‘ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ‘mdash; UC President Mark Yudof made one thing clear during his public address on Sept. 11, 2009: Even in the midst of this recession, he’s not willing to compromise quality or access to the university, which ‘mdash; to the unknowing student ‘mdash; might like seem a pretty compelling promise. The thing is, we can’t have both.
Despite President Yudof’s pride in the fact that we enroll twice as many Pell Grant-eligible students as any Ivy League school, in order to maintain the accessibility of which President Yudof is so proud, we have to make a choice.
Do we sustain our current level of excellence and hike student fees so unreachably high that many cannot benefit from a UC education? Or do we accept the fact that, for now, we can’t afford to keep the expensive professors and research that gave the university its esteemed reputation?
It’s a tough question to answer, but we must remember that the goal of a public university is to provide affordable higher education to anyone who wants it.
It isn’t ideal, but the lesser of two hard-hitting evils in this situation is to cut spending on services and faculty. We better hope, probably in vain, that those pricey professors will stick around San Diego and Berkeley for the California sunshine even if they could make more at Columbia University, because raising student fees 44 percent in two years ‘mdash; as Yudof has proposed ‘mdash; will compromise’ student access to the University of California. After the $662 increase the regents instituted for the current academic year, students now pay $7,788 per year. By the 2010-11 academic year, they’ll be paying $10,302. That’s a 32 percent increase ‘mdash; and with the recession at work, you can safely bet that most don’t have 32 percent deeper pockets. ‘
Yudof stated that a third of fee increases for undergraduates would be used on financial aid, as will half of the graduate student fee increases (their fee hikes will sting even more: up by as much as $654 for Winter Quarter 2010 and $1,506 for next fall, depending on the program). Even so, that’s a bit like punching someone in the eye and then offering him gauze and body tape. It’s just a vicious circle. Rather than commanding funds from students only to give it back to those with aid packages, Yudof ought to be assessing other forms of damage control: Though a fee increase may be unavoidable, trimming the fat through further service cuts could make the blow a little less painful. At a pu
blic university with a total enrollment of over 190,000, the interests of the many have to be taken into account ‘mdash; and chief among those interests is giving everyone a chance to enroll.
Lower on most students’ lists are non-essential offerings and services like psychological counseling, concerts and events and on-campus clubs. Because ‘mdash; as rewarding and as valuable as those non-necessities can be ‘mdash; in a crisis of this magnitude, the focus needs to be on preserving what every university must provide: a simple classroom education. Yudof was quick to remind us that the poorest UC students won’t be impacted by the increase. Under the university’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, implemented this academic year, those families with incomes below $60,000 per year currently don’t pay any educational or registration fees, and under his proposal that program would extend through next year.
Students with family incomes from $115,000 to $180,000 are covered, too ‘mdash; President Obama instituted a tax break for those in that income range that will offset the increases. Though it’s certainly nice that Yudof isn’t proposing we trade the poorest students for fancy lab equipment, and we can presume that students falling in the $150,000 range and above will still be free to park their BMWs in Pangea Parking Structure come next year, Yudof’s proposal creates a huge middle-class problem: The average student falls into neither category. In Fall Quarter 2008, the average parent income of freshmen across all campuses was $90,472. UCSD freshmen, however, reported an average family income of $82,114.
Yudof reminded us that those who will be most adversely impacted, should his proposal come to fruition, are not the ‘genuinely poor.’ But for the student whose family narrowly misses that $60,000 cap, the extra $3,000 per year can go a long way ‘mdash; and can be the deciding difference in being able to afford health insurance, or any number of other basic living expenses that many will not be able to afford as easily, even if they aren’t ‘genuinely poor.’
Assuming room and board fees stay exactly the same for the next year (probably not the safest bet), the cost of attending UCSD would balloon to over $28,000 for 2010-11, which would amount to a staggering 34 percent of that average family’s annual income. Granted, even before these increases, many families still forked a hefty portion of their wages over to the university. But in a time when nearly everyone has less, Yudof’s insistence on charging students 44 percent more in two years is an especially harsh slap in the face. Softening the blow with further service cuts and layoffs might not be ideal, but until that $535 million deficit-eliminating donation pulls through (we’re looking at you, Mr. Gates), no choice of action will please everyone.
Readers can contact Trevor Cox at [email protected]. ‘