UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA — The routine tug-of-war between
state educators and legislators over funding blues has sprouted yet another
tiff between California colleges. Where there was once a united front among
college officials for statewide education funding, there is now competition for
a shrinking pot.

The conflict came to a head during a meeting earlier this
month when the UC Board of Regents voted to oppose Proposition 92 — a measure
that would reduce student fees, initiate a fixed funding amount and curb
tuition hikes for the state’s 110 community colleges.

While Proposition 92 supporters took offense to the board’s
decision, the regents uncharacteristically acted with UC students in mind.

Despite the proposal’s plan to lower costs by $5 per unit
for community college students, it would have transferred a large portion of
the fiscal burden to UC and CSU students because officials of all three systems
pull state funding from the same pool.

According to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s revised 2007-08 budget
proposal, discretionary funds — money spent by legislators on an as-needed
basis — amount to only 8 percent of the total state budget. Currently, the
10-campus UC system, 23-campus CSU system and community colleges procure money
from this portion of the budget.

Proposition 92, however, would further reduce this already
dismal funding pot by redirecting almost $1 billion in the next three years,
all set aside specifically for community colleges. Under these financially
restrictive conditions, UC and CSU students would again receive a raw deal.

With UC mandatory student fees ballooning, community college
students are not the only ones that deserve lower prices. Community college
costs far less than a UC or CSU education — at $20 a unit for Miramar Community
College classes, for example, the maximum load of 20 units a semester would
cost only $400, a far cry from UC education fees that soar close to $2,000 per
quarter.

If there are any students who need assistance paying for
college, it surely isn’t the ones paying the least.

However, the proposition’s narrow aim to bring fiscal relief
to only a select group of college students is not its only flaw; there is
another equally serious problem with the proposed legislation.

Whereas the current system requires that the need for
additional funding be assessed by observing attendance at K-12 schools and the
first two years of community college, the proposed policy would do so by measuring the number of California
residents between the ages of 17 and 25.

The change would seriously disrupt the system’s efficiency
because these figures would not accurately represent the number of students
actually attending the various community colleges.

This could in turn produce an excessive allotment of funds to the community
colleges that could have otherwise been directed to the UC and CSU campuses.

The regents’ resolution also hinted at more dire
consequences that could result from such unbalanced funding.

“Passage of Proposition 92 could result in a reduction in
the university’s state-funded budget, which in turn could result in an erosion
of university programs and services,” the regents said in their decision to
oppose to measure.

This is not to say that community colleges don’t deserve
more state funding. In fact, they are just as deserving as the state’s other
universities, but there is no reason why they should be guaranteed finances
while their sister schools remain at the mercy of state legislators.

The regents — along with CSU officials who followed a
similar course of action last week — were therefore right to deny the
proposition’s legitimacy.

Despite any possible good intentions behind the creation of
Proposition 92, its proposed solutions would prove too weak and too narrowly
effective to significantly improve the quality of higher education in California as a whole.