University of California: Bleeding to Death?

The state of California is in serious trouble. It’s no mystery what happened: finances were horribly mismanaged, priorities were mistaken, and a nationwide recession didn’t help an already-tremendous budget shortfall. The specific causes of the state’s problem are irrelevant here; what is relevant is the impact those problems will now have on the University of California.

In 1960, the California legislature approved the Master Plan for Higher Education. This plan was a collection of requirements and guarantees for the UC system, as well as the CSU and Community Colleges. One such requirement pertained to admissions:

* UC was to select from among the top one-eighth (12.5%) of the high school graduating class.

* CSU was to select from among the top one-third (33.3%) of the high school graduating class.

* California Community Colleges were to admit any student capable of benefiting from instruction.

Furthermore, the Master Plan laid out the grounds for a Community College transfer to UC or CSU:

The transfer function is an essential component of the commitment to access. UC and CSU are to establish a lower division to upper division ratio of 40:60 to provide transfer opportunities to the upper division for Community College students, and eligible California Community College transfer students are to be given priority in the admissions process.

Most important in the Master Plan, however, is listed in item three of the Master Plan summary, available from the University of California Office of the President:

3. Reaffirmation of California’s long-time commitment to the principle of tuition-free education to residents of the state. However, the 1960 Master Plan did establish the principle that students should pay fees for auxiliary costs like dormitories and recreational facilities. Because of budgetary reductions, fees have been increased and used for instruction at UC and CSU in recent years, but fee increases have been accompanied by substantial increases in student financial aid.

Indeed, the UC and CSU system were tuition-free to state residents well into the 1960s. What fees did exist were only for dormitories and campus recreation; faculty salaries were paid through tax revenue by the state.

The Master Plan made the University of California what it is today. Through the beliefs and goals put forth in that plan, the UC has become the highest-ranked college system in the country. Among public universities, UC Berkeley alone was rated number one nationwide by US News and World Report in 2009. UCLA was rated third, UC San Diego seventh, and UC’s Davis, Irvine and Santa Barbara tied for twelfth. In 2008, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked each UC campus among the top 50 in the world.

The UC system “leads the nation in research excellence and productivity among public universities.” Furthermore, “in the National Research Council’s (NRC) 1995 study of the quality of American doctoral programs, more than one-third of all UC doctoral programs evaluated placed in the top ten in their fields on faculty quality.” Best of all, these fantastic universities have been accessible for years for a fraction of the cost of comparable private universities.

All of that, however, is about to change.

Earlier this month, it became apparent that the University of California was to take a 25% cut in its state funding. In addition to the cancellation of student programs, staff and faculty at all ten UC campuses were told they would be taking mandatory furloughs. What’s worse, faculty was told their furlough days had to be taken on vacation days, so as not to impact the academic year, essentially forcing them to take a pay cut.

Even with such deep cuts, the UC now finds itself in hot water, and is not completely without fault. Several years ago, the UC administration and the California state legislature struck a deal; UC would slowly increase tuitions (already having been increased beyond the Master Plan for Education) in accordance with the increase in average income among the California populace. In exchange, the state of California would guarantee no loss of funding for UC. In short, the UC would have been compensating for increasing costs without requesting additional state funding.

Although this would have amounted to a decrease in access to education due to the intricacies of calculating average income statewide, UC would have been able to retain the same high standards which had made it the shining star of public university systems. Unfortunately, the California legislature did not keep their end of the deal. Schwarzenegger et al. informed the UC administration that they would indeed be forced to take a funding cut – a 25% one, no less – even though tuitions had already been raised. The end result is a massive loss of programs and services, cuts to faculty pay, and an over 30% increase in tuition, starting next quarter (January 2010).

At this point, the UC will be receiving 6& of the state’s total revenue. California prisons, on the other hand, receive 9%.

Needless to say, students and faculty alike are furious. The point became abundantly clear last Thursday, September 24, 2009, when students, staff and faculty at all ten UC campuses walked out at noon in protest. The event received much media attention, bringing the issue into the consciousness of Californians everywhere.

What are the long-term implications of such cuts to the UC? Can it pull itself out? If admissions requirements are lowered to allow for more students, quality decreases. If faculty pay continues to take a cut, the best professors will go elsewhere, and quality decreases. If tuitions continue to go through the roof, access decreases, and thus quality decreases. There are few (read: no) positive outcomes on the docket.

What can be done? First and foremost, blame needs to be placed where it belongs. As California Aggie editor Adam Loberstein pointed out on Tuesday, September 29th, students and faculty must unite behind a constructive cause.

Though we commend students and faculty for being vocal about the value of education, certain aspects of these protests were marked by emotional and irrational criticism, instead of informed statements.

Loberstein went on to make several more points, including the uselessness of calling for massive cuts to salaries of UC President Mark Yudof and others high up in UC administration; such salaries may be 6 figures, but the UC budget is measured in the billions. “‘Cutting from the top’ would merely be a drop of water in an ocean of deficits,” Loberstein wrote. A more constructive strategy may be to call for new methods to increase state revenues:

Instead of aimlessly asking regents for more money, perhaps we should be asking the state for a specific way of getting this money. One solution would be to tax oil companies in order to fund higher education. Another solution is to lobby the capitol – it’s only 15 minutes away and we have a student lobby corps on campus to organize such efforts.

Such actions cannot wait. The UC is effectively bleeding to death; if nothing is done and tuitions continue to increase due to further state funding cuts, in ten years the system will be but a shadow of its former self. Let us, as Californians, not forget the value of higher education. UC powers our future by allowing our best and brightest an avenue to success. UC President Mark Yudof has summed up the situation in a much more succinct manner than I could ever dream of:

I’m sorry. I regret it, but the state has stopped building freeways to higher education and it has started building toll roads. That’s what you have. You have a toll road to higher education. I don’t like it but that’s what they’ve done.