It’s the stuff of children’s books: A greedy, powerful Gubernator is persuaded by virtuous, learned and worldly public servants in the UC Students Association, in the last days before his budget release, to capitulate and protect California’s public college students from even higher tuition fees next year.
How beautifully thrilling, and how dastardly untrue. The reality — a skillful politician uses college fees as a symbolic but substanceless appeal for re-election and a power-hungry group of student lobbyists rushes in to claim credit — is somewhat less pretty. Worse yet, reality would also acknowledge one other fact: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fee “buyout” plan does absolutely nothing to make college more affordable for the most vulnerable and poorest students — the group, UCSA has argued, that has been hit the hardest by the tuition increases in the last four years.
There is, however, a way to make a UC education affordable for all, though neither Schwarzenegger nor the UCSA would ever have the guts to propose it: Drastically raise fees for the students that can afford it.
Currently, state tax dollars pay for at least two-thirds of the more than $20,000 a single year at a UC campus costs (excluding housing, food, textbooks, etc.). This is true for every student in the University of California, including those who could afford to pay a larger portion of the cost themselves, and amounts to an inefficient system of untargeted aid that helps the rich as much as the poor.
Campus liberals have long squeaked loudly over things like corporate welfare, cost-distorting subsidies for fossil fuels and inefficiently cheap water provided to large agro-businesses. Surprisingly few, though, seem to understand the similarity between other forms of wasteful government subsidies for the richest echelons of society and the role of the state in subsidizing their own student fees.
For years, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has recommended that wealthier students pay a larger share of the cost of their UC education, allowing the state to use its scarce resources to offer aid targeted to low-income families, who surely need all the help they can get. Yet such an approach has been opposed by UCSA, even though the group has long tried to link its lobbying efforts to the interests of the needy.
Instead, the organization (a quintessential special interest group) has argued that “education is a right,” much like normal K-12 schooling that is made available at no cost to students of all means. Whatever the intellectual appeal of this argument to the bleeding hearts that tend to be present in overwhelming numbers on UC campuses, it is oblivious to the reality of the outside world: Resources are scarce, and should be appropriated in the most efficient fashion.
Another problem with rights rhetoric is that it is normative and value-based. Just as UCSA may do with higher education, an energy-industry lobbyist can use the same passionate appeals, the same preachy oratory and the same zeal to argue that cheap gasoline is, indeed, an equally basic human right. The same can be done with almost any service the government provides.
In the end, whether or not one believes that college should be cheap and plentiful, she must acknowledge that it is currently neither.
Higher fees would bring another, unrelated benefit: more concern by the University of California for the wishes of its students. Currently, the university is essentially guaranteed to receive state funding, since there will always be more students wanting to obtain the cheap subsidized education than there are spots. Thus, the university can ignore the needs of undergraduate students and focus instead on procuring research funds.
However, if state funds suddenly went to individual needy students, who would be able to take them to any university of their choosing, and rich students had to pay something resembling the full cost of their education, UC campuses would actually have to compete in quality against other schools for the money. This would result in a healthy competition that would force campuses to woo students by looking out for their interests.
At the end, higher fees and targeted aid would be a win-win solution, making the university more accessible and more responsive without a penny more of state funds than it currently receives. But don’t hold your breath for UCSA to propose it. If a large share of students, no matter how rich, suddenly stopped receiving their share of state funds, they would surely have no reason to continue paying UCSA’s annual dues, which is why the group would never go along.
Welcome to the slimy world of politics. You won’t find it in any children’s book.
