510 E. Peltason Dr, UC Irvine  

by Trevor Griffey, School of Humanities, UC Irvine

The idea of continuing education— sometimes also called “lifelong learning”— is old and venerable. It taps into some of the best humanist ideals of self-improvement and the democratization of access to skills and knowledge.

But the management of contemporary continuing education programs by many universities has shown the perils of for-profit models for education hosted by supposedly non-profit and even public universities.

UC Board of Regents, March 2017    

That is the question.

This is the answer: Never.  

Or not at least until the campuses fight and change current Office of the President (UCOP) budget ideology and practice. They have never done that.  Not yet.  

I’m going to compare UCOP’s January state budget show with their offstage borrowing.  State funding yields little, while the debt yields a lot.  

I’ll keep my eye on two major implications for the campuses. The first is a lock-in of structural deficits with continuing cuts to the educational core--to both teaching and research.