UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ‘mdash; Last Friday, after a 106-day delay due to resistance from his own party, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a greatly compromised California budget that has succeeded in dissatisfying almost everyone. Of the estimated $15 billion to be cut from state programs in the next 17 months, a whopping $8.6 billion will come from public education, including $115 million from the University of California ($50 million of which could be reimbursed by allocations from the federal stimulus package) as part of a plan to cut 10 percent across the board among public universities.
Rather than instituting dramatic, systemic change to the university ‘mdash;’ the only means by which our $450 million ‘budget challenge’ could be gradually resolved ‘mdash; the current plan calls for more of the same tactics: increases in tuition and supposedly temporary reductions in service. Though the university has not formally decided how the new budget will impact student fees for the 2009-10 school year, the UC Office of the President said those numbers will be determined during Spring Quarter. Increases at this point are all but inevitable, given the fact that every year in the last decade, students have seen a 7 to 10 percent tuition increase at the university ‘mdash; except, by virtue of coincidence, the year that Schwarzenegger was running for re-election.
A hefty portion of the deficit ($122 million) currently stems from underfunded enrollments ‘mdash; i.e., students the university suppo
rts without the help of state funding. While a cap on current enrollment levels should narrow this gap, it’s not a precedent we want to set. Ideally, California should be able to fund every student who chooses to invest in our state’s future by pursuing a UC education.
Meanwhile, one of the few state-funded areas not subjected to budget-slashing is ‘mdash; as always ‘mdash; the prison system. If the state can afford to fund each of its prisoners in the state penitentiary system, then why shouldn’t UC students be fully accounted for as well?
Stephen Levy, head of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Sacramento, estimates that if California offered an early release to nonviolent criminals, the state could save around $1 billion ‘mdash; more than twice the UC system’s current debt.
Assuming a 10 percent increase in mandatory student fees ‘mdash; as Christopher Newfield, UC Santa Barbara professor and author of ‘The Cuts Report: Effects of the Governor’s Budget Proposals on the University of California’ and ‘Current Budget Trends and the Future of the University of California’ has predicted ‘mdash; we’ll see our bill jump from $7,126 to $7,850 (for in-state students). Then there are all those other mandatory fees that vary from campus to campus, inflating the average UC tuition to’ about $9,000 per year, up nearly a grand from 2008-09.
The new tide of student fees comes at an inopportune moment for those hard-hit by the economic crisis, but it will recoup only a fraction of the funds needed for the university to get out of the red. Newfield stated that in order to fill the current deficit by way of tuition increases alone, fees would have to rise 40 percent in one year, bringing total costs of attendance into private university range ‘mdash; those with less depleted resources, as they’re far less reliant on government funding than we are. Of course, that prospect is a near impossibility: We’re not in danger of being subjected to private school tuition levels for next year.
We are, however, in imminent danger of feeling the consequences of our drained resources. University of California President Mark G. Yudof says that students and staff can expect to feel the strains of these budgets cuts on a personal level. He warns against the consequences of lower spending, arguing that it will lead to the eventual decline of student opportunity and economic growth.
If it makes us feel any better, Yudof does note that $30 million in savings has been realized at the UC Office of the President alone. High-level salaries have been frozen and nonessential forms of spending, such as travel, have been severely restricted.
As helpful as these adjustments are, they can’t adequately offset a debt of $450 million. In the current state of crisis, we must turn to innovative alternatives to alleviate current budgetary strains.
Corporate funding of research universities has risen in recent years:’ According to Insidehighered.com, from 2000 to 2005 universities have witnessed a 50 percent increase in corporate contributions to research and development in science and engineering nationwide. In 2005, UCSD ‘mdash; one of the greatest beneficiaries of corporate funding in the U.S. ‘mdash; received over $34 million toward research, more than any other UC campus that year. While some opponents of the practice, such as perpetual presidential candidate Ralph Nader, argue that private funding of public research can compromise university autonomy, this crisis ‘mdash; in which the state cannot provide its students with even the most basic services ‘mdash; requires us to take charge for ourselves and seek outside assistance.
Yudof said that he will be working with each of the UC campuses to decide how to contend with these cuts so as to best preserve academic programs and student services, yet nowhere does he mention consulting students themselves ‘mdash; the real victims of the educational crisis. The formation of cross-campus student committees about these budget cuts is central to the preservation of services students value most. We will, after all, be feeling the consequences much deeper than the legislators who have determined our current fate.
Students who already have a difficult time enrolling in required classes can only expect their problems to worsen. They’ll be paying higher tuition for a longer period of time for a lesser education than that of their forerunners. In order to make this crisis as temporary as state leaders would like us to believe it is, the university can’t idly wait for government funds, nor can it continually raise tuition to fractionally offset the cuts. Rather, it must independently solve the problems we face if it hopes to maintain the quality of the UC educational experience.
Readers can contact Trevor Cox at [email protected].