Dear Editor,

UniversityLink at UCSD will replace — next year — the Transfer Admission Guarantee program that was discontinued in 2012. To be eligible for the program, a student’s family income cannot exceed $40,000 a year. Additionally, students must have at least a 3.5 average GPA, and they must fulfill regular transfer requirements. Students must also go to one of nine local partner community colleges: Cuyamaca, Grossmont, Imperial Valley, MiraCosta, Palomar, San Diego City, San Diego Mesa, San Diego Miramar or Southwestern. Interim Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Alan Houston at the most recent UCSD A.S. Council meeting, said that an estimated 200 students will be eligible for the program each year and that there is no ceiling for the number of students that can take advantage of it. A potential financial problem that this program may cause is that these incoming students will require larger amounts of financial aid. However, according to Houston, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla’s “primary objective in the capital campaign that will be launched next year is scholarships for undergraduate students.”

In my opinion, the new “guaranteed” transfer policy facilitates racketing up graduate enrollment at UCSD while it potentially creates a big hole in undergraduate enrollment that wasn’t there before (under TAG).

This is in keeping with UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla’s long-term goals. Establishing a free standing school is bound to limit its impact on the overall educational system, and such a school is likely to have to provide resources that could be garnered from existing schools or at least could be used in cooperation with such schools. Even if the school is not connected to other schools, it would make sense to have some sort of regularized internship connections, which would link the students and staff to the realities of computer operations in various government and private organizations in the country, e.g., like the berufsacademie in Germany.

California’s master plan for higher education has succeeded in building the greatest system in the world, but it’s under attack. Push has come to shove with the $200 per unit charges for Santa Monica Community College’s most in-demand classes.

San Diego Community College District Chancellor Constance Carroll and State Senator Marty Block now want baccalaureate degrees in the fields of nursing, software engineering and public safety administration. San Diego State University might raise tuition independently, and establish Ph.D.s, M.D.s and J.D.s (if the Block-Carroll heresy isn’t snuffed).

Dick Blum, the longest-serving member on the UC board, is there to exploit the privatization of the 112-member, 2-year public college system; he owns $700 million in for-profit colleges stock (Blum told me on the sidelines of the regents meeting held in San Diego: “The CCs aren’t doing their jobs”).

For-profit colleges are mined by their CEOs overwhelmingly at taxpayer expense. Senator Marty Block is for EVERYTHING. He takes the maximum amount of money from Bridgepoint Education Corporation. He favors the local option for SDSU.

Block supports Point Loma Nazarene University and University of San Diego students receiving the same amount of money in Cal Grants as do Stanford University students.

— Richard Thompson
UCSD Alumnus ’83