Our start on eventual proper coverage
UCR Riverside protesters are attacked by police.
Bob Samuels has a helpful overview of the Regents issues along with his takedown of the worst idea of the week -- students' trading tuition in college for twenty years of debt. This idea is being implemented in the UK as part of the Tory government's attempt to mitigate the obvious cost disaster they were imposing on British college students with their overnight tripling of fees to 9000 pounds. It would undoubtedly ease regular large tuition increases, since it would exploit people's inability to feel as upset about future costs as they are about present ones, and would solidify, in the world of education, our economy of debt.
UCSF's chancellor offered the other big surprise of the week by expressing a desire to leave the UC system-- sort of. We will be looking into this, but the San Francisco Chronicle coverage implied that the motive was that UCSF could no longer afford to subsidize the UC system. Chancellor Desmond-Hellmann mentioned a loss to UC of $49 million. This is about 1% of UCSF's budget, but in any case is offset by the $186 million that UCSF receives in state general funds, which is over $52,000 per student or over five times the per student GF of Berkeley. There are many more cash flows back and forth than I've just mentioned, but the main point is that a huge taboo has been broken. The main motive is probably a bad case of UCOP fatigue, and we may see a systemwide outbreak soon.
Photo: "Protest at UC Riverside" by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times
that "worst idea" also has ties to Prof. Robert Reich- he should help them flesh it out-explain it fully- or speak out against it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailycal.org/2012/01/13/uc-riverside-students-propose-alternative-uc-student-contribution-plan/
What a fantastic idea, educate yourself at say UCSF (or SF or whatever they are called) for
ReplyDelete50-55k for 4-5 years (or 250-275k). The state will provide graduates with the incentive to go abroad to earn a living. Evolve off the young brite well educated high earning folks while robbing the state of the very services it needs most to recover from this barbarian sacking of CA society and higher education. All while freeing up more general fund money to incarcerate three strikers- interestingly at 50-55k a year forever (500k-1m per person). I agree that this is incredibly short sighted and the state and the cyborg regents are tearing this U to pieces by forcing it to cook up new funding models that Hail Mary have to succeed at this point. Exactly what I feared when the mail order educated/mail order steroid slanger began the Termination of the University of California.