As you go from class to overcrowded class this fall, you’ll want to forget that tuition last year was around $1,800 less than you’re paying now. Continuing a 30-year trend, the UC Board of Regents gathered in cigar and gin-soaked boardrooms over the summer to raise our tuition by 17.6% and lay down plans for further increases in January, or maybe just raise tuition 81% over the next 4 years. (Hey, overcrowding at least improves your chances of getting lucky; tuition hikes on the other hand, just increase the probability of working a shitty job in college and plenty of debt after). The UC Office of the President (UCOP) never tires of reminding us that tuition increases are the recession’s fault or scolding us that Californians are just unwilling to spend on education in hard times; this is a strange excuse though, since state funding has been decreasing while tuition has been skyrocketing since the early 1990s. Even while UCOP continues to whine about how poor it is and how unfortunate it is that they need to raise tuition, it’s offering the state of California a billion dollar loan from UC financial reserves. As it happens, in 9 of the past 10 years tuition was raised – well before the 2008 recession began; UCOP’s insistence on the necessity of this recent series of tuition increases has so many logical fallacies that if it were an assignment, it’d get an F (assuming, of course, that the overburdened TA grading it even had time to pay attention to it). Tuition hikes and budget cuts – at all levels of California higher education – are part of the decades-long process whereby the richest assholes in California (and the greater US) intend to make private what few institutions remain in public hands.
Even if you slept through math in high school, UC tuition increases aren’t difficult to calculate – just add a few zeros every few decades: since 1975 tuition has gone up 1,923% or, if you’d prefer to adjust for inflation, 392% (from $700 to over $12,000 per year)! Minimum wage in California, by contrast, when adjusted for inflation, has stayed roughly the same for the last 40 years, while the median family income has continued to fall since 1973. Most people in California make less money today, yet pay much more for education: for families struggling to pay rent, mortgages, car payments, etc., education becomes a luxury good. To make matters worse, financial aid packages meant to help low to middle income students attend the UC, heavily depend on students working part-time in an economy with a staggeringly high unemployment rate and very low entry- level wages; furthermore, it relies on students taking out thousands in loans that, most economic experts agree, will lock us into debt for the rest of our lives. Indeed, many economists believe that student loans will be the next credit bubble to burst, perhaps wreaking more destruction than the recession of 2008. Because there aren’t enough jobs for everyone who graduates, student loan default rates are nearing 10% – but, unlike other loans there’s no way out for student borrowers. Sallie Mae and Bank of America can take your paychecks and your children’s paychecks until they get back all their Benjamins, and then some.
As the pinnacle of public higher ed., UC students should also know that what happens at the UC level is magnified in the CSUs and Community Colleges. CSUs estimate that over 10,000 students have been denied admission this year because of budget cuts; at the same time they’re not repairing facilities, replacing library books, or rehiring lecturers. California Community College systems, however, have been hit the hardest: it’s estimated that 670,000 students who would normally go to Community College this year will be turned away. CCs are facing nearly $400 million in budget cuts this year and will have to cut several thousand classes to make up for budget shortfalls. Given that unemployment for thoseaged 18-24 is over 17%, it’s clear that the cuts to public education will continue to have a devastating affect on an entire generation. California Community Colleges serve over 3 million students, many of those students going on to four-year colleges after they get their Associates degrees. (It seems almost plausible that state leaders actually hope many of these 670,000 end up in prison: as the CSU Chancellor, Charles Reed, said, “It’s outrageous that the prison system budget is larger than UC and Cal State put together.”)
I. AUSTERITY
If you paid attention to the news at all this summer, you likely heard about the budget crises for California and the Federal Government. State legislators, by a twisted interpretation of their constituent’s needs, have not tried to raise revenue, but are instead cutting UC funding for 2011 by $650 million (and tax shortfalls by November are almost guaranteed to cut another $100 million from the UC budget for this year). Community Colleges, like the UC, will also see further midyear multi-million dollar cuts, as tax revenue continues to stay low. During all of this, UCOP’s response was no doubt similar to yours, when you were four: they whine, don’t get what they want, and then take it out on us. For you, these state shortfalls mean that tuition will have to be increased in the middle of the school year – and you’ll be responsible for making up the difference. The recession has hurt: during the 1970-71 school year, the state allocated 7% of its budget for the UC, and it’s sharply declined since then. However, state shortfalls are not simply a result of the present recession; they’ve given the UC Regents a nice story to tell you as they shred quality education and let old UC’s facilities decay while haphazardly building new ones. It’s all built on our rising tuition.
