What a Novel Idea: Fewer Pens, More Classes

A couple weeks ago, our much-maligned royal circle — the UC Board of Regents — stumbled upon two big no-brainers.

They found that if they bought less office supplies for administrators, they could put those savings toward classes and professor salaries. They also chose to more clearly define the student registration fee — which was designed to go toward student resources — as the “Student Services Fee.”

Nice and transparent. However, they also slipped some ambiguous language in to the fine print — language that completely contradicts its upgraded name. The Student Service Fee can now technically to toward state-funded areas such as admissions, the registrar’s office and libraries.

You win some, you lose some, and it’s a 50 percent positive track record in a year of budget shortfalls.

A round of applause, please, for the board of geniuses! Office supplies? We’d have never thought to sacrifice monogrammed staplers while public education collapses. The plan will funnel $500 million of administrative funds into the classroom — the brainchild of UC Chief Financial Officer Peter Taylor. Taylor’s first move: reduce $100 million in printers, paper and staplers — amenities for which we shell out $4 billion a year.

It’s a practical, albeit obvious, solution; now, Taylor just needs to keep up the steam. He says that nine similar initiatives have been launched since 2008, but — at the first sign of economic upturn — everyone trashes their cheap schizophrenic copy machine for the latest laser printer. Though there are few signs that California’s $1.2 billion deficit will begin to fill anytime soon, we hope the regents can at least enforce a modest administrative budget, no matter how the financial weathervane swings. No public office should shine like it’s in the Fortune 500. After all, it’s academic prowess that defines our university, not our supply of ballpoint pens.

As for the new Student Services Policy, it includes all sorts of clauses meant to clarify where our money is going. Each campus will have a website revealing how the fees are being spent, and chancellors will supposedly solicit student input on how much the fee should be.

Ironically, this transparency won’t change the fact that our registration fees will now officially be able to go toward educational areas that a 2002 UC Council on Student Fees document deemed “inappropriate” for registration-fee usage. The 2002 document provided guidelines that were never officially approved — but the official, updated version gives the regents permission to use our Student Services Fee for purposes the old document banned.

We — along with Registration Fee Advisory Committee Chair Erik Van Esselstyn — are all for putting our fees into education rather than less essential services. When push comes to shove, it’s better that more money go toward the academic side of our college experience. At a time when waitlists are inflating and departments are facing a 20-percent cut, the classes and professors at the crux of our university can always use a little help.

However, blurring the line between our registration and educational fee ignores the intent behind having two fees in the first place: When the going gets tough, the registration fee should ensure that certain services don’t see their funds pulled arbitrarily. To keep things honest, the regents should have just re-adjusted the two fees instead of making them overlap.

Van Esselstyn said it best: raise the educational fee, then lower the student service fee by the same amount. It seems an obvious solution — but then, so did those belated office-supply cutbacks.

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