Or maybe the question should be posed like this: “without affordable and accessible higher education, does California even have a future?”<\/p>\n
California’s dramatic economic success over the last few decades, propelling the state into the forefront of the global economy, was made possible by the investments made in higher education in the 1950s and 1960s. Democrats and Republicans agreed on the need for a well-funded college system that prioritized accessibility<\/strong> and affordability<\/strong>. The UCs, CSUs, and the oft-overlooked community colleges trained generations of workers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and others who created, produced, and managed the state’s innovation and prosperity. The 1960 Master Plan was the envy of the other 49 states, and gave California and its workers a massive competitive advantage.<\/p>\n All of that is now under direct assault. As I have charted before, Arnold Schwarzenegger has always wanted to destroy the Master Plan<\/a> and privatize public higher education, without regard to its effects on the economy. One can only assume this is part of his broader goal of decoupling the wealthy from the fate of everyone else in this state. He wants to sacrifice broad economic prosperity and the possibilities of future growth to enable the already rich to become much richer and escape any future taxation and redistribution of their hoard.<\/p>\n As a consequence, with yet another massive hit to higher education budgets, the UC system is proposing a truly insane 32% increase in student fees<\/a> in 2010, bringing the cost of a year at a UC to over $10,000. For perspective, just 10 years ago I paid about $4,400 for a year at UC Berkeley. The total cost of the fees alone for four years were about $17,600 – which, if these increases go into effect, will buy you about 3 1\/2 semesters of a UC education.<\/p>\n It is difficult to imagine how this will have any other outcome than economic stagnation. More and more young people will be unable to attend college and thus be consigned to even lower wages than college graduates are already experiencing. Unemployment rates are much lower for people with a bachelor’s degree<\/a> than for those who do not have one, although college grads are definitely getting hit by the recession.<\/p>\n Or, more young people will have to take out even larger amounts of student loans to afford the higher fees. A $40,000 loan debt is an enormous burden on young families, especially in a state with a high cost of living, stagnant wages, and the likelihood of long-term high unemployment<\/a>.<\/p>\n Either way, it represents a de facto<\/em> tax increase on middle-class and working families in order to protect the wealthy from facing higher taxes. It is economically indefensible.<\/p>\n The possibility of such reckless fee increases, along with the destructive cuts already being felt on campuses across the state, suggests that California’s government has stopped caring about the state’s economic future. In a recession higher education should be expanding its offerings, hiring more profs and letting in more students. Retraining and re-education is an excellent, tried and true method of producing economic recovery. Yet economic recovery is a verboten concept in California these days, as these fee increase proposals make clear.<\/p>\n The reaction is already beginning. UC faculty are planning a September 24th walkout<\/a> to protest the cuts. They are joined by 12,000 university staff<\/a>, UC Berkeley grad students<\/A>, and solidarity actions at UC Berkeley<\/a> and UCLA<\/a>, with other actions likely to occur that day as well.<\/p>\n That’s going to have to be just the opening shot in a long battle to save not only higher education in California, but the state’s future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or maybe the question should be posed like this: “without affordable and accessible higher education, does California even have a future?”<\/p>\n California’s dramatic economic success over the last few decades, propelling the state into the forefront of the global economy, was made possible by the investments made in higher education in the 1950s and 1960s. Democrats and Republicans agreed on the need for a well-funded college system that prioritized accessibility<\/strong> and affordability<\/strong>. The UCs, CSUs, and the oft-overlooked community colleges trained generations of workers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and others who created, produced, and managed the state’s innovation and prosperity. The 1960 Master Plan was the envy of the other 49 states, and gave California and its workers a massive competitive advantage.<\/p>\n All of that is now under direct assault. As I have charted before, Arnold Schwarzenegger has always wanted to destroy the Master Plan<\/a> and privatize public higher education, without regard to its effects on the economy. One can only assume this is part of his broader goal of decoupling the wealthy from the fate of everyone else in this state. He wants to sacrifice broad economic prosperity and the possibilities of future growth to enable the already rich to become much richer and escape any future taxation and redistribution of their hoard.<\/p>\n As a consequence, with yet another massive hit to higher education budgets, the UC system is proposing a truly insane 32% increase in student fees<\/a> in 2010, bringing the cost of a year at a UC to over $10,000. For perspective, just 10 years ago I paid about $4,400 for a year at UC Berkeley. The total cost of the fees alone for four years were about $17,600 – which, if these increases go into effect, will buy you about 3 1\/2 semesters of a UC education.<\/p>\n It is difficult to imagine how this will have any other outcome than economic stagnation. More and more young people will be unable to attend college and thus be consigned to even lower wages than college graduates are already experiencing. Unemployment rates are much lower for people with a bachelor’s degree<\/a> than for those who do not have one, although college grads are definitely getting hit by the recession.<\/p>\n Or, more young people will have to take out even larger amounts of student loans to afford the higher fees. A $40,000 loan debt is an enormous burden on young families, especially in a state with a high cost of living, stagnant wages, and the likelihood of long-term high unemployment<\/a>.<\/p>\n Either way, it represents a de facto<\/em> tax increase on middle-class and working families in order to protect the wealthy from facing higher taxes. It is economically indefensible.<\/p>\n The possibility of such reckless fee increases, along with the destructive cuts already being felt on campuses across the state, suggests that California’s government has stopped caring about the state’s economic future. In a recession higher education should be expanding its offerings, hiring more profs and letting in more students. Retraining and re-education is an excellent, tried and true method of producing economic recovery. Yet economic recovery is a verboten concept in California these days, as these fee increase proposals make clear.<\/p>\n The reaction is already beginning. UC faculty are planning a September 24th walkout<\/a> to protest the cuts. They are joined by 12,000 university staff<\/a>, UC Berkeley grad students<\/A>, and solidarity actions at UC Berkeley<\/a> and UCLA<\/a>, with other actions likely to occur that day as well.<\/p>\n That’s going to have to be just the opening shot in a long battle to save not only higher education in California, but the state’s future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-87"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Cn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}