition would reach $8,180 if raised to the 10 percent total.

Hume said students at UC’s nine undergraduate campuses can expect a more difficult time registering for some classes, larger class sizes, and cuts in student services.

“We will be less efficient. They will take longer to graduate. They will not be able to get classes. They will not be able to get their majors,” Hume said.

The CSU is following suit with a 10% increase of its own:

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said during the same editorial board meeting that he is recommending that the CSU Board of Trustees approve a 10 percent tuition increase next week but that he will not go back for more later in the year. Fees at CSU will rise by $276 to $3,048 plus campus fees, which were an average of $749 per student this year.

These increases are going to make it even more difficult for qualified Californians to attend college, improve their earning power, and strengthen the state economy. With the credit crunch reducing the availability of student loans these increases leave me wondering whether this isn’t a sly way to drive students away – applications and freshman classes have been soaring year after year.

It’s also a further step in the privatization of our higher education system. With decreasing public support the onus is now on students to self-finance their education, which is in direct contravention to the principles of the UC and CSU systems as laid out in the 1960 Master Plan. If California is to have an economic future in the 21st century – if we are to keep pace with European and Asian economies – we need trained and skilled Californians able to handle the tasks of a 21st century civilization. Instead the state of California is abandoning that mission – for the sake of preserving the 20th century, we are going to sacrifice the 21st.

California higher education has not been having a good decade. When Arnold first took office a series of major cuts were made to the UC, CSU, and community college budgets. In 2004 a compact was agreed to between the UC and CSU leaders and Arnold, guaranteeing a stable, if low, level of funding. That agreement has been heavily criticized for having accepted a lower standard of state support – and that criticism looks to be merited, as Arnold now proposes to violate that agreement with his 10% cut of higher ed funding.

As a new study by the Campaign for College Opportunity shows, the proposed cuts would have the effect of severely curtailing enrollment by as much as 27,000 over the next two years, which is the size of an average UC or CSU undergraduate campus enrollment. And a study by the UC Academic Senate  found that “to maintain educational quality” student fees would have to rise from $7,500 to $10,500 – a staggering increase from an already high level.

“The Schwarzenegger revision accelerates the redefinition of the University of California away from a public university and toward a ‘public-private partnership,’ ” the UC study said. “The university becomes dependent on high student fees for delivering its core educational mission. . . . The university becomes quasi-private or poor — or perhaps both at once.”

UC has been suffering for years from what the Academic Senate study called a “hollowing out” because of lack of money. “From a distance, all appears normal; once one goes inside, the damage is clear,” it said. Leaky roofs go unrepaired; valuable faculty leave for better-paying universities…

The problem of “faculty brain drain” from public to private institutions is a serious one across the country but is hitting UC and CSU the hardest, as their funding has been the most dramatically impacted.

The study and the cuts were the subject of an article in today’s LA Times which contained some quotes from higher ed leaders about the impact of these cuts:

Diane Woodruff, chancellor of the California Community Colleges, said the governor’s proposed cut would mean those campuses would not be able to provide classes for more than 50,000 students. An additional 18,500 would not receive financial aid.

The cutbacks would most affect low-income, first-generation and nonwhite students, who generally depend more on university services, she said…

“By 2025. if we continue on this same course of cumulative budget cuts on a cyclical basis, the California workforce will be 3 million short and California will not be competitive,” Cal State Chancellor [Charles] Reed said.

In other words, Arnold’s proposed 10% cut of higher education would have a crippling effect on California’s economy. The student fees increases would squeeze middle-class families even more dramatically, and would be difficult for young students to pay – especially as student loan availability is shrinking due to the credit cruch – even the notorious Sallie Mae claimed “we’re at the cusp of peak lending.”

But this is sadly part of a larger pattern for Arnold and his Republican allies. Don’t let their occasional bickering and infighting fool you – they stand shoulder to shoulder when it comes to this state’s future. They all agree that our economy and the middle- and working-classes should be sacrificed for the sake of a few wealthy Californians who don’t want to pay more taxes. They agree that to save voters $150 a year in vehicle license fees, public education – from kindergarten to undergraduate – should be destroyed.

The article notes that “Despite the dire situation the universities and community colleges find themselves in, education leaders have been reluctant to challenge the governor.” It looks like that task is going to fall to the students who, abandoned by their schools’ administrators, are launching a statewide protest on Monday, April 21 to oppose these cuts.

( – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a brilliant metaphor for how the debate over problems often totally misses the root of a given problem itself: “How Best to Fill a Sieve With Water”:

There are many arguments over which is the correct course of action which I liken to debating how best to fill a sieve with water. By this I mean that they ignore the fact that their premise is wrong.

Obviously the first thing an impartial observer would say when the two camps are debating whether to use a spoon or a cup would be to point out that one can’t fill a sieve without first plugging the holes. This seems to be my current role, pointing out assumptions which are either wrong or taken as being obvious without any examination.

Here are a few current (and not so current) examples.

The best way to stimulate the domestic economy is by raising/lowering taxes. Perhaps the best thing is not to stimulate the economy at all but to redistribute the present wealth better or to shrink the economy to a sustainable level. “Growth is good” is the sieve.

The best way to aid the development in the third world is by foreign investment/local projects. That the goal should be “development” goes without saying. What development means is the sieve.

[…]

The way to control foreign powers is by the use of military might/diplomacy. That other states need to be “controlled” is the sieve. Perhaps they just need to be left alone.

The writer, rdf, offers a bunch of other examples, but the principle is clear enough.

Then, I came across this post at Davis Vanguard that brings out one such example of debating the filling of sieves with water, in the context of intra-educational battles over California’s Proposition 92, which would set minimum levels of Community College funding and limit tuition to $15 per unit, paying for it out of prop. 98 funds.

There is no doubt in my mind that community colleges are one of the most laudable aspects of the American educational system, if not the most laudable. The second chance (and third chance, etc) that they offer to students who may not have been ready for college at 18, or people for whom life’s hard realities intervened, or who don’t have the cash to go to a state college, or who are just interested in a skill or a given subject serves to make the American educational system far more democratic in terms of openness and serving the whole population than the far more tracked systems of Asia or Europe (even as our structural flaws and barriers to true equality of access to education place our systems at a distinctly inferior position when looked at from the vantage point of the systemic or societal level). Community colleges are, in a broader educational context that leaves a lot to be ashamed of, a justifiable point of pride. And they only serve that critical educational function when the cost of attending is nominal if not entirely free. So at a gut level, while I’m unsure if prop. 92 is the best means to get to that end, generally I’m quite sympathetic to what they’re trying to do with it.

But it is a mistake to get sucked into fighting over scraps of the pie, when we should be asking why the pie is insufficient for public education at all levels in this state. The CCs work synergistically with the UCs, CSU and the primary educational system. If they’re all hurting for funding, let’s look at where waste can be rededicated toward more productive ends (namely, by moving funds from the embarassingly overpaid administrative area to the long-neglected salaries of staff and faculty or physical plant area). It would probably cut costs significantly were we to have decent public health insurance, to contain that exponentially rising cost of forking over a grotesque profit margin to the insatiable insurance and pharmaceutical corporations. But after you cut the obvious waste, we really need to get serious and start acting like adults about raising taxes to pay for this public good. Jacking up fees is a terrible (and illegal, if you look at the 1960 California Master Plan For Higher Education‘s requirement that fees never go to pay for educational costs, long since breached in bipartisan practice from Gov. Reagan on down to another B movie actor-turned-Governor) way to make up the shortfall, because it strikes at the very heart of an open public educational system by rationing the common good of education by ability to pay (or at least by willingness to accrue sizeable student debt).

Tuition in Calfornia has risen at a rate far exceeding inflation or state costs since 2003, while state spending on higher education has been falling as a % of the state budget for decades now. This is not by accident, this is the result of a deliberate plan to gradually privatise the whole educational system by Governor Schwarzeneggar’s finance director, Donna Arduin. From an LA times article two months ago:

To reorganize the state’s finances, Schwarzenegger recruited Donna Arduin, an advocate of privatizing government services who had been Florida budget director under Gov. Jeb Bush. As California finance director, she soon became known as Schwarzenegger’s “bad cop.”

Her budget plan for UC and CSU called for hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts for the third consecutive year, major student fee hikes, a reduction in enrollment and a plan to steer thousands of students to community colleges instead of the universities.

These “crises” are not accidental or temporary, they’re structural, and are instrumentally used to set different parts of the educational community against each other to distract from the privatization and slow destruction of what was once a world class public institution with free tuition and low fees, open to anyone with the grades. With every tuition and fee hike, and every shift to corporate or private donations (with strings attached, it should go without saying), the very idea of the public is watered down and eroded, and we all get suckered into just accepting it as a natural state or random “crisis” instead of as a system under deliberate atack on ideological grounds.

The solution here is not to fight over the scraps from the table, but rather to demand that funding matches the needs of a world class, accessible educational system. you cannot have quality on the cheap, and there is a vast public interest in having the social mobility and economic dynamism that comes from such an educational system, from the CCs on up.

When you look at what benefit has accrued and continues to accrue to the state of California from the existence of our public higher educational system, it is well worth the money. As these fees continue to be raised, that once great engine of social mobility will slow down and eventually grind to a stop, and those social benefits will not accrue in the same way. Cutting a segment of the population out makes it harder to justify paying for the system collectively. Turning away California’s poor, California’s working class and increasingly its middle class as well as starves our economy and our culture from the dynamism and works that those students might have created with the stimulus of a world class education.

If one believes in an educational meritocracy, education ought to be completely free, to let the cream rise to the top. What privatizers like Schwarzeneggar and Arduin mistakenly assume is that those with the money are the cream by virtue of their having all that money in the first place. The history of America and the history of California suggest otherwise.

I’m going to have to read up on prop 92 to decide whether it’s worth pursuing, but in the big picture, it’s a symptom of a greater problem that we’re not addressing as a state.

(This grew out of a comment on the Davis Vanguard thread, that got so long I figured it needed its own diary. Originally at surf putah)

( – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

Pay for disgraced overpaid executives goes up:

University of California President Robert Dynes, who was pressured earlier this year to step down by next June, is expected to get an over-scale faculty salary of $245,000 for research and teaching at UC San Diego.

[…]

Dynes had been at the center of controversy after The Chronicle disclosed that millions of dollars in extra compensation and questionable perks had been handed to some top executives without telling the public or regents. The Chronicle’s findings, reported in 2005 and 2006, were followed by three state and university audits that showed how UC administrators sometimes flouted, circumvented and violated university policies governing pay and perks.

Speaking to reporters outside the meeting, Dynes said he would be taking a yearlong administrative leave at his presidential salary of $405,000 after he steps down.

“It is a sabbatical that I have earned. I have been at UC for 17 years, toward 18 years, and I have never taken a sabbatical,” Dynes said. “I look forward to it to re-energize myself.”

In leaving the presidency, Dynes will have his moving costs to San Diego reimbursed and he is authorized to get a subsidized, low-interest housing loan from UC.

[…]

In related action, the committee gave thumbs up to a pair of 17 percent raises for Hume and Vice President Anne Broome. The full board is expected to approve them Thursday.Hume needs the $62,500 raise to bring his salary closer to his peers, Regent Judith Hopkinson said. Hume’s salary, which will be $425,000 a year, is more than Dynes’ $405,000 salary. Regents Chair Richard Blum [that’s Mr. Dianne Feinstein, for those keeping score in ruling class bingo.] said that when a new president is hired, the salary for the top position would be increased.

At the same time  the already-high tuition for debt-burdened students goes up:

The California State University Board of Trustees is expected to approve a $4.8 billion budget request today that could increase student fees 10 percent next year, and the University of California’s governing board is expected to follow suit with a possible increase of 7 percent.

[…]

Fees have nearly doubled at both universities since 2002. Most recently, the 23 campuses of the California State University system raised fees by 10 percent to about $3,521 annually this year, and the 10-campus University of California system increased the cost for undergraduates by 9.7 percent to about $7,494. The figures do not include expenses such as room, meals and books.

[…]

Gregory Cendana of the UC Student Association said that he is not seeing an increase in quality or services with his rising fees. He said he has to work 35 hours a week in two jobs and will graduate with $21,000 in debt.

“I’m tired of paying higher fees when I still have to sit on the floor of my classes,” he said.

So let me get this straight. A decent wage and benefits for food service workers? Sorry, don’t have the money, unless we take it out of stuident fees. Cost of living increases for professors, staff or academic student employees? Sorry, can’t afford it, times are tough, tighten your belts. Keeping fee increases within inflation levels (let’s not even begin to talk about the UC mandate to provide free public tuition, long since abrogated in deed if paid lip service)? Sorry, wouldn’t be fiscally prudent, pull yourselves up by your bootstraps between classes, kids.

But huge bonuses and six figure salaries for disgraced administrators? Sure, the UC system needs “good people,” and their peers are making so much more than them, think of the embarassment of having smaller salaries than the other plutocrats.

They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. The UC and CSU systems are being privatized before our eyes.

originally at surf putah

In 1960, the Master Plan for Higher Education in California was adopted, with Democratic Governor Pat Brown having played the key role in brokering the deals that produced the remarkable document. Among its core principles were access – from the guarantees of UC or CSU acceptance for students in the top levels of their high school classes, to community college transfers – as well as affordability with an outright ban on tuition and the expectation that “student fees” would be limited, and used for things such as student activities and dorms. The state would provide the support for instruction.

But ever since Reagan took office in 1967, these promises have been under attack. In a political or especially an economic crisis, state politicians have repeatedly undermined the Master Plan, limiting access by reducing affordability. After a truce in the 1990s, the budget crisis of the 2000s saw another sustained attack on higher ed and the first acknowledged abrogations of the Master Plan’s promises. Today, a UC or CSU education is no longer affordable, and reduced state support not only limits access, but is impoverishing those who work in its ranks.

All this is the subject of a fantastic LA Times article this morning titled “Less to Bank on at State Universities: Educators fear a 2004 funding deal has schools sliding toward mediocrity.” But the article is about more than just the problems of reduced funding. Instead it outlines how this is a deliberate policy of the Schwarzenegger administration, an effort to privatize California colleges and put them out of the reach of those who have been promised access to them.

The story does not end there. An unstated, but equally important aspect of the piece also shows how this crisis is also the product of a stunning failure of public officials to protect the institutions and historic policies they have been charged with defending. Whether it is the UC Regents, the State Legislature, or the Democratic Party, these officials have done little to nothing to protect one of the most important projects in California history.

One of the best aspects of this article is how it foregrounds the suffering of those working at the colleges. Many of us are familiar with the costs of college facing a student in California – hell, most of us were or still are students at a California public university in the recent past – but the problems of university staff have gone comparatively unrecognized.

Library assistant Linda Snook isn’t usually someone to stand up in front of hundreds of people and discuss her personal finances. But when the UC Board of Regents met here this summer, she pleaded for help.

Snook told the regents that she makes $26,000 a year working full time at UC Santa Barbara and pays more than half of that in rent. Her supervisors have recommended her for raises, she said, but there is never enough money in the budget. She’d like to enroll in graduate school at UCSB, but, on her pay, that’s a distant dream.

“I am barely making it,” she told the regents. “We’re not paid what the private sector would make. We desperately, desperately need help. Please.”

As anyone familiar with Santa Barbara knows, $26K is WOEFULLY inadequate. And her inability to pursue a graduate degree shows just how much access has been reduced. These days, when one needs not just a BA, but a Master’s degree, to be competitive for professional jobs, denying workers such as Linda Snook the opportunity to get that education is a direct failure of the state to meet its promises.

Higher education is the key to a strong, successful, and prosperous California. It promotes long-term growth, provides new technologies and entrepreneurship, trains skilled workers, and itself keeps economies afloat in towns as diverse as Riverside, Chico, and San Luis Obispo.

Without affordable access to higher education, California will slide into a kind of caste system where only those who already have wealth can afford to send their kids to college, and everyone else either cannot go at all, or must take out so many loans that they become shackled to their debt, unable to contribute meaningfully to the state economy.

The bulk of the article is dedicated to explaining this problem. In previous financial crises, such as those in the early ’80s and early ’90s, cuts made in lean times to higher ed budgets were restored in boom years. The crippling cuts of 1991-92 were reversed by 1996-97, for example. As recently as 2001 “the universities were in relatively good fiscal health.”

But that changed with the most recent budget disaster. Both Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger hit higher ed with massive cuts, partly enabled by the fact that neither the UC nor the CSU have guaranteed funding minimums, a necessity in this age of a foolish unwillingness to consider new taxation.

As a result of this crisis, UC and CSU leaders sought a new “compact” with Arnold, and in May 2004 they got it:

The two university chiefs struck a deal with the governor: They agreed to slash spending that year by hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for a funding formula lasting until 2011. Titled the “Higher Education Compact,” the agreement calls for modest annual increases in state funds, private fundraising to help pay for basic programs, and large student fee hikes, especially for graduate and professional students.

There was no hearing on the pact; no legislative discussion; no vote. Many UC regents were not told of the deal until it was done. Richard C. Blum, who became the regents’ chairman this year, called the lack of disclosure “an error in judgment.”

The problem is that the amount of funding Arnold promised is LOWER than what was given in 2001. For 7 years – 2004-2011 – UC and CSU have to either accept this lower amount that leaves them at least $1 billion short of what is actually needed, or break the deal with Arnold and thereby face worse cuts.

The effect of this is to cut back the level of state support for public education – privatization through the back door:

In 1970, the state spent 6.9% of its budget on the University of California. Today it spends 3.2%. In 1965, the state covered 94.4% of a UC student’s education. Last year it paid 58.5%.

This year, California will spend an estimated $3.3 billion to operate UC. It will spend three times as much — $9.9 billion — to run the state’s prisons.

And it is a deliberate privatization. ALL of this is in fact quite deliberate. It is not a reaction to a fiscal crisis. Instead it is a carefully planned effort to destroy mobility and access for the mass of Californians in order to allow those who have already prospered to keep their wealth while shutting the door behind them to those who wish to follow.

It goes back to Donna Arduin. Brought in as Arnold’s finance director in 2003, she is an ardent advocate of privatization. In order to “balance” budgets in Michigan, New York, and Florida under Republican governors, she advocated the gutting of social and educational spending so as to prevent a tax increase. As the LA Times notes, she took a similar approach to higher ed in CA:

Her budget plan for UC and CSU called for hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts for the third consecutive year, major student fee hikes, a reduction in enrollment and a plan to steer thousands of students to community colleges instead of the universities.

And in fact that is what happened. The results have been catastrophic.

• Students are burdened with enormous loan debt, but as the California Budget Project noted in its recent report A Generation of Inequality, young college educated Californians have had a harder time finding work than those with just a high school diploma. Students are saddled with debts they cannot pay off.
• Workers are left behind as the California economy and even its society are increasingly geared toward serving those who have wealth. The library assistant described above trying to survive on $26K in Santa Barbara is but one example of how higher ed workers are increasingly treated as servants – people expected to work extremely hard, but not paid enough to live in a state with a high cost of living.
• The quality of education suffers. In order to continue to educate students, all three branches of higher ed are turning to part-time, adjunct instructors – the “field hands” of academia. Although these part-timers work diligently to provide the best possible instruction, their working conditions are very difficult, and as a result the use of part-time instructors has been proved to adversely affect graduation rates at both community colleges and four-year schools.
• The privatization plan also overwhelms community colleges, who have a more difficult time handling the influx. I currently teach at a community college, and will defend its quality of education against any critic. But without more resources – from classrooms to tech equipment to full-time faculty – it is nearly impossible to keep up.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donna Arduin’s privatization plans are a major culprit in all of this. But their plans would not have had success if they didn’t have help. Leaders at the UC and the CSU system, the state legislature, and Democrats have all played their role in abandoning California’s commitment to affordable, accessible higher education.

UC and CSU leaders have frequently gone along with budget cuts, refusing to rally the public against them. The tone was likely set in 1967, when one of Reagan’s first acts as governor was to fire UC President Clark Kerr. UC Regents, CSU Board members, and all the other campus heads, are very aware of their dependence on politicians.

So instead of fighting these cuts, university administrators have instead chosen to fight others in the university community over the remains, massively increasing student fees and trying to gut workers’ wages and benefits. Just last week the graduate student employees’ union, UAW 2865, won a contract protecting their benefits and wages, providing even an annual cost of living increase. Earlier this year CSU faculty won a major victory in getting a wage increase, as high as 20% when it is fully phased in. And the campus staff, from those who work in the offices and libraries to those in the food service sector, have been continuously organizing to get wage increases.

As the university administrations fight students and workers instead of rallying to their cause, neither the state legislature nor Democrats have put up a meaningful fight to reverse this alarming trend. Legislators are afraid of reopening the tax question, despite the fact that the question of taxes usually only ever comes up when Republicans are trying to win a particular election. Democratic legislators make a major error when they think that voters are interested in holding the line on taxes at the cost of soaring college costs – the middle and lower-class households that still make up the bedrock of the Democratic coalition in California are hurt far more by the planned privatization of California higher education than any tax increase.

Ultimately this privatization, planned in the governor’s office, signed off in secret by the UC and CSU leaders, and tacitly accepted by Democratic legislators, is nothing more than an effort to preserve the wealth of those who currently have it and to ensure that nobody else in this or future generations will ever have the opportunities they had again.

Bill Lockyer, who recently proposed outright privatization of UC as a budget deficit “solution,” graduated from UC Berkeley in 1965. He and/or his family would have only paid $880 in student fees for his 4-year education from 1961 to 1965. The equivalent of that in 2007 dollars would be, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, $5,808. Currently undergraduate fees at UC are $6,141 – a four year total is $24,564. That’s over a 300% increase beyond the rate of inflation. That’s nearly $20,000 that individuals must pay now that the state, through distributed taxation, paid in previous years.

It is shameful that so many who benefited from state subsidies are now arguing that current and future generations should not have the same opportunity. Perhaps we should ask Bill Lockyer and other California politicians who argue for privatization to reimburse the state $20,000 for the cost of their education.

Or perhaps we should instead demand that California live up to its historic promises of affordable, accessible higher education. If a strong economy with a equitable distribution of wealth, financially secure families, and opportunities for advancement and creativity is what we want in our society, then we must restore the broken promises of the 1960 Master Plan. But if we instead want a neo-feudal California, where those with wealth are the only ones able to enjoy security and prosperity, where everyone else is not only poor and struggling to get by but also shut out from the education they need to get out of that condition, well, all we have to do is…nothing. Maintain the status quo, and that ugly outcome will quickly become an ugly reality.

Of course, we *could* look to other solutions, such as those wu ming proposed, to deal with the state’s budget crisis an enable us to restore these broken promises. But why do that when it’s so much easier to create a new inequality?!

(brilliant ideas – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

In a recent report in the Bee, CA State Treasurer Bill Lockyer brainstorms ways to balance the state budget, including a suggestion that that we consider cutting the UC system off of all public funds, and having “public” universities raise their own funds by – you guessed it – raising student fees. As if the state hasn’t already kicked students in the gut repeatedly by jacking up tuition and fees, turning our public universities into de facto private institutions.

This from the same “Democrat” who proudly said he voted for Schwarzeneggar for the recall in 2003. And a graduate of UC Berkeley in 1965, back when tuition was so low as to be nearly free. But I guess those were different times, eh Bill?

But in a sense, Lockyer is right despite himself. The state infrastructure is woefully underfunded and underbuilt, given our growing population. We’ve got a 25 million person infrastructure in a 37 million person state, and we’re headed towards 50 million in the decades to come. Yet his proposals largely suck. So what else could we do, since we’re in modest proposal mode?

Lest I be accused of mere churlish sniping from the sidelines, I’ll bite:

1. Legalize pot and decriminalize all other drugs, with an amnesty for every inmate locked up in CA jails for the victimless crime of nonviolent possession of drugs. Tax the pot, and use the savings from the criminal justice system + new tax revenue to a) fully fund local addiction treatment clinics and clean needle exchanges, and b) pay down the deficit. Most of the social costs of drug use stem from their criminalization, not the chemicals themselves. Far better to deal with the actual addiction through medical treatment, leave people who can handle it alone, and tell the prison industry and the prison guards’ unions to find another cash cow to exploit.

2. While we’re at it, repeal the 3 strikes law that has clogged our prisons with nonviolent offenders. A new prison costs the same as a new college, and housing an inmate in an overcrowded cell block is around the same cost as educating a student. Instead of slashing public eductaion, why not reduce the % of the California population we’re warehousing?

3. Repeal Prop. 13. If that’s too scary for timid defenders of the status quo, afraid of what Howard Jarvis’s winged monkeys might say in attack ads, why not take a baby step and repeal it just for commercial property? Corporations never die, so why should they pay 1978 tax rates for eternity?

4. Pass SB 840, Sheila Kuhl’s Universal Health Insurance Act, which will remove a huge source of our growing state deficit, namely rising insurance costs for state employees, which effectively funnels budget funds directly into health insurance corporations’ profit margins, at a rate far exceeding inflation. Private health insurance is a huge part of the problem, and removing profit from the equation would help the budget planning process out tremendously.

5. Raise taxes, both income and (if you’re courageous enough) wealth taxes. There’s a ton of big money sitting around in this state, and for all the whinging about excessive taxes, our rates are fairly low compared to most other large urbanized states.

6. Stop borrowing money to pay for programs that could be funded outright; pay as you go with taxes. The “no tax” approach to the state costs us a huge amount more in the long run just on interest payments alone. Some things (infrastructure projects, for example) make sense with bonds and debt financing, but most of the initiative bond measure stuff should just be part of the regular budget. Which brings us to…

7. Change the 2/3 raising tax and budget supermajority requirements to simple majorities. Asking a virulently antigovernment, antitax, anti-public good Republican party rump have veto power on the state of California’s future is just absurd. If they want to dictate terms, then perhaps they should win a majority first.

Will Democrats follow any of these ideas? Probably not, but they’re all better than junking the state public higher eductaion system just to balance the books in the short term.

originally at surf putah