February 8, 2020

Dear Chancellor Larive and iCPEVC Kletzer:

We, the undersigned faculty members, are writing to express our unequivocal opposition to the practices and principles underlying the “Notification of Class and Section Disruption” Google form accessible through the notify the campus hotlink in the February 7, 2020, Public Affairs communication titled “Unsanctioned strike by some graduate students” (pasted below).  In addition to concerns about academic freedom, we are extremely alarmed by the culture of surveillance and reporting encouraged and facilitated by such an approach.

As you are well aware, the foundation of any research university is the creation and free exchange of knowledge, principles reflected in the tenure system and, in the University of California, through guarantees of academic freedom (APM 010). Additionally, the University of California has sought to reiterate these principles with the recent creation of a National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The free exchange of knowledge—the very cornerstone of the university—is compromised when everyone in our community is encouraged to survey and report on conversations occurring in the course of instruction. Indeed, we all—Senate faculty, lecturers, graduate student instructors, TAs, and students—work tremendously hard and conscientiously to create learning environments in which everyone can speak freely to discuss a wealth of subjects and to address a range of different perspectives. This is an increasingly challenging task in a social/cultural/political moment when discourse is highly fractured and fractious, and a mechanism for reporting “class and section disruption,” especially one haunted by the specter of McCarthyism, only exacerbates this trend of fractious and fractured rhetoric. Within such an environment, genuine dialogue and the free exchange of knowledge are nearly impossible. This inhibits academic freedom and ultimately undermines the core mission and values of the University of California and UCSC.

In addition to our fundamental opposition to these practices of surveillance and reporting, the Google form for reporting class and section disruptions raises a number of red flags in terms of academic freedom. Our reading of both APM 010 and the AAUP 1940 statement on academic freedom is that we have a basic right to teach our subjects as we see fit, which we understand to include changing the day’s activities to respond to immediate learning opportunities provided by current events or news of previously unknown research innovations. Moreover, even when AAUP notes the limits to such a right (i.e., that instructors should “be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject”), it nonetheless acknowledges that such a limit is primarily intended to “underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to their subject.” Such rights and protections not only safeguard the ability to change the material and/or the sequence of activities in our courses in order to respond to emergent circumstances but they also allow for the introduction of new material not specified on the syllabus if related to the overall course, so long as we are able to articulate those connections.

Like you, we are concerned about the quality of our students’ education, and we want to hear from them about their educational experiences. That said, we believe that students already have processes for sharing their experiences, both positive and negative, including grievance procedures and student evaluations of teaching. In addition, we are certain that students make regular use of publicly available email addresses for campus administrators in order to register their concerns and complaints.

Given the gravity of our concerns about the free exchange of knowledge, we hope that you will disable the link to the Google form and refuse to use any data collected through that mechanism as the grounds for disciplinary measures against faculty and students.

Sincerely,
1. Kimberly Lau, Professor, Literature
2. Jessica Taft, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
3. H. Marshall Leicester, Professor, Literature
4. Christine Hong, Associate Professor, Literature and CRES
5. Irene Lusztig, Professor, Film + Digital Media
6. Megan Thomas, Associate Professor, Politics
7. Muriam Haleh Davis, Assistant Professor, History
8. Josh Brahinsky, Lecturer, College 10
9. Hunter Bivens, Associate Professor, Literature
10. Rick Prelinger, Professor, Film + Digital Media
11. Dorian Bell, Associate Professor, Literature
12. Gail Hershatter, Distinguished Professor, History
13. Thomas Serres, Lecturer, Politics
14. B. Ruby Rich, Professor, Film + Digital Media
15. Peter Limbrick, Professor, Film and Digital Media
16. Neda Atanasoski, Professor, Feminist Studies and CRES
17. Grace Pena Delgado, Associate Professor, History
18. Matthew Lasar, Lecturer, History
19. Catherine Jones, Associate Professor, History
20. Christine King, Lecturer, Kresge & Porter Colleges
21. Leslie Lopez, Continuing Lecturer, Community Studies and Oakes College
22. Boreth Ly, Associate Professor, HAVC
23. Christie McCullen, Lecturer, Sociology & Oakes College
24. Hillary Angelo, Assistant Professor, Sociology
25. Edmund Burke III, Research Professor of History Emeritus
26. Deborah Gould, Associate Professor, Sociology
27. David H Anthony, Associate Professor, History
28. David Brundage, Professor, History
29. Edward Kehler, Lecturer, History & Stevenson College
30. Regina Day Langhout, Professor, Psychology
31. Vanita Seth, Associate Professor, Politics
32. Ben Leeds Carson, Associate Professor of Music and Kresge College Provost
33. Alma Heckman, Assistant Professor, History
34. Jody Greene, Professor of Literature and Associate Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning
35. Chris Chen, Assistant Professor, Literature
36. Fernando Leiva, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
37. Daniel L. Selden, Professor of Literature
38. Megan McDrew, Lecturer, Sociology
39. Amanda M. Smith, Assistant Professor, Literature
40. Sylvanna M. Falcón, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
41. Eric Porter, Professor, History of Consciousness, History, and CRES
42. T. J. Demos, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture
43. Nicolas Davidenko, Associate Professor, Psychology
44. Shelly Grabe, Professor, Psychology
45. Zac Zimmer, Assistant Professor, Literature
46. Irene Gustafson, Associate Professor, Film and Digital Media
47. Jason Samaha, assistant professor, psychology.
48. Martin Devecka, Assistant Professor, Literature
49. Heather Bullock, Professor, Psychology
50. Margarita Azmitia, Professor, Psychology
51. Jeff Erbig, Assistant Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
52. Jackie Gehring, Associate Teaching Professor, Politics and Legal Studies
53. Kyle Parry, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture
54. Marcia Ochoa, Associate Professor, Feminist Studies and Interim Provost of Oakes College
55. Carla Freccero, Distinguished Professor, Literature & History of Consciousness
56. Amy Mihyang Ginther, Assistant Professor, Theater Arts
57. A.M. Darke, Assistant Professor, Digital Arts and New Media, Games and Playable Media
58. Anjuli Verma, Assistant Professor, Politics Department & Legal Studies Program
59. Dard Neuman, Associate Professor, Music
60. Maureen Callanan, Professor, Psychology
61. Karlton Hester, Professor, Music
62. A.Laurie Palmer, Professor, Art
63. Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Feminist Studies and CRES
64. Julie Guthman, Professor of Social Sciences and Community Studies Program
65. Rob Wilson, Professor, Literature
66. Cynthia Lewis, Professor, Education
67. Madhavi Murty, Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies
68. Juned Shaikh, Assistant Professor, History
69. Carolyn Dean, Professor, History of Art & Visual Culture
70. Warren Sack, Professor, Film & Digital Media
71. Amy Lonetree, Associate Professor, History
72. Amy Beal, Professor, Music
73. Dee Hibbert-Jones, Professor, Art
74. Ron Glass, Professor, Education
75. Phillip Hammack, Professor and Chair, Psychology
76. Noriko Aso, Associate Professor, History
77. Christina Ravelo, Professor and Chair, Ocean Sciences
78. Larry Polansky, Emeritus Professor, Music
79. Russell C. Rodríguez, Assistant Professor, Music
80. Kent Eaton, Professor and Chair, Politics
81. Sara Niedzwiecki, Assistant Professor, Politics
82. Vilashini Cooppan, Professor, Literature
83. Lindsey Dillon, Assistant Professor, Sociology
84. Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness
85. Elizabeth Stephens, Professor of Art lee valley
86. Marcelo D. Viana Neto, Visiting Assistant Professor, Art & Design: Games and Playable Media
87. Elisabeth Cameron, Professor, HAVC
88. Anjali Arondekar, Associate Professor, Feminist Studies
89. Saskias Casanova, Assistant Professor, Psychology
90. Kim Cardilla, Lecturer, Psychology
91. Susan Strome, Distinguished Professor & Chair of MCD Biology
92. Mark Anderson, Associate Professor, Anthropology
93. Elliot Anderson, Associate Professor, Art
94. Martha Zúñiga, Professor, MCD Biology
95. Miriam Greenberg, Professor, Sociology
96. Massimiliano Tomba, History of Consciousness
97. Nathaniel Deutsch, Professor, History
98. Andrew Mathews, Anthropology
99. Jerry Zee, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
100. Lars Fehren-Schmitz, Associate Professor of Anthropology
101. Mayanthi Fernando, Associate Professor of Anthropology
102. Jon Daehnke, Associate Professor, Anthropology
103. Matt O’Hara, Professor, History
104. Jeremy Lee, Teaching Professor, MCD Biology
105. Lindsay Hinck, Professor, MCD Biology
106. Peter Weiss, Continuing Lecturer, Chemistry and Biochemistry
107. James Clifford, Professor Emeritus, History of Consciousness
108. Alan Kawamoto, Professor, Psychology
109. Don Brenneis, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
110. Mathis Hain, Assistant Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
111. Nirvikar Singh, Distinguished Professor of Economics
112. Nidhi Mahajan, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
113. Anna Friz, Assistant Professor, Film & Digital Media
114. Nina Treadwell, Professor, Music
115. Catherine Ramírez, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
116. Flora Lu, Professor of Environmental Studies
117. Barbara Rogoff, UCSC Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology
118. Campbell Leaper, Professor, Psychology
119. Chris Benner, Professor, Environmental Studies and Sociology, Dorothy E. Everett Chair of Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship.
120. Tanya Merchant, Associate Professor, Music
121. Julie Bettie, Associate Professor, Sociology
122. Eva Bertram, Associate Professor, Politics
123. Robert Majzler, Lecturer, Psychology and College 10
124. Abel Rodriguez, Professor, Statistics
125. Kevin MacClaren, Lecturer, Stevenson College
126. Lindsey Kuper, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
127. Owen Arden, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
128. micha cárdenas, Assistant Professor, Art and Design: Games and Playable Media, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
129. Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Professor, Computational Media
130. Benjamin Storm, Associate Professor, Psychology
131. Noel Smyth, Lecturer, History
132. Karen Bassi, Professor, Literature and Classics
133. Alice Yang, Associate Professor, History & CRES and Stevenson Provost
134. Eileen Zurbriggen, Professor, Psychology
135. Manuel Ares, Jr. Distinguished Research Professor, MCD Biology
136. Joshua Arribere, Assistant Professor, MCD Biology
137. Sheeva Sabati, Lecturer, Feminist Studies, Oakes, Colleges 9/10
138. Micah Perks, Professor, Literature
139. Cynthia Polecritti, Associate Professor, History
140. Upasna Sharma, Assistant Professor, MCD Biology
141. Hiroshi Fukurai, Professor, Sociology and Legal Studies
142. Brij Lunine, Lecturer, Writing
143. Gerald Casel, Associate Professor, Theater Arts
144. Dean Mathiowetz, Associate Professor, Politics
145. Melissa Gwyn, Associate Professor, Art
146. Christopher Connery, Professor, Literature
147. Rebecca Covarrubias, Associate Professor, Psychology
148. Peter Alvaro, Computer Science and Engineering
149. Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, Distinguished Research Professor, Anthropology
150. Elizabeth Beaumont, Associate Professor of Politics and Legal Studies
151. Mark Baker, Continuing Lecturer, Writing Program and Oakes College
152. Bryan Holbrook, Lecturer, Psychology
153. Janette Dinishak, Associate Professor, Philosophy
154. Lisa Rofel, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor, Anthropology
155. Seshadhri Comandur, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
156. Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Professor and Graduate Director, Literature
157. Dion Farquhar, Continuing Lecturer, Crown College
158. Camilla Hawthorne, Assistant Professor, Sociology
159. Banu Bargu, Associate Professor, History of Consciousness
160. Caren Camblin, Continuing Lecturer, Stevenson College & College Ten
161. Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Professor of Politics
162. Susan Gillman, Distinguished Professor of Literature
163. Kiva Silver, Continuing Lecturer, Stevenson, Writing & History
164. Ellen Newberry, Continuing Lecturer, Writing Program
165. Sandy Archimedes, Continuing Lecturer, Writing Program
166. Luca de Alfaro, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
167. Zeb Rifaqat, lecturer, Stevenson College
168. Erica Halk, Continuing Lecturer, Writing Program
169. Patty Gallagher, Professor, Theater Arts
170. Phokion G. Kolaitis, Distinguished Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
171. Martine Schlag, Professor and Chair, Computer Science and Engineering
172. Megan Moodie, Associate Professor, Anthropology
173. Gabriela Arredondo, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
174. Judith Scott, Professor, Education
175. James Davis, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
176. Katia Obraczka, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
177. Maywa Montenegro, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies
178. Constance Rockosi, Professor and Co-Chair, Astronomy and Astrophysics
179. Sarah-Hope Parmeter, Lecturer in Writing
180. Robin King, Continuing Lecturer, Writing Program and Oakes College
181. Jeremy Gauger, Lecturer, Kresge College
182. Alan Christy, Associate Professor, History and Provost of Cowell College
183. Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Professor, Astronomy and Astrophysics
184. Nico Orlandi, Associate Professor, Philosophy
185. Raja GuhaThakurta, Professor and Co-Chair, Astronomy and Astrophysics
186. Ruth Murray-Clay, Associate Professor, Astronomy and Astrophysics
187. Megan McNamara, Lecturer, Sociology
188. Nameera Akhtar, Professor, Psychology
189. Maria Elena Diaz, Assoc Prof. History Dept.
190. George Bunch, Professor, Education
191. Robbie Kubala, Assistant Professor, Philosophy
192. Enrique Martinez Leal, Assistant Professor, Art Department
193. Patricia Pinho, Associate Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
194. Maya Peterson, Associate Professor, History
195. Jenny Reardon, Professor, Sociology
196. Nicol Hammond, Assistant Professor, Music
197. Emily Honig
198. Noah Finnegan, Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
199. Claudie Beaulieu, Assistant Professor, Ocean Sciences
200. Andy Skemer, Associate Professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics
201. Melanie Springer, Associate Professor, Politics
202. Judith Aissen, Professor Emerita, Linguistics
203. Mark Nash, Professor, Arts
204. Isaac Julien, Distinguished Professor, Arts
205. Jennifer Derr, Associate Professor of History
206. Juan Poblete, Professor, Literature
207. Greg O’Malley, Associate Professor, History
208. Robert Boltje, Professor of Mathematics
209. Jeremy Hourigan, Associate Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
210. Camilo Gómez-Rivas, associate professor, Literature
211. Alex Pang, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
212. Faisal Nawab, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
213. Catherine Carlstroem, Lecturer in Humanities
214. Ronaldo V. Wilson, Professor, Literature and Creative Writing, and CRES
215. Hinrich Boeger, Professor of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology
216. Heiner Litz, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering








Below is a copy of the form referred to above:
Notification of class and section disruption
Students who wish to notify the campus about a class or section disruption are able to do so with this form. The form can be used multiple times.


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What class would you like to provide information about (e.g., MATH 1)?


Did this disruption concern....
o   Primary Lecture or Seminar
o   Required Section, Laboratory, or Studio
o   Optional Section, Laboratory, or Studio
o   Office Hours


What type of disruption occurred?
o   Cancelled
o   Moved to an alternative location or delivery method
o   Held, but the topic was not as described in the syllabus
o   Examination or major assignment cancelled
o   Grades withheld
o   Other:


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What was the scheduled meeting time?


Who was the teaching assistant or instructor?


Please provide any additional comments, including letting us know if you need additional support so that we can connect you with resources.

This week's Regents meeting's Agenda is chock full of important items.  In particular, UCOP is presenting the 2016-2017 budget proposal along with a three-year "sustainability" plan, a proposal to improve the finances of UCRP through internal borrowing, and a proposal to centralize the management of the Health Care system. Unfortunately, the lessons from this week's Regents' agenda is that despite UCOP's efforts to tout its agreement with Governor Brown, last year's tuition gambit has done little to change the fundamentally underfunded situation of the University.  Nor is there any indication that either the Regents or UCOP are prepared to break from long-standing patterns of strategy in order to begin to ensure a UC focused on its educational mission and on increasing the quality of its offerings.

THE PLAN ITSELF

UCOP's proposed budget is a work up of the deal that President Napolitano and Governor Brown negotiated by sidelining both the Legislature and the Academic Senate.   Chris and I have already commented on the deal itself so let me simply point to some of the more important elements.  The proposed Budget for 2016-2017 assumes another 4% increase in base funding, $96 million in one-time funding in exchange for changes in UC's retirement system, $25 million for enrolling an additional 5000 California residents, $25 million for deferred maintenance, and an additional $68.7 million in new Non-Resident Tuition (NRT) revenue.  It continues to make the annual promises about the fantastic savings that UCOP is gaining through various technological and management initiatives. In all, UCOP reports a total 2015-16 revenue of $28.3 billion of which core funds constitute $7.3 billion.  In 2016-2017 they are budgeting for an increased core revenue of $481.3 million.

Along with the proposed budget UCOP is submitting what it calls a three year "Financial Stability Plan."  The plan restates the Brown-Napolitano deal that calls for continued 4% annual base budget increases through 2018-2019 and fulfillment of the Governor's promise of $436 million over 3 years (although the Legislature has only promised the first $96 million) in exchange for reducing retirement benefits substantially for future employees.  It includes the proposed $25 million that the Legislature has offered for an additional 5,000 California resident students in 2016-17, and offers to enroll an additional 2500 more in 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 (hopefully in exchange for additional funding). It increases the NRT by 8%, the student services fee 5% annually, and proposes tuition increases tied to inflation beginning in 2017-2018.

A first point, which Chris has made many times, is that the 4% increases, while better than the extreme cuts of the late Schwarzenegger and early Brown administrations, are too small to overcome the longer-term under-funding of the University that goes back 15 years.  To make matters worse, both the Budget and the Financial Stability Plan each bake in increasing burdens on campuses and their students, faculty, and staff.  The $25 million promised for the upcoming year's 5000 additional resident students is approximately half of what both UC and the LAO agree is the marginal cost of an additional student (8). The new underfunded students will force campuses to shift funds from other efforts to pay for these costs (costs that will draw on core funds).

In order to help pay for these students, UC campuses will continue to increase the number of non-resident students, although they say at a slower pace (due to political pressures), so that there will be an additional 1200 non-resident students next year and the latter will be paying an 8% tuition increase.  UCOP apparently believes that the State will continue to pay $25 million each year to help support the initial 5000.  This seems a reasonable assumption in the short term, though it is a long-term problem if it is not included in an expanded base allocation.   If the additional 5000 are also inadequately funded, UC will have added 10,000 resident students over 3 years without providing campuses with the resources needed to properly educate and support these students.

UCOP insists that they are determined to lower the faculty-student ratio throughout the system.  But does anyone really foresee an increase in faculty numbers that could do that even as student numbers jump--6200 new students in 2016-2017 plus at least an additional 2500 additional residents in each of the following two years?  For those campuses with significant NRT, at least some of those funds will need to go to supporting the new enrollments.  For the other half of the UC system without significant NRT,  those enrollments likely will eat up a chunk of the monies they will receive from rebenching and the additional 4% in base state funding.  This plan may be sustainable in the sense that the campuses and students will still be here at its conclusion.  But it doesn't suggest that UCOP's stated commitments to increasing quality and improving campus facilities can be met.

The Budget and Sustainability plan together lock in continued under-funding, increased burdens on campuses, faculty, and students, and further erosion of shared governance at UC.  At its best it is predicated on a set of promises from Governor Brown.  I needn't remind people how well previous compacts with Governor's have held up over time.

THE FUTURE FOR THE FACULTY

A second aspect of the Budget, one of special importance to both faculty and staff, is the proposed reorganization of the retirement system.  In her negotiations with the Governor, President Napolitano agreed to create a new tier for those hired on or after July 1, 2016.  These employees would have a pensionable salary limit (i.e. the amount of annual salary that can be considered in calculating the size of a person's pension) based on the state's PEPRA limits rather than the previous, and much higher social security cap.  In return, the Legislature agreed to release $96 million once these changes have been made, and the Governor has promised additional funds up to the $436 million I mentioned above.  The Legislature has made no commitment to the last two years of the Governor's promise. (For good accounting of these developments there are various posts on this site and by Dan Mitchell on the UCLA Faculty Association Blog).

I have no doubt that there was, and is, political pressure on this from Sacramento.  But to get some sense of the extent of UCOP's concessions on this score it might be helpful to turn to another item on the Regents Agenda--a proposal to borrow money over the next three years from the University's Short Term Investment Pool (STIP) to help pay down the legally defined unfunded liability of UCRP. (As Bob Samuels pointed out long ago, this legal liability is based on the requirement that UCRP has enough money on hand to pay out pensions if everyone retired immediately).  This short term funding is something that the Senate has been pushing for several years, though campuses, perhaps especially those with medical centers, have been resistant.

In very basic terms, the proposal will allow the University to borrow from its own funds to help pay into UCRP, thereby helping to keep the University's annual contribution to UCRP at a steady state and to shorten the time until the unfunded liability has been paid.  Strikingly, UCOP is proposing to borrow $1,463,400,000--or put another way nearly three times the amount of money that the Governor is promising in exchange for a dramatic reduction in the worth of UC benefits.  As UCOP continues to emphasize, perhaps in the hopes of muting opposition, this new plan will not affect anyone employed before July 1, 2016.  But it will affect new generations of UC employees and lead to a significant reduction in overall compensation.  Although theoretically some of this loss could be made up in salary and other forms of compensation,  those forms of compensation do not have the same tax benefits as do pensions. More importantly, they increase retirement risk.  Nor is it clear why anyone should think that state funding for salaries will increase in the future at a rate that will cover the lost compensation value for future employees.

There is presently a Task Force charged with determining what the new pension tier will look like and with coming up with strategies to minimize the reduction in benefits to future employees (since it is unlikely that they can be eliminated).  The Task Force is expected to present its conclusions to President Napolitano next month and there will be a limited period for comment early next year.  But as Dan Mitchell has repeatedly pointed out (e.g., here, here, and here), the proposal for STIP funding includes a statement that "New employees will have the opportunity to choose a fully defined contribution plan as a retirement option, as an alternative to the PEPRA-capped defined benefit plan." (3)  This statement is included despite the fact that even the University's own FAQ on the question insist that no decision has been made as to whether to have a purely defined Defined Contribution Plan (h/t Michael Buroway).

So we have a cut in retirement benefits negotiated outside of the regular shared governance plan, a special Task Force, set up by the President to determine the shape of those cuts, official information on the Task Force site saying that no decision has been made about a defined contribution plan, and an item on the Regents Agenda suggesting that that decision has been made even though the Task Force has not finished its discussions.  This situation exists despite the fact that several years ago, after extensive study, the University recognized that a Defined Contribution Plan was less able to serve either the needs of individuals or the needs of the institution as a whole.  Nor does the amended language of the Budget Bill (section 85) require the University to start a Defined Contribution Plan. This decision by UCOP to overturn the carefully established retirement consensus builds upon other indications that UCOP is perfectly happy to sideline shared governance when it is convenient for them.

THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

There is one other item, or rather the absence of one other item, in the Budget proposal that is significant.  In its Budget Summary (pg. 29) UCOP notes a series of accountability measures required by the State. Interestingly, I could find no mention in the documents (please let me know if I missed it) of another set of legal obligations that are important for the budget.  Those are from section 84 that requires the University to provide much more detailed transparency about its administrative structure--especially concerning the Managers and Senior Professionals Group (MSP) and to rethink its proclaimed market comparisons for the Senior Management Group.  I mention this not because I want to demonize the people in either group but because it is difficult to see how a truly sustainable future can be created for the University that does not seriously rethink its administrative structure, starting with a better understanding of the relation between administration and the educational core.

If UC truly wishes to create a sustainable future for itself, it will need to create a more decentralized administrative structure, one more attuned to the actual teaching, learning, and research that goes on in the everyday life of the institution.   That sort of transformation might have resulted from the UCOF process a few years ago--but it didn't.  It is clear that it will not emerge from UCOP.  But it is needed more than ever.

As Dan Mitchell has been reminding us, UCOP has appointed a Task Force to implement the Regents agreement to reduce pension benefits for future employees.  As a result of the Committee of Two, UCOP has agreed to lower the amount of employee salary that can be counted towards UCRP to approximately $117,000.  They are proposing that some form of hybrid defined benefit/defined contribution plan be created to allow employees to save above that $117,000 limit.  UCOP is also proposing that an all-defined contribution (DC) plan be developed that would allow future employees to opt out from the defined benefit plan entirely.

UCOP insists that the "New retirement benefits options are being developed as a result of the budget agreement between UC and state leaders, which included nearly $500 million to help pay down UC’s unfunded pension liability." But there are several issues that need to be raised about this claim.

1.  UCOP refers to the nearly $500M that the University will receive from the state in exchange for pension modification.  But the University will have received only $96M upon the creation of the new pension tiers. I understand that the actual state budget promises only this one year of funding. Although President Napolitano and Governor Brown may have agreed on the larger number, there is no sign that the Legislature or its leadership have agreed.  What future budgets will look like is always unclear. UCOP, in effect, is proposing a serious reduction in pensions for future employees in exchange for less than a third of the money they now estimate they will have to spend to complete UCPATH.  Will their predictions for future state pension contributions be more accurate than their predictions on UCPATH?

2.  There is no evidence that either the Governor or the Legislature asked that UC create an option for a stand-alone DC plan. Sacramento's concern had to do with the limits on the salary on which benefits could be accrued, which is consistent with its hostility to high levels of UC executive compensation.   The notion that there needs to be a stand-alone DC plan appears to have emerged from UCOP or from some other source within UC.  President Napolitano's justification for this proposal seems to be that it is what has happened in the private sector so it should happen at UC.  But we should recognize that the shift in the private sector occurred not because of widely accepted actuarial proof that DC plans are better for employees but because they enabled businesses to shift the cost of retirement onto retirees. There was nothing natural or inevitable about it. It was not driven by a desire to stabilize or improve retirement security for employees.   

In addition, you'll recall that the University engaged in a serious debate about this question only a few years ago and decided to retain its long-term commitment to a DB plan.  Rather than appointing a task force to determine the best way to implement this new plan UCOP should engage in an open discussion about whether or not this is actually better for employees. There has not been, to my knowledge, any reason to think that the relative benefits of DB vs DC plans has changed in the last few years.  If anything, the weight of the argument suggests that DC plans are worse for employees and may in fact be worse for employers.  DC plans raise the fees on accounts, force employees to assume greater risk, and tie individual retirement fate even more closely to the stock market.  From the vantage point of employers, DC plans increase fees and reduce incentives for employees to stay. There is also--despite assurances to the contrary from UCOP--the danger of ultimately undermining the the DB plan by leaving it an "orphan" plan--moving funds needed to sustain it over the long term into other more volatile directions.

3.  Nearly two years ago, Colleen Lye and James Vernon documented the decline in the quality of UC faculty salaries and benefits.   The 2014 Mercer Remuneration Study confirmed these findings (see slides 33-34 for a summary).  UCOP's acceptance of the state's pension limits and even more so its eagerness to move away from a commitment to a DB plan simply accelerate this decline.  Although I think that there are reasons to cap accrual salary in exchange for sufficient state-funding on an ongoing basis, this is not the deal that UCOP has achieved. And the policy drift towards the Defined Contribution plan is an entirely different matter.  UCOP seems to be removing the conditions that promote loyalty to the institution and seeking to encourage faculty to consider UC a way-station rather than a home.  It is the self-destructiveness of existing conventional wisdom at its most short-sighted.

The faculty, and the Senate as part of the faculty, needs to insist that the Task Force be empowered to decide--after wide-ranging discussion and employee consent--whether a DC plan is good for the university and employees.  It should not be limited to deciding how to implement such a plan. 

In other words, the Task Force needs to maximize the interests of future employees and not simply implement the practices of the private sector.

UPDATE:  Dan Mitchell has now written a new post that very helpfully lays out the problems with "orphan" pension plans.

The Democratic candidates public college plans are more interesting than most coverage has implied (brief comparisons are here). They are all variations of "Debt-Free College" proposals, to use candidate Martin O'Malley's term, structured in part as federal bailouts of state universities.  They are grossly underfunded, but they establish new principles and could launch a new political struggle for public eduction reconstruction.

My suspicions thawed as I read through them. It's hard to work in the sector and not be excited that maybe the federal government will save public universities from their states.  It's equally hard not to be excited about real reductions of student costs and student debt, which have led to U.S. attainment declines, the unjustifiable burdening of Millennials, and other assorted evils.  More pressure to fix debt was added by a shocking St. Louis Fed report whose findings were summarized by the NYT coverage as "Racial Wealth Gap Persists Despite Degrees."  The headline should have been, "Racial Wealth Gap Increased by Getting Degrees."  Gaze at this figure for a while (from the original report--as already explained by Shapiro & Oliver twenty years ago):

College not only doesn't end racial stratification--it increases it.

So what are the chances of a fix? Bad for now, but better later.

The Obama Administration has been laying some groundwork: it just announced a revised "pay as you earn" (Repaye) plan, under which "Monthly loan payments for participants in the repayment program will be capped at 10 percent of their discretionary income. Any loan balance remaining after 20 years of payments will be forgiven."  This will lead to big cuts in monthly payments for lower-income graduates--from $333 to $61 in the NYT article's example as well as de facto loan forgiveness.

The big new campaign announcement was the New College Compact, Hillary Clinton's battleship of a college plan that is trying to swamp Bernie Sanders' College for All sailboat with sheer tonnage of items addressed.

Mrs. Clinton's plan involves mostly breaks in interest payments on student loans (one-third of her total).  Another chunk would go to an "innovation fund" for developing some non-college learning infrastructure and better information and enforcement of existing loan regulations (it's a hodge podge).  Half of her new funds would go to grants to state colleges to offset tuition reductions, coupled with unspecified new quid pro quos about tuition and cost reduction.  Her total is $350 billion over 10 years.

Bernie Sanders's plan is not so different, except it focuses less on cracking down on bad actors in the sector and has an annual total of $70 billion, or twice Mrs. Clinton's.  There aren't yet a lot of details to sweat, though clearly Mr. Sanders's figure is much closer to the price tag that would make free public college a reality.  Mr. O'Malley lacks details but has the most heartfelt rhetoric.

There are a few general issues worth mentioning.

First, the political center on public colleges has moved.  It has moved left, away from letting "market forces" continue to pile up student costs and student debt.  Free community college has been endorsed by the US President.  Free 4 year college is now on its heels.  In almost no time, politicians like Mr. O'Malley have started to write, "today, our kids aren't getting the same bargain that my dad did" as the new common sense.  Bob Samuels has pointed out that a couple of years ago his book Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free made him a "lone, crazy voice in the wilderness."  Now "free" is a respectable part of the mainstream debate.

Second, we're witnessing not just a changing political balance but a paradigm shift. The Democratic college plans try to (1) lower debt payments by (2) reducing public college tuition so that less debt is incurred in the first place. They propose to do this by (3) giving federal money directly to state colleges to offset lost tuition income and (4) forcing state legislatures to stop cutting higher ed and even rebuild its funding. Jordan Weismann has a helpful summary of the new Democratic consensus.

This combination of elements is a very big deal. It would roll back our de facto federal voucher program for college students in which non-research federal money goes to students who turn it over to the school of their choice in the form of tuition.  Many or most states will fight this as they fought Obamacare, and for the same reason--expanding a public service they don't like with new federal money that requires a cost share from them.   There will be blood. But we have hit a milestone that might remind some people of the road to Medicare, which established the public-good principle for full health care coverage in retirement, which then made accomplishment the responsibility of public funding.

The third issue is that tuition increases for resident B.A. students are going to stay off the political table.  Of course in the short or even medium run, politicians won't actually replace tuition revenues with public funding increases. This is bad news for public U operating budgets, and this is no doubt why short-termers at public universities are preemptively denouncing free tuition. It's good news to people like me who want to see the case for the public funding become politically cheaper by making the case for constant tuition increases politically more expensive.  The intellectual and ethical arguments for the public side are there, and now their political price is coming down.

Fourth, the senior managers who try to drift near the political center are going to miss it, since it has moved.  That is what has been happening in California, where Janet Napolitano thought tuition increases had a few more years of political life than they actually did.  Time's almost up for non-resident tuition increases--there's maybe a year or two more before a major backlash against selling UC flagship seats to non-residents while redirecting residents to the campuses they didn't want.  The new center is under active construction and it would be good for the heads of systems to be part of this, which they won't be if they spend their time fighting it.

Fifth, the Democrat's means won't achieve their alleged ends.  The candidates still propose no-new-taxes positions.  They want to pay for the biggest change in university policy in a couple of generations with marginal revenues: the reduction of rich folks' income tax deductions (Mrs. Clinton); a Tobin tax on financial transactions (Mr. Sanders). Both are good ideas for general policy reasons.  Neither offers either sufficient money to buy off the states or the deeper principle that would build public support.

That deeper principle is the public-good value of having a very large number of unindebted people with bachelors degrees.  A related principle is that the most efficient way to pay for a public good is with general taxes. You want to increase a public good's consumption (e.g., vaccinations), not ration it with a market price system or carve the revenues up with banks and other providers in an orgy of profit-taking.  Everyone can understand this public-good argument if US politicians actually make the argument.  The Democrats lost their momentum 40 years ago when they stopped making it, and they won't recover politically until they do--and they may end up giving it to a resurgent third party instead.

So what does this encouraging shift in national politics have to do with Phyllis Wise, the recently resigned-fired-not fired-resigned chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?  She emblemized old-school corporate management that will keep a federal fix away.

There has been plenty of coverage of the most recently turmoil in what has been a bad year for UI brass, culminating in Dr. Wise's resignation that became a firing that became a resignation again.  Corey Robin offers the definitive incredulous untangling of last week's events, in which Phyllis Wise resigned, had her resignation rejected by the Board so they could fire her, which led her to threaten them with further disclosure in an email that was followed by a second resignation letter, which this time was accepted. A sample of Prof. Robin's breakdown:

1. Salaita is hired but then is told, no, you’re not really hired, so that he can be fired. Wise is forced to resign, but then is told, no, you’re not really resigned, so that she can be fired. 

2. Wise complains that not only is she the victim of a university administration that puts politics above principles and reneges on its contracts with its employees—all true, by the way—but that such actions are also “unprecedented."

3. Suddenly, the UI Board of Trustees is concerned about contracts with its employees. . ..

Suffice to say that no chicken has ever come so accurately home to roost.

But the deeper problem is the overall practice of management revealed by the initial firing of Steven Salaita and the subsequent lawsuit, discovery, email publication, and initial court decision affirming most of the Salaita counts. When the Board found out about Steven Salaita's angry tweets about Israel's Gaza attack last summer, they became completely obsessed with one of the 120 people who were being appointed as professors in the UI system--an associate professor from Virginia Tech that had been hired into a program I doubt any of them had ever heard of before.  So there was the lack of an ability to maintain perspective, to set priorities, to decide what is important to the long-term health of the University and what is a side show.

Here we have a fiduciary body that is prone to impulsive politicization. Next, there's the will to intervention from above. The Board of Trustees translated a passionate conviction held by a small, powerful group into an overturning of an elaborately collaborative campus decision, in this case the hiring protocol that had been completed with an offer tended to Prof. Salaita and his acceptance of it.  In its move to dismiss his lawsuit, the University claimed that they had never entered into a valid contract with Prof. Salaita, so no abusive intervention was made. In his thorough rejection of this claim, Judge Leinenweber describes various kinds of language that could have made clear the contract was contingent on the board, none of which was used, and then notes that appointment power had been delegated to deans.  "If the deans had no authority to make any binding offers, the University would have been confused as to why 120 professors showed up to work when no one with actual authority had offered them a job" (19).

Similar judgments had been offered by a wide range of UIUC and other faculty a year ago, when the Board still had a chance to calm down and let the hire proceed. They ignored all of these.  This second problem is the Board digging into an oppositional relation toward its own university community and internal processes, and the third is the routine insistence that "no mistakes were made."

There's a further set of bad management practices revealed in Chancellor Wise's emails about Prof. Salaita.  There's the compulsive secrecy about the content and basis of deliberations and decisions, which are then routinely whitewashed in press releases.  This has become so common that we hardly notice it anymore, but it means that the larger community lacks the information that would allow it to come to an informed judgment, which is supposed to be the whole point of universities.  It also sinks executive groups into the epistemological blindness of their closed circle, which becomes inbred under pressure.

In the Salaita case, senior officials had agreed that he had in fact been hired, was joining the UIUC faculty, and should be subjected to an unpleasant tongue-lashing from Chancellor Wise when he arrived.  They sometime between 7:25 am and 1:55 pm on July 24, 2014, they undecided this and shifted to blocking an appointment they now claimed had never been made.  There seems to have been pressure from heavyweight donors that the UIUC administration failed to deflect--another management issue of a lack of independence towards outside interests that are increasingly plutocratic.

The decision must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it meant suppressing the history of the administration's view that he was hired, which they had held as recently as that morning.  It meant running with an unconvincing rationale for unhiring Prof. Salaita that subjected them to widespread scorn and the campus to a national boycott, and all for nothing, since their position has now been thrown out of court.  What had happened, to quote from another context, was that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." The academic world sensed this at the time, but could not prove it, and it was endlessly denied in the administration's public relations campaign that has now been shown to be founded on a lie.  This has had very bad consequences for Steven Salaita, but also for the University of Illinois.  Complex organizations thrive or decline by trust and goodwill, which underwrite their powers of collaboration.

The Wise Affair may seem like an anomaly or a day at the office in the rough and tumble of state politics.  So Dr. Wise was trading Steven Salaita for Board chair Christopher Kennedy's support for her College of Medicine proposal, in John K. Wilson's valuable reading of the email record: what did you expect?

My point is that we have to expect much better.  We have to build better academic governance at the state level or the federal bailout will either never happen, or never work.  To do this, we'll have to face the fact that the CEO model has failed for universities: to invoke Thorstein Veblen's critique of business reason, the CEO must above all make the sale, and making the sale often requires hiding the truth.

You may think public universities have been muddling through pretty well with this marketing approach most of the time.  I'm sorry to say that you would be wrong.  Exhibit A is a quarter-century of declining public funding. Exhibit B is a long list of administrative sins that legislatures trot out to refuse meaningful restorations.  Nothing is more likely to block federal solutions than state government's deep distrust of senior university leaders.

University of Illinois folk have made good reform suggestions (eg. Kirstin Wilcox, Michael Rothberg, Martin F. Manalansan IV and Ellen Moodie), all of which involve something we thought we had-- an open university, freestyle discussion, and bottom-up forms of planning. These moves towards active governance by faculty and staff are as important as the public funding policy changes.  We won't get close even to the funding reforms of Hillary Clinton's unless we can get past the management model of Phyllis Wise.

As you have probably seen, the Governor and the Legislative Leadership have agreed on a final budget bill.  From a funding standpoint, there is little in the new bill regarding UC to change Chris's critical analysis of the Governor's May Revision.  UC is scheduled to receive up to $25M beyond the Governor's original call for a 4 percent general fund increase on condition of a continued tuition freeze.  CSU fared somewhat better.  It will receive approximately $50M over the Governor's May proposal.  It too, though, has a variety of conditions placed on the money.  For UC the key pages of the bill are 105-113 and for CSU 113-117.  I'm going to focus on UC in this post because I am less familiar with the implications for CSU. But I hope that people at CSU will use the comments section to expand the discussion.

There are several key points to make about the total budget package.

First, it includes a one-time payment of $96 million for the UC pension.  But this money is dependent on a dramatic reduction in the benefits of UC's defined benefit pension plan (as was clear from the Regents agreement with the Governor).  After a new system is put into place, the maximum salary that can be counted in a pension calculation for new hires will be approximately $117,000.  The Regents have proposed a supplemental Defined Contribution Plan and have also floated the possibility of allowing new hires to go entirely into a DCP.  If the latter should happen it is possible that the DBP will become unsustainable in any form.

Second, the Legislature was able to get the Governor to agree to an additional $25M above his May proposals.  But this money is contingent on the University enrolling an additional 5000 resident students by the 2016-2017 academic year (107).  There are a couple of things to be said about this situation.  First, as Dan Mitchell pointed out, UC is unlikely to increase numbers in a dramatic fashion for the upcoming year.  That means that these increased numbers will hit with great impact in 2016-2017.  Having been at UCLA when it attempted a dramatic increase in numbers I can say that without proper preparation and expanded faculty and student services the effects are quite serious. Secondly, the Legislature is assuming $5000 of the marginal cost of each new resident student.  This figure is even lower than the LAO calculation that, as I pointed out in an earlier post, would lead to the permanent under-funding of the University. In addition, the money will arrive long after the students have both enrolled and had their presence documented by UCOP.

Sacramento is also insisting that this money, itself inadequate for the simple increase without a lot of supplement, also be used to increase and quicken graduation rates.  Now increasing graduation rates is something that we can all support--but Sacramento appears to be concerned with increasing graduation rates no matter the effect on education.  It wants more students to pass through more quickly with inadequate support--a position that ties in nicely with the Governor's vision that costs can be driven down by pushing students into online courses or reducing requirements.  There is, in all of this, a general disregard for academic expertise and an apparent conviction that quantity is the most important variable.

Although less explicit, it seems as if the Legislature and the Governor are willing to make the University more dependent on non-resident students even as they insist on increasing the number of resident students.  Although the Legislature and the Governor have insisted on a continuation of the tuition freeze for resident students through the 2016-2017 academic years (106), President Napolitano has been empowered to increase tuition for non-resident students up to 8% annually.  Both the Governor and the Legislature have apparently agreed to the assumption that non-resident students can be used to underwrite resident students so that the State can continue its long-standing failure to support higher education in the state.

Thirdly, and more positively, the Budget Bill demands greater administrative and spending transparency (108-109).  The bill directs the University to finally clarify the nature and distribution of the Manager and Senior Professional category (long one of the black holes of administrative transparency), to clarify the financial sources it considers applicable to educational activities, and to provide forecasts of costs and resources through 2018-2019. Although this transparency will not accomplish anything in and of itself, it will allow for a more open discussion of priorities than has been possible in the past.  The bill also demands that the University include state employee salaries in any market calculation for the Senior Management Group.  In effect, Sacramento is challenging the University's insistence that its administrators should be paid more than other public executives. Given the University's recent practice of hiring administrators without prior background as educators it is perhaps not surprising that the Governor and Legislature are now wondering why they should be treated differently than other public administrators.

                                                                               *****

At this point in time, it is difficult to see how President Napolitano and the Regents efforts to provoke public support for the University were successful.  Nor is it clear that the continued willingness of the University to act as if the Governor is the only player in town makes any sense.  In the end, the University received approximately 25-30M extra dollars compared to what the Governor had promised in previous budgets.  But this additional money comes with some very crucial strings, including a drastic reduction of pension eligibility, agreements to look into reducing graduation requirements, increased auditing of faculty and staff, increased dependence on NRT, and the possibility of even greater state intrusion into university affairs. It is also true that President Napolitano was able to get the Governor to promise a longer-term funding commitment to the University.  But as we learned from Schwarzenegger's "compact," those promises are easy to make and easy to break.  So, the bottom line seems to be minimal increased funding, seriously increased auditing of academic life, continued pressure to sacrifice educational quality to cost cutting, and a commitment to substantial cutbacks in retirement benefits for future employees.  Not a good budget round.

The big story in Higher Education this year has been the threat of massive budget cuts.  From Wisconsin to Louisiana, from Kansas to Arizona, and from Maine to North Carolina, state governors and legislators have proposed or enacted cuts to public colleges and universities. Although the outcome of this year's budget struggles remain uncertain, it does seem clear that California is not going to impose new cuts. Instead we seem to be battling over the size of small state funding increases.

That contrast between California and other states might appear to be grounds for confidence in the future.  But that would be premature.  Although the state has increased funding over the last several years and is proposing a small increment this year--it is important to recognize not only that these increases do not compensate for the years of cutbacks but that they help to solidify a strategy of permanent austerity budgeting.

One way to see this point is to look at the recent Legislative Analyst's report on "enrollment funding" for UC.  The main point of the report is to call for the Governor and Legislature to reinstate "enrollment funding" (i.e. to tie state funding to specific enrollment targets for the University).  Now I should say that I have no problem with the idea of enrollment funding.  Both the Governor and UC have done away with it (the Governor I suspect because he doesn't want to be obligated to increase funding with enrollment and UCOP because it allows them greater flexibility should they want to restrict enrollment without losing state funds).

If made correctly, there are good arguments for a greater linkage to tie funding to enrollment and to ensure that funding goes to support that enrollment (for instance ensuring that a new permanent faculty FTE is hired for every 19 additional students as is assumed in the financial calculations). (4) But the way that the LAO seeks to organize enrollment funding is less defensible and also revealing.

The logic of enrollment funding ties increase state support to the marginal costs of additional students.  The LAO calculates the marginal cost at $9244 for general campus students (UC's is slightly higher but I am going to use the LAO's). (8)  The LAO recommends setting the present year as the baseline for enrollment--which would also lock in the per student funding as it now exists as a baseline.

They propose that present enrollment be considered the baseline because it would avoid a conflict over whether funding should go for increased enrollment or to answer UC's claim that there are significant numbers of unfunded students.  But here is where the problem lies. Instead of providing a way to address the conflict over whether or not the state is fully funding students, the LAO simply eliminates the question by refusing to engage with it.  And that has serious implications.

The easiest way to do see these implications is to accept the LAO cost logic and then look backwards over the last decade and one half.  To be sure this means that all of what follows are estimates--but I think that the general picture is clear.

In 2001-2002 UC received $3,279,000,000 from the General Fund.  In the fall of 2001 there were 167,914 resident students enrolled on the general campuses.  In the fall of 2013 (the last year that I have good numbers for) there were 196,917 resident students enrolled on the general campuses.  That increase of 29,742  should have led--given the LAO's calculations of marginal costs to a funding increase of approximately $275M from the state (and this is without additional costs for health system students).  Put another way, the 2013-2014 UC General Fund support would have been $3,560,000,000. Instead it was $2,884,456,000.   The Governor's proposed General Fund contribution for 2015-2016 is $3,106,138.

The numbers, although approximate, are clear.  The LAO's proposal on enrollment funding would lock UC into a permanent structure of state austerity.  Although the state does pick up some of these losses through Cal Grants they do not recover all--nor do they even begin to backfill the long-standing under-funding of the University.  Students, staff, and faculty have been forced to assume the costs of this austerity--whether in terms of higher tuition, larger classes, or increased workloads.  By all means have the state engage in enrollment funding. But also have the state fund that enrollment at an adequate level, and allow it to rise as costs and educational needs change.

Rose Aguilar had a segment of her show "Your Call" on KALW that focused on the UC Budget and the need for transparency. UCOP apparently decided was not to send someone to talk on public radio in San Francisco. But luckily Chris participated along with Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee and Kevin Sabo of UCSA.

You can find the episode HERE

The November UC Regents meeting featured a battle of the paradigms between administrative and student accounts of student finances. 

UC Office of the President (UCOP) officials, led by Executive Vice President Nathan Brostrom, sustained their longstanding claim that generous UC financial aid protects all low-income and most middle-income students from tuition costs. The Berkeley campus issued a statement citing the main talking point:

California students from families with annual incomes under $80,000 will continue to have tuition and fees fully covered by financial aid, and the vast majority of California students from families earning less than $150,000 a year will see no increase.

Upping the volume on this message, the immediate past chancellor of UC Berkeley, Robert Birgeneau, claimed that this high financial aid depends on high tuition, so that "frozen tuition means ever-increasing debt for low-income students."

While senior managers focused on tuition, students focused on their total cost of attendance. This is what they have to pay overall while they are in school.  Grants can cover most or all of their tuition, and yet rent, food, transportation, health insurance, etc. run up the overall bill for attending UC.   Regular folks watching the livestream might wonder why the officials were so soothing while the students were so distraught.  The explanation is that the officials and the students were talking about two different things.

(1)

Here’s a figure from a Legislative Analyst’s Office report that visualizes the experience gap in the regents’s boardroom.

For this student, from a family at around the median income, the University, federal and state programs cover all tuition and some expenses.  And in spite of fairly expensive aid, she is left that large blank space in the left-hand bar: nearly $10,000 to pay on her own. (Her total costs are lowballed here--as we'll see, they are closer to $35,000 at the coastal campuses).   

A bit of terminology will help:

"Student Responsibility" in the chart can also be called Self-Help Expectation, or Unmet Need, defined in a basic way as follows: 

Cost of Attendance (COA) minus Expected Family Contribution (EFC) = Financial Need

Financial Need minus Financial Aid Awarded = Unmet Need

The first thing to note is that a university can say to a student, "we cover your full tuition" and still leave her scrambling to fund a gap in her grants, here of between $9000 and $10,000 per year. She will have to fill this gap either with loans or work.

Second, there is an ambiguity in the terminology. You might assume "Financial Aid Award" means grants.  But in fact university financial aid offices "award" loans as well.  They can, in this way, reduce a student's Unmet Need to zero, but only by inducing the student to borrow and/or take on additional work.  They can also include parental borrowing in the closing of Unmet Need.

I will follow what I believe is UC practice is calling the mixture of loans and work the student's Self-Help Expectation.  Unmet Need seems like a more rigorous term to describe financial need that is not covered by grants, but this is apparently not how UC uses the term so I will avoid it. 

Next, where does the financial aid system expect her to get this money?

I've spent quite a bit of time with financial aid analyses, but like most UC faculty have not done concrete aid calculations for particular students.  I got some help from an employee of UCSB's financial aid office, who was nice enough to send me some examples and comments. This person created the examples below without disclosing the campus's financial aid "parameters," which are apparently confidential. All of these examples presume a family of 4 with one student in college and no assets, savings, or non-salary income. It also assumes the student does not have outside scholarships.

(2)

Here is the cost of attendance (COA) for UCSB.

Tuition is about one-third of total costs, which are close to $35,000 a year.  A student can save about $4000 by moving off-campus, putting off-campus COA at $31,000.  I will stick with the on-campus first-year student: how does she cover these costs?

Example 1: Total Family Income = $35,000.
Expected Family Contribution = $0

This is a low-income student.  Her financial aid award letter (assuming on-campus housing) will break down like this:

$12,192    Cal Grant  
$  5,730    Pell Grant
$  7,736    UCSB Grant
$  3,500     Subsidized loan
$  2,000     Unsubsidized loan
$  1,700     Perkins loan
$  2,000    Work study

The student's COA is $34,858. Her EFC is $0, so her Financial Need is also $34,858.  Her grant total is $25,658.  She is left with a Self-Help Expectation of $9200.  She can supply $2000 of that with a work-study job. She needs still to come up with $7200 on top of that. 

This award letter has her borrowing the entire $7200 from three sources. Four years of this borrowing gets her a debt of $28,800. (In practice, annual loan offerings vary and generally increase each year, so $7200+ $6500+ $7500 +$7500 yields $28,700 after four years.)  If she took a second job to avoid taking on half of the loan--by earning $3600 per year--and she worked two eight hour days per week at $10 / hr take-home pay, she would need to work 24 weeks a year while graduating with $14,400 in loans.  

If you look at the charts of both UC Berkeley borrowing and national borrowing in my post "Free Speech and a Free UC," you can see that this is a conservative estimate. The average debt burden for a student in this income range is about $3000 higher than this amount.

Example 2: Total Family Income = $70,000
Expected Family Contribution (EFC) = $7820

$12,192    Cal Grant  
$  5,730    Pell Grant
$  5,646    UCSB Grant
$ 3,500     Subsidized loan
$ 2,000     Unsubsidized loan
$ 1,700     Perkins loan
$  2,000    Work study
$11,520    Parent PLUS Loan

This student is no longer likely to receive a Pell but can still get a Cal Grant (which covers full tuition).  His COA is the same as the first student's, $34,858.  His family is supposed to kick in an EFC of $7820, so his Financial Need is $27,038 per year. His grant total is $17,838.   He has a Self-Help Expectation of $9200. Interestingly, this is the same expectation as low-income Student 1's. Student 2 is not eligible for work study.  His parents are eligible for PLUS loans, however, and together with his $5500 in loan eligibility, this financial aid award letter has the student and his family borrowing to cover both the EFC and his Unmet Need.  

Assuming his loan amounts increase and he accepts the maximum in each case, the total borrowing for Student 2 is $5500 + $6500 + $7500 + $7500.  Four years of that will leave the student with $27,000 in debt for a bachelor's degree.  He could avoid $6800 in loan debt by working the same 16 hour weeks during most of the school year, or avoid all of it with many more hours of summer work. He could also avoid $4000 in expenses each year by living off-campus.  But if he wants to spend work hours on studying, as critiques of reduced student study time like Academically Adrift are asking students to do (my LARB review offers background on this issue), he and his family together will have borrowed $27,000 + $46,080 for a joint total of $73,080 for his bachelor's degree.

Example 3: Total Family Income = $100,000
Expected Family Contribution = $19,760

$12,192    Cal Grant  
$  5,730    Pell Grant
$  5,898    UCSB Grant
$ 3,500     Subsidized loan
$ 2,000     Unsubsidized loan
$ 1,700     Perkins loan
$  2,000    Work study
$23,460   Parent PLUS Loan

This student's family income is more than 150% of median family income in California. She has a kind of "middle class scholarship" in the form of the UCSB grant. It runs slightly higher than that for the student with $70,000 in family income.  But she is eligible neither for the Pell nor the Cal Grant.  Her family EFC is $19,760, so she has a Financial Need of $15,098 per year.  Subtracting her Financial Aid Awarded ($5,898) from her Financial Need yields her a Self-Help Expectation of . . . $9200.  

As with Student 2, she can cover $5500 of that with her two loans, and cover the remaining $3700 with the balance of her parents' PLUS loan ($23,460 minus their EFC of $19,760 is exactly $3700).  Or her parents could take out a smaller loan and she could cover the balance by working a bit more than Student 1's 16 hours a week for 24 weeks a year.  

My source observes,

To make up a third of her need  [without borrowing], a student would need about 20 hours a week or more throughout the school year and that leaves very minimal time for academics and could also be a factor as to why students do not become involved in organizations or research on campus.  That in turn could affect their attendance in grad school or programs like EAP. It then becomes a question of "how much can I do in one day," and what gets left out is when a student has to work it almost always ends up affecting their educational goals. 

Whatever she decides, Student 3 will  graduate with $22,000 in loans after four years. Her parents will owe $93,840 on their PLUS loans, plus interest. 

(3)

This is how the situation appears to me:

The student's Self-Help Expectation is not an accident of an insufficient financial aid budget. It is built into all the calculations.  The parameters appear to be structured to generate this gap of $9200 for all students, including poor students.  While private colleges regularly "gap" at least their least desirable admits, say the bottom quarter, UC appears to gap all of its students. My source wrote, "I don't know the politics of the policies behind it. I just know financial aid offices are always leaving that 'gap' to be covered in loans or work."

Covering a Cost of Attendance that assumes a $9200 Self-Help Expectation requires plenty of work, or debt, or both.   That is true of low income students, as the aggregate data confirms. In other words, a full tuition scholarship is readily compatible with $15,000 in graduation debt. The "middle class scholarship," as implemented by a campus-based grant, produces $22,000 in debt in these calculations. 

Parents are taking on new levels of debt for their children.  A $100,000 family income might suggest resources to support college, and the PLUS loans promise to soak all of that up. Student 3's parents take on close to 100 percent of their annual income in loans for one child's public university B.A. degree.  A special program like UC Berkeley's Middle Class Access Plan (MCAP) would reduce Student 3's parents' debt by reducing the EFC from about 20 percent of annual income in that case to a maximum of 15 percent. That would bring their debt down to $77,840.  It would not affect the debt of the other two students.

Parental debt doesn't seem to be reducing student debt, but to be covering tuition increases for non-poor students. 

The portion of tuition increases not funded by student or parent debt is funded by the state or federal governments. Here's a figure that shows one reason why the state is so angry with UCOP.

Fifteen years of tuition increases has increased Cal Grant outlays to UC by close to a factor of 8.This encourages the state to reduce its general fund outlays for UC operations by the amount that it has to increase Cal Grant outlays. Gov. Brown has in fact already told the regents that Sacramento is putting money into student scholarships instead of making "a direct investment in the university."   (For further reading, see Katy Murphy's good overview of the issue). 

Health insurance costs seem very high for this generally young population. So does on-campus housing, which costs $4000 a year more than housing furnished by famously price-gouging Isla Vista landlords (a different cost estimate for off-campus housing is here). Student costs may be artificially increased if campuses are using on-campus housing as a profit center to generate cross-subsidies for other activities.

In short, in the clash between official reassurances and student anguish about tuition hikes, the students are right.  Covering Cost of Attendance has work, stress, and debt built into it. Putting the point more harshly, the high tuition / high financial aid system functions is a debt engine.  Frozen tuition means "ever-increasing debt," in Prof. Birgeneau's terms.  But so does increased tuition.  The current financial aid system is structured to translate both higher tuition and higher financial "aid" into higher debt.