UCOP's budget request for 2010-11 was good (see the summary).  It goes looking for a big bounce - from down over $800 million this year, to in principle up over $900 million next year. It's a restoration budget, and is an improvement in tactics after years of being limited to 3% increases by UCOP's timid interpretation of the Compact such that it failed to use the mid-decade boom to get out of the hole dug by the previous bust of 2002-05.

We've analyzed the budget on this blog quite a bit: a July 11 headnote provides some background and links, and references a post that estimates the funding crash under a scenario called Extreme Arnold.  That post summarizes six scenarios for the UC budget and offers an overview of what's happened to our state funding.

The chart there was an update of those of the Futures Report (2007) (or see the slides) and the Cuts Report (2008).   Now my Futures Report co-author Henning Bohn, an economics professor at UCSB, has also updated the budget data. It's a draft, he reminds me, but it is nicely convergent with the updates noted above.  Henning also updates the calculation of state personal income, so that "benchmark" line is better.

First, there's the brown line that shows that actual state funding is below the worst case scenario imagined in 2007 - a "public funding freeze" otherwise known as privatization - (the scenarios are summarized here).

The governor and legislature's appropriate for 2009-10 is literally falling off the chart.  The brown dot is UCOP's 2010-11 target.  Note that it is still below the level funding guaranteed by the Compact with the governor - the one he unilaterally abrogated.

Now comes the interesting part.  When people ask why UC got whacked beyond anything seen in higher education in three generations, the answer is always the same: Sacramento has no money.  If you think about money in terms of Sacto's insane budget brokering - which produces fake closures and infinite mystery holes not seen in nature - then there is money for nothing, and the state can do nothing, and we are all being sucked slowly into the budgetary version of Poe's maestrom until we are a state of certified morons - because there is just no money.

Here's where another of Henning's charts comes in handy:

State personal income: that's how much money we actually have. This inspired, illuminating chart compares UC's general fund to the state's actual personal income.  When state funding goes down because state income goes down - because the economy tanks, people lose their houses and jobs - then the ratio between the two stays the same, and the line is flat.  When people get poor, but greedy government services continue to suck their blood, then we have an upsloping line - the university would be taking more of a share of people's money than before.  We see a Benchmark that would indicate where UC's budget would be were its General Fund to have remained the same share of state personal income as it had in 2001.  Then we see three phases:

1.  a 5 -year decline in UC's allocation as a share of state personal income - the money people actually do have to spend on various things - prisons, cars, big screens, hootche-kootche, education.   2001's 0.28%  personal income for the greatest public university in the world was already pretty darn low, and lower than it had been in the past. But it went down and down until 2005-6.
2. 2005-2008 -the Compact allowed 3% annual increases, less than half that of other state agencies (see Cuts).  This kept UC funding exactly flat in relation to state personal income - each went up between 3 and 4% a year, hand in hand.  But there was no recovery to the 2001 norm.
   
3. 2008-10: the 25% GF cut.  UC's budget dropped  not just in absolute terms, but as a share of state personal income.

This means that UC didn't get poor because the state's people got poor.  UC got poor because Sacto  skimmed a piece of UC's traditional share of the state's wealth. Sacto took a slice, and UC got poor.  It got poor because Sacto took out UC's earned money even though UC was as a worthy, stable provider of state services for a deservedly stable share of state income.

Here at UC, we not trying to do anything fancy this year.  We're not talking about improving UC. We're not talking about innovation. So here are two unfancy strategies with Sacto, performed I hope by some not very fancy people.

1. establish a historical baseline share of state personal income.  Henning has already provided this. UCOP should adopt it.  It will go up and down with the state, but not off a cliff as it is now doing with the state standing there giving a push.
2. detail the multi-year financial objectives that this baseline translates into - e.g. what GF we need in 2013, given an expected number of students and rate of inflation. It will be a compact with the students and state alike, will allow future planning. The measure would be flexible in a downturn, giving the taxpayers a break . It would also encourage UC to detail what they are going to do with the money.

It's simple. It's easy.  Do it!!!

To Enable the Young, Poor, and Sick to Contribute to Fixing the Budget

By Jonathan Lemuel

Everyone knows that California is facing a crisis. But the increases in fees for UC, CSU, and Community College students, the recent proposals of the Parsky Commission to shift the tax burden more onto the poor and the middle class, the legislature’s limited changes to California’s criminal justice system, and Governor Schwarzenegger’s half-hearted cuts of health services all reveal a failure of political will and imagination. Now, I do not claim to be anything other than a well-wisher to the Public Good, but I think that the cause of California’s budget problem is obvious: we have too many poor, sick, and young people roaming freely on the streets while expecting to be treated as if they possessed human dignity.

I would therefore propose that all children be sentenced to prison when they turn two years old. Such a proposal would simply speed up California’s normal process; it has become clear for at least two decades that Californians prefer to lock up young people (especially minorities) than to educate them. This proposal would simply make that policy more universal. It would eliminate the need for bureaucrats (judges, bailiffs, attorneys, perhaps even police) thus reducing the size of the State’s workforce. Given that Californians have shown themselves willing to pay more to imprison people than to send them to college it would be politically popular and therefore help unify the state. And finally, it would save the State money that would otherwise be spent building new prisons—California could simply transform schools into prisons and work with those physical plants.

The economic benefits are, therefore, clear. I realize that some might point out that it costs several times as much annually to incarcerate a person than to send them to college and thus question the economic logic of my proposal. I am not sure why this should be a concern since our State leaders have been spending money in this way for decades without complaint. But I think that their objection shows that they are not willing to “blow up the boxes” as the Governor likes to say; my proposal addresses costs nicely. First, if we sentence students to prison at the age of two then we would lessen the need for teachers and severely weaken the power of teachers unions—evil bureaucracies that everyone knows are a major cause of the budget problems and it would enable more authority to flow into the prison guards’ union. Given that the State recently cut educational and vocational programs within the prisons we would save money on useless things like books that teach our children dangerous ideas and stimulate their imaginations. And we would no longer burden hospitals or insurance companies with the distasteful task of treating the poor or uninsured since they would already be under the health system of the Department of Corrections. If we forced inmates to work on public roads and bridges we could even fix some of our infrastructural problems.

But there are moral and political benefits as well. Because while I am suggesting that all children should be sentenced to prison, I am not suggesting that they all should be committed to prison. That would be patently unfair. Instead we should allow those with sufficient money to buy their children’s freedom. If we set that price appropriately we would be able to raise sufficient funds to make the state prisons function for all of the poor, the young and the sick and have money left to protect the houses and property of those not in prisons. Since only those who could afford their children’s freedom would be sending their children to college we could easily raise the rates at UC and CSU—thereby ensuring their good bond ratings. This requirement would hurt no one since clearly only those with sufficient wealth could truly care for their children. I am convinced that this policy makes more sense than the proposal of the recent Parsky Commission to rely on an untested value-added tax to make working people bear more of the state’s tax burden. My proposal is much simpler and easier to enforce.

I have some learned friends who have proposed other possible solutions to the State’s crisis: imposing an oil extraction tax; splitting the rolls on Proposition 13 to allow homeowners to retain their protections while causing commercial property and development to pay a fairer share; some have even proposed that we institute majority rule in California! But none of these proposals make sense to me. First of all, they would all mean that we would no longer allow the Republican Party to control public policy and that seems cruel to such public servants. But, more importantly, these suggestions send the wrong message to the young, suggesting as they do that all citizens are equally worthy of support and assistance. But we know that isn’t true. After all, as Mike Genest, Governor Schwarzenegger’s finance director pointed out “Government doesn’t provide services to rich people,” it is only the others who derive benefit from the public. It is time, and my proposal would do this, that we openly acknowledge what has been implicit in our social and economic policy: the wealthy are better than the rest of us. And we should get out of their way. Otherwise we might convince ourselves that we should be treated as their equals.

legitimacy and the great public absence
by Kris Peterson, UC Irvine

I just finished watching a YouTube video of Regents Bonnie Reiss and Eddie Island make a quick get-a-way to their vehicle at UCLA - just after they voted to increase student fees by an unprecedented 32%. They were surrounded and followed by students chanting, “Shame on you!” Reiss represents the banking and finance industry; and Island, a retiree of McDonnell-Douglas, represents the defense industry.  So, given that these two industries, with their ballooned subsidies and profits, have done nothing more than take this country down over the last several years, I’m thinking a lot about legitimacy. Not legitimacy related to governance. Rather, legitimacy in terms of representation and intent.

Let me go back in time. Between 1952 and 2007, UC had a vibrant relationship with its patron, the weapons industry. Over the years, some found this relationship egregious, as the public was concerned about nuclear proliferation and Cold War military conflicts throughout the world. Culminating in the 1970s, student protests against UC-managed Labs indexed these global events. Yet despite all this, the one thing that the weapons industry, and indeed the US military, had in common with a stellar, highly endowed, multi-campus, public university was the priority of research. Whether it was about NSEP language grants, private sector-federal government partnerships, or DOD and NSF funding that blurred the lines between foreign policy and military interests, a strong interdisciplinary research institution, writ large, was good for this industry.

But now we have a new relationship that constitutes a mix of patronage and competition. It’s been built with the finance industry, commercial real estate – Big Business generally – all of which the Regents represent. And what does the “bottom line” of these industries have in common with the project of education and research? Well, it doesn’t take much to bet up or down on whether the housing market will crash; and it doesn’t take much to figure out how student fees will secure your bond markets as Bob Meister has analyzed. The reasoning of the “bottom line” may be this: what kind of education is really needed once manufacturing and jobs have been exported? What kind of new knowledge for innovation is needed when the wealth of innovative industries has been transferred to the finance sector? What’s the role of public education for an economy that’s radically restructuring?

As we all know, state budget priorities have shifted dramatically over time. For example, Bruce Franklin has pointed out that in 1976, the last tuition-free university (CUNY) became a fee-based institution. From 1976 to 2000 - the moment when free education disappeared, on average, a new prison was constructed in the US every week - thus the extraordinary transfer of funds from education to prison budgets, as well as the extraordinary transfer of especially young Americans of Color from the potential and reality of education to prison (which could certainly increase with skyrocketing fees). Indeed, in the last few statewide cuts, the surveillance institutions sustained relatively few hits compared to the 20%-100% cuts experienced by other public services and institutions.

But I want to make a distinction here between the transfer of wealth between CA budget categories and the outright emptying out of the public sector. Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon privatization should be our guide:  after Reagan inflated the national defense budget, we never really imagined that these massive sums of money could be pushed into private hands under Bush II’s pretext of war, even though by then it was a model the US (and others) provided the Third World. Yet now this model has been adopted by California. So we are no longer explicitly facing the question of entitlement to funds within limited budgets. We are now up against a competition for resources, which can be crudely drawn between the public and private sectors – with the public sector losing out. The recent CA Budget Agreements (peruse the California Budget Project for details) clearly show that while the health, education, and human services sectors are being overwhelmingly dispossessed, corporations are increasingly privileged and raking it in.

So here’s the thing with legitimacy: the Regents as a simultaneous representative of both public higher education and Big Business is a real, big, stupid problem in the context of resource struggles. The state budget decisions that screw us are the same decisions that serve the interests of the Regents. This is a conflict of interest that makes the Regents’ decisions about fee hikes and budget cuts as well as the premise of the Gould Commission completely illegitimate. Furthermore, it’s perplexing that the Regents have been put in charge of setting our future agenda. They, in fact, should be subjected to public hearings that understand their plan to eliminate the "publicness" of the UC, even prior to the budget crisis.

And certainly the absence of the Legislature is stunning - their lack of accountability, their lack of responsibility in maintaining the integrity of higher ed, and in some cases their total ignorance. One of my colleagues here at UCI met with our Assembly Rep a couple months ago to talk about the prospects of higher education in the context of cuts and new changes. The point of the meeting was to convey how once you lose infrastructure you don't really get it back. Our Rep had no idea what was at stake - I mean, remarkably and unbelievably clueless. So, the Legislature needs their public hearing too.

In addition to pressuring the Regents, I would advocate in-depth public or town hall meetings that also travel throughout the state, perhaps from one school district to the next. Other modes of public engagement are of course possible, but while current efforts are gaining lots of momentum, we need to take this crisis to the public. Senate and Assembly members, media, unions, students, parents, civic groups, PTA and local boards of education (make the K-12 link), the CSU and UC communities, and the general public should all be able to participate and discuss direct and indirect issues impacting public education and the public sector more generally. Such dialogues could look for ways to advocate for the university's and public education’s growth rather than figuring out how to pound the last nail into the coffin. Right now, our only mode of engagement (outside of protests) is with UCOF, which, if the Regents even bother showing, limits the discussion between “us and them.” This makes it a private endeavor and contributes to the ongoing absence, if not ignorance, of the public (Michael Meranze’s recent post about the public’s ideas of saving the university is telling).

While some may argue that such an endeavor is too difficult or it’s something that should happen over the longer term – well, point taken, and I certainly don’t have all the strategic answers. But honestly, can we afford to leave this in the hands of the Regents and the Legislature who don’t feel knocked around by protests and who are answerable to more powerful interests? We have a real opportunity to initiate state wide discussions on what the public sector actually is, why we need it, why it’s being taken away, and what this means for Californians – something the national health care debates failed to adequately accomplish.

As I have heard and read many good arguments about public education as a cornerstone of democracy, as an entitlement that should remain in tact, as something that shouldn’t simply provide a direct route to the market place, and as a site that enriches “hearts and minds,” I don’t think these angles alone provide the kind of sway we need. Rather, we need to examine how economic structures are transforming in ways that will restrict entitlements currently taken for granted. As economy and entitlements transform, the question of society’s knowledge, labor, and educational needs are also changing. These fast paced events are meant to fit into an economy that’s less productive and that’s being recreated by massive job and home loss. Both are shrinking the middle class – the class for which, as Chris Newfield has pointed out, higher education was meant to expand.  So the argument cannot just rest with the preservation of the university for its own sake, it must argue against the very political and economic foundations driving the change. Shifting our efforts into the public realm may be our best hope.

The only good news coming out of UCLA has been the student protests. They attracted lots of media coverage of the financial hardships caused by the 32% fee hikes - and of frustration with a closed decision-making process.  The coverage of the students was almost entirely positive. It included a photo of a little tasering going on next to the bushes, not long after the UCLA admin denied the possibility that students were being tasered.  The Regents did their work under police protection, and left under even heavier police protection, and they were all trapped together in the parking garage by students for 3 or 4 hours, which I doubt was enough time for them to ponder all the errors of their ways.

That's too bad, because UCOP and the Regents have made UC's finances worse, not better, with this fee hike.  A little history will help explain.

In Major Downturn 1 (1992-1995), UC lost about 20% of its state funding and raised fees (excluding campus fees) from $1624 to $3799, an increase of 134% in 3 years.

In Major Downturn 2 (2002-2005), UC lost about 16% of its state funding and raised fees from $3834 to $6141, an increase of 60%.

In Major Downturn 3 (2008-??), UC has already lost 25% of its state funding. This is by far the worst of the downturns, and is hitting the state workforce hard.  Fees started at $7126 in 2008. Were they to rise by the average of the two previous increases, or say 100%, they would be at about $14,250 by 2011-12 - up another $4000 from 2010-11 (set yesterday at $10,302).

Were the fees in this downturn to go up as much as they did in Downturn 1 (134%), they would stand at $16,685 in 2011-12.  If the downturn stays bad, more cuts will come and fee hikes will be even higher - to $20,000, with the usual stipulations about 33% return-to-aid.

The Regents this week all but locked us into this.  Here's why:

1. Sacramento has another new deficit and opinions range from the Republicans calling for deeper and deeper cuts to the Democrats saying they don't see any way around deeper cuts.  
2. Fee hikes take political pressure off Sacramento to restore funds.  Hikes do not make up for state cuts (UCOP estimates they make up for 1/3rd; I estimate this hike will net 2% new funds for UC's core budget.  But they create the public impression that UC has access to new non-state money, and will struggle a little but will be just fine. 
   
3. Many in UCOP and on the Board of  Regents have convinced themselves "the era of public funding is over."   They correctly note that state government would like to minimize its contribution to higher ed in various ways, including through such means as reneging on its agreement to pay a share of UC's pension costs. This pessimism is, however, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and undermines strong proactive engagement before it begins.  The only alternative to public funding are large, repeated fee hikes.
4. UCOP and the Regents have no critique of the Governor's slash-and-burn budgeting, no plan to howl about downgraded student dreams and reduced economic contributions, no game-changing plan in general, nor any announced intention to start one. 
   

In reality this decline is unnecessary.   Like many others I've made counterproposals (see the debate there too), and UC is full of faculty, staff, and student organizations with better ideas than what we heard from the Regents committees this week.

The first step is going to be the hardest: the Regents will have to figure out how to implement what the great majority of the UC community would like to see, rather than rejecting that every two months.

From SAVE UCLA: Subject:
TOMOR- ROW: PART II, Statewide Mobili-zation Against the Fee Hikes at Covel Commons!

Today was hard and unexpected, but tomorrow we will have 1000+ students and workers from all across the state to stand with us against the tuition hikes. TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO SHOW UP AND SUPPORT!

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW, IF YOU CAN, PLEASE SHOW UP AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE (6AM EVEN, THE EARLIER, THE BETTER):

6:30-7:30am - PICKET PREP
8-10am — REGENT'S MEETING PUBLIC COMMENT - PICKET AND CHANT
10-11am—REGENTS "TRIAL" - POLITICAL THEATER
12-1:30pm—RALLY (TO MARCH THROUGH BRUIN PLAZA +)

JOIN STUDENTS FROM BERKELEY, IRVINE, SAN DIEGO, SANTA CRUZ, SANTA BARBARA, RIVERSIDE, CSU FULLERTON, AND CLAREMONT COLLEGES!

If you are going to inflict pain on students, the least you can do is feel their pain.  The second thing you can do is broadcast their pain to the Governor and the legislature that caused it.    Maybe then they’d think twice about forcing more fee hikes with more cuts. Maybe even the fanatical governor would think twice, since he is promising still deeper cuts, and to go after “the high-hanging fruits.”

The Regents are expected to increase undergrad resident “Ed Fees” 32% over the next 18 months. They are also set to explode professional school fees beyond limits set by their own rules – from zero to $6000 for Environmental Design at Berkeley, zero to $6000 for Information Management, zero to $4000 for Social Welfare, zero to $11,000 for Physical Therapy at UCSF – a 2/3rd increase for Public Health at Berkeley, and 40% increases in Nursing at 4 campuses scheduled for 2010-2012. In responses, UC leaders are saying that 32% fee increases won’t affect students that much at all.  The Blue and Gold Plan press release says that over half of UC undergrads get grants averaging $10,300 per year - which would suggest to normal readers that half of undergrads will continue to pay no tuition.

In the same vein, the Regents' documents state that "financial aid program enhancements . .  meant that undergraduate students with family incomes below $180,000 experienced, on average, an increase of $1,200 - $1,500 in resources for education expenses” (Regents Nov F1 p 12).  Or a page later,  “UC projects that, on average, students with incomes below $180,000 will experience financial resource increases, either through gift aid or expanded tax credits, to cover the full amount of fee increases already approved and now proposed for 2009-10.”  This sounds a lot like UCOP is saying, the more fees go up, the better off all (but the richest) students are.

This is a script from a model sometimes called "high-tuition / high-fees," and at other times called "privatization." It is not a script based on student reality. Even UCOP’s rosy scenario leaves an average $11,000 gap in the cost of attendance, which is three times what "middle-income" familes ($50,000-$100,000) are able to pay for college and nearly five times the average outlays of lower-income families (Sallie Mae Figure 6). These gaps are filled with increasing student debt, and increasing student work while in college.  Private student debt tripled in the last downturn, debt overall continues to grow, 75% of the public college students who borrow have more than $10,000 in debt, with a median of $17,700.

Stats can be strung out for a while but let's cut to the chase. Debt reduces incentive to continue and reduces freedom of career choice and economic contribution. Excessive work lowers attainment for students who do attend.  Today I spent an hour with a first-generation student who pays for fees and rent at UCLA by working 38 hours a week as a shift supervisor at Starbucks. How much more exactly is UC going to ask her to do?

This gets us back to strategy.  The Ed Fee hike will net $330.0 million for UC (Display 3), which, as a percentage of 2 years of  UC's "core budget" (p 3) comes to 2%.  Is 2% really worth all this student grief?
Secondly, when the Governor and the legislature read that UC covers its fee hikes with financial aid, what reason do they have to rebuild public funds?  The logical effect is the opposite - to think UC can save itself with higher fees, and help low-income students with better aid.  UCOP has been sending a mixed message for years - we need more public money, but we can always raise private money through tuition increases. The effect has been a disaster for public funding - not the one cause of the disaster, but a major one.  In the ten years that have seen fees double,  public funding is now back exactly where it was (Display 4) - well below, actually, corrected for enrollment growth and inflation.  And with its soothing talk of managed fee hikes, UCOP is giving Sacramento no reason to change.

Here's what the Regents should do instead:

1.Recenter UC’s message on the reality that massive fee hikes are very bad. They are just plain bad - bad for students, nearly useless for restoring operating funds.

2.Hold state leaders responsible for the cuts that forced the hikes. The Regents should say this: We had a Higher Education Compact with the Governor. It held us to 3% annual increases, and then, when things got tough, the governor reneged on the deal. The same happened with the legislature: we got the bipartisan shaft. We are going to explain to every student and every parent just what you all have done to their university. We will ask them to ask you to explain how you will fix it. If you can’t or won’t fix it, we will ask them to vote you out of office – as enemies of students, of public higher education, and of the future of the state.

3. We have a new "Compact." It is not with Sacramento this time. It is a “Compact with UC Students.” Our Compact with them is this: we will not charge them more for less.  We will set a minumum investment per undergraduate student that maintains UC quality (as the Academic Senate recommended in 2008).  We will establish a multi-year strategy for sustaining this investment, with clear revenue goals.These will center on repeated increases in state funding requests. Any fee hikes will be strictly limited, devoted to enhancing educational quality, and their uses will be clearly defined. If we cannot do this with the current scale of enrollments, we will shrink enrollments. And we as UC leaders will join with students, staff, and faculty in tracing the problem to Sacramento, starting with Governor Schwarzenegger, because it is a problem no remotely affordable fee hikes can fix.

There are risks in this kind of strategy. But a loss of 40% of of enrollment-corrected state funding from 1990 to 2005, and another 25% in the past 2, says that the conflicted high-fee public model has failed - and has failed faster the faster that fees  rise.   UC's truly amazing students deserve much better than this, and the Regents need to do something besides pass the hikes.

by Michael Meranze

As we head into this week’s Regents meeting and the imminent increase of student fees, Andrew Dickson is right to draw attention to the political and funding implications of the recent PPI poll on higher education. The results, as he makes clear, are sobering. The public, at least as represented in the poll, thinks well of the Community Colleges, CSU, and UC, believes that higher education is important for the state, and is concerned about its future. But a strong majority is unwilling to pay higher taxes to help higher education overcome recent cuts and a sizeable minority thinks that if we simply used funds more effectively everything would be fine. Dickson emphasizes the difficulties inherent in these poll results. I want to point here in another direction. The poll indicates, I think, that while there is no real consensus on how to move ahead and that public opinion is contradictory, UCOP’s plans to rebuild UC on the basis of student fees is a self-defeating strategy. Not only will it prove economically insufficient but it will likely start a death spiral in state support. In the end, the University cannot survive that spiral—at least not as a public university of 10 strong campuses.

The long-term task we face is to stop UCOPs strategy of trying to shift university funding from the State to the students. That will not be an easy task. There seems to be no end in sight for the continuing and worsening budget news. While some cuts—especially to education—were limited by Federal stimulus money that money will run out by next year. The Governor and his allies are threatening even more substantial cuts not only to education but to those most in need of state funds. Mike Genest, Schwarzenegger’s outgoing finance director (and source of support for President Yudof’s mantra that the state is not a reliable partner) revealed that he looked into the possibility of California giving up statehood in order to become a federal territory.

Given the crises of the State budget, the PPI poll offers a series of sobering points. As Andrew Dickson reports, the Poll results show that 56% of the public is unwilling to raise taxes in support of higher education. This fact does have some ambiguity to it: 56% of Democrats are willing to raise taxes whereas 58% of independents and 74% of Republicans are not. Republican opposition I take to be hard opposition—after all low taxation is an article of faith for the California Republican Party. The question is whether the numbers could be changed for the Democrats and the Independents. In the short run the answer seems to be no. The recession has hit the state hard and people are reluctant to add to their own economic burdens. The significant lack of confidence in State leaders (the poll suggests that only 21% approve of Arnold’s handling of higher education and only 16% approve of the Legislature’s handling of the problem) probably increases the public’s reluctance to commit to further funding. Moreover, while a majority of the respondents believe that the University needs both additional funding and to use its funds more effectively, there is a sizeable minority (38%) who believe that the University could solve its problems simply by being more efficient. On the other hand, 70% of the respondent’s indicated that they thought that the budget cuts for higher education were a “big problem.”

This sort of contradiction, of course, is nothing new to California politics nor is it limited to higher education. Since at least the 1980s Californians have assumed that they could gain high quality public services without having to pay for them. Moreover, there has been widespread misinformation about the tax system (which is far more regressive than most admit) and about the alleged effectiveness and wisdom of California’s commitment to mass incarceration (which as even Andrew Dickson’s conclusion suggests is a too easily accepted political meme. The structure of State governing power after Proposition 13 was all but designed to make the State inefficient with the predictable result of loss of confidence. But the Great Recession has made these long-standing problems more severe and it does no good to ignore that.

But there are difficulties peculiar to our situation. The difficulties are easy to name: the Regents and UCOP are determined to switch our funding onto students and private sources and the Oakland-based Senate Leadership are unwilling to resist that process (indeed all indications are that they are active supporters). The Regents have refused suggestions that the fee increases have a sunset clause or that an audit be completed before imposing higher fees. The Gould Commission is pushing ahead with its plans to remake the University in a matter of months (and it doesn’t seem coincidental that Russell Gould and Christopher Edley were opposed to slowing down the process—after all that might allow more alternatives to appear).

On the other hand, the protests and objections from students, staff, and faculty and the challenges from local Senate committees do seem to be having an impact. New questions arise continually about the use of student fees and about the colleges’ possible subsidization of the professional schools. UCOP has been forced to respond more and more to the dissatisfaction of the campuses. And President Yudof’s indication, on the eve of the Regents meeting to discuss fee increases that he would seek $913M in additional funding from the State suggests that he too is feeling the public pressure against explicitly giving up on the State.

It is in this context that the contradictions of the PPI poll take on their greatest importance. It is true that 56% of the respondents were unwilling to pay more in taxes but 62% were “very concerned” and 27% were “somewhat concerned” about raising fees for students. At the same time 57% were “very concerned” and 29% were “somewhat concerned” about admitting fewer students due to the budget crisis with almost identical numbers for reducing classes. When asked if they were willing to raise student fees to make up for budget cuts 68% said no (although to be complete I should note that 67% were willing to have a sliding scale for fees). Even more striking, at least to me, is that when asked what was the most important problem facing higher education, 31% thought student costs and affordability and 26% thought the lack of state funding while only 2% pointed to the politics of professors and only another 2% pointed to teaching or instruction. Despite all the summer fears about the hostility to the University and the professorate, the public doesn’t seem all that worried.

These results suggest to me that the University will pursue UCOP’s present strategy at great risk to itself and to higher education. The public is not in favor of fee increases to compensate for budget cuts (which appears to be President Yudof’s plans). If fees continue to be raised it seems likely that the public will become more alienated from the higher education, they will turn their backs on the institutions, and we will begin a race to the bottom for state funding. Nor can the University continue to raise fees indefinitely if it hopes to retain students. Already there are signs that private colleges are gaining enrollments due to the rising costs and decreasing offerings at CSU and UC. Without romanticizing what UC has been in the past we can be assured that if the Regents and UCOP continue their present strategy UC will cease to be the world-renowned system that it is now. CSU is equally stressed: their applications are increasing dramatically as they are forced to cut back on admissions. CSU leaders have been more outspoken in opposition to these changes than have the UC Regents. But they cannot reverse this process alone.

We may not be able to stop the fee increases in the short term. But there are possibilities to reconnect with the public’s desire for an open and excellent public university system funded by the state. Kristin Peterson and Mary Furner have suggested a variety of strategies to engage the public. These will, admittedly, take time. Our internal challenges—most especially in stopping the Gould Commission’s rush to judgment—will remain. But despite the cautions that Andrew Dickson has raised there is a reservoir of commitment to public higher education in the state. Californians remain committed to their system of higher education, continue to think that college education matters, and continue to think that the state’s future is tied up with its universities and community colleges.

We are facing a new version of the battle of the books. But whereas earlier battles concerned the ancients and the moderns ours is somewhat different. The Governor, the Regents, UCOP and UCOF seem to think that the only books that matter are accountants’ books. The public knows better. But we need to offer clearer accounts of how higher education matters and propel UCOP into doing the same—and these accounts need to come from all parts of the University. If we are unable to do this then we, UC, CSI, the Community Colleges and the State will be the losers. And in that case, I doubt that even the winners will savor their victory.

The Department of English at Riverside has issued a letter of solidarity in response to the Budget Crisis. President Yudof has responded here.

Thanks to Bob Samuels for these notes on the UC Commission on the Future meeting this past week.

Yesterday there was a Town Hall meeting at UCSD to discuss campus budget recommendations:

"This open forum will provide an opportunity for faculty, staff and students to communicate directly with members of the Joint Senate-Administration Task Force on Budget. The Task Force is charged with providing recommendations for sustaining UC San Diego’s academic excellence during budget reductions, while protecting our core missions of research and education through cost savings, increased efficiency, and increased non-State revenues. We encourage you to attend and share your vision and ideas regarding the UC San Diego of Tomorrow."

As might have been expected there were a number of well-argued statements as to why the University deserved more funds from the State of California. One of these referred to a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) for which one of the findings was that:

Californians give high grades to their public higher education systems but are worried about increased student costs and state budget cuts.

At the UCSD meeting it was mentioned that the poll had been headlined on our local public radio station, and that the message was that the public were strongly supportive of UC. A tweet from Mark Yudof also states:

Meeting with the UC Commission on the Future here in Oakland. We are also reviewing the new PPIC poll that shows CA holds UC in high esteem.

Sadly, the poll itself is not so unambiguous. The actual question was "Overall, is the ___ doing an excellent, good, not so good, or poor job? UC polled as 13% excellent, 49% good. However, the community colleges polled a little higher (13% excellent, 52% good) while CSU was close (9% excellent; 52% good). Given the estimated 2% margin of error for the poll it might be fair to say (as PPIC did) that all sectors of California higher education are held in equivalent high esteem.

Unfortunately perhaps, the poll contained other questions (in addition to the oft-reported lack of confidence in state government). Some perhaps more problematic results (from the PPIC news release):

Given the high value that most Californians place on spending for higher education, what would they be willing to do to offset state spending cuts?

• 68 percent are unwilling to increase student fees. Solid majorities across parties, regions, and demographic groups concur.
• 56 percent are unwilling to pay higher taxes. Although 56 percent of Democrats are willing to pay higher taxes for this purpose, 58 percent of independents and 74 percent of Republicans are not.
• 53 percent would support a higher education construction bond measure on the 2010 ballot. But support is lower among likely voters (46% yes, 47% no) for this hypothetical bond measure and would fall short of the simple majority threshold needed to pass such a measure. Here, too, a partisan split emerges, with 61 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents saying they would vote yes on a bond and 55 percent of Republicans saying they would vote no.

Half (50%) of Californians believe that major changes are needed in the higher education system— a 10-point increase from last year—and 39 percent say minor changes are needed. When asked the best method for significantly improving California’s higher education system, about half (52%) say a combination of better use of existing state funds and increased funding is the answer. Just 7 percent say increased funding alone is the key and 38 percent say just using existing funds more wisely is best.

So, UC is not considered special (or at least any more excellent than the other CA higher education sectors); there is a belief that higher education fails to use its existing funds sufficiently wisely; and there is a significant resistance to increasing taxes to support higher education in the state. At the same time, increases in fees are seen as problematic.

I suspect we ignore such views at our peril. Furthermore, despite comments I have heard lamenting the cost of our prisons, I still suspect many of our neighbors would rather see an unemployed professor sitting on their street corner than an unemployed felon!

Please note links featured in the blog's other columns: SAVE's petition to postpone fee hikes, and a survey and further information on travel to the Regents' meeting at UCLA Nov 17-19.

The UCSB student coalition demands are here.

See also the first issue of UC Solidarity Notes, a student-worker joint production.

By Anonymous

Part 1: Response to previous and current cuts

I am a faculty member in a research unit receiving a large amount of extramural and especially federal funding. We are primarily a graduate department, and only about a third of our teaching is currently at the undergraduate level. Since we offer few service courses, we have few TA positions available to provide a stipend and tuition remission to our graduate students. Instead, most graduate students are funded by federal grants and fellowships of various sorts. In fact, every grant proposal submitted out of our research unit is expected to include a request for graduate student funding. The graduate students in our unit not only do research for us, but they are the primary constituents of the courses we teach. The PIs in our research unit also support through extramural funding a very large number of postdocs, project scientists, and technicians. The majority of our budget comes from federal research grants, and core UC funding is only 14%. Unfortunately, it is this 14% that produces 90% of our headaches.

The more selective cuts that occurred during the previous recession hit our research unit harder than the rest of UC, so we are coming into the current crisis with scant buffer. Many staff members have already been laid off, and most institutional lab support has already been eliminated. The remaining UC funding is devoted to long-term matching commitments to federally-funded research infrastructure (which must be paid to maintain our central programs), salaries of support staff for core academic and business office functions (which cannot be reduced any more), and salaries of PIs. The last category, in fact, makes up the majority of our UC funding, so there is probably no way to accommodate further cuts without reducing faculty salaries even more than is the case with the current furloughs.

The suffering from budget cuts has been disproportionate across our research unit. Those PIs who were already supporting their research staff and lab facilities exclusively from extramural funds were not hurt when institutional support was removed. Those people paid 100% from extramural funds were unaffected by the furloughs. Those faculty members with enough funding to pay themselves on furlough days (two thirds of us) have not experienced any salary reduction. The availability of extramural funding may explain why faculty in the sciences have not been as upset about the handling of the UC budget crisis as faculty in the humanities. In fact, I heard a colleague state that it was a victory for shared governance that we were able to prevail upon UCOP to spare extramurally funded people from the furloughs.

to be continued

From Pat Morton, Professor of Art History, UCR

There are a number of activist groups working at UCR right now, including UCR Mobilize, Social Justice Alliance, and Concerned Faculty of UCR.  They emerged out of the September 24 Walkout and Teach-In, which attracted about 1000 people over the course of the 5 hour program.  (Chancellor White even came to the Teach-In and spoke supportively.)

UCR Mobilize is a small but very active coalition of students, faculty and staff that's been doing actions since the September 24 Walkout.  We meet weekly on Wednesdays and coordinate between faculty, student groups and unions.  The unions are already organized and have been fighting this fight for a long time.

For a few weeks after the Walkout, the students carried most of the momentum and started an education campaign of flyers, events and coalition building.  They've coalesced as the Social Justice Alliance, which coordinates with other activist groups on campus.  They are highly motivated by the fee increases, and plan a big presence at the November Regents' meeting, but they're in it for the long haul.  They've had three actions at the Bell Tower in the center of campus, including a Death of Public Education event on October 28 that featured a "Die-In" and rousing speeches from student activists.  There are many other student groups responding to the crisis (Students Against Sweatshops, Chicano Student Programs, MeCHA, UCSA, CCSA, Common Ground Alliance, etc.)

Concerned Faculty of UCR has been reactivated recently (it was originally formed to support labor actions at UCR). Last week, Chris Chase-Dunn, Karthick Ramakrisnan and I called a meeting about the Gould Commission of the Future visit to UCR, and 40-50 faculty attended.  We've been able to get the head of the Academic Senate to attend our meetings and join efforts to reach faculty. The next meeting is Friday, November 13.

At the November 3 Gould Commission "listening session,"  faculty from Concerned Faculty questioned the credibility of the Commission and the market thinking of its charge, and raised issues about access and the impact of privatization on our students.  Outside the pointed criticisms of the Commission, speakers affirmed UCR as a model for the entire UC, a campus that reflects California and produces "excellence" with diversity. 

Upcoming Events:

On Monday, November 16, UCR Mobilize plans two Teach-Ins (12 pm and 6 pm) to educate the UCR community about the crisis, its effects, and resistance, and mobilize for the November 17-19 Regents' meeting at UCLA.  Faculty, staff, and students will speak.

A large contingent of UCR students, union members and faculty will participate in the actions on Nov. 18-19 at the UCLA Regents meeting.

We're planning a series of events for the winter, leading up to the system-wide Day of Action on March 4 (Sacramento) and the Regents' meeting at UCR on March 17-19.

We're building alliances with CSU and CC campuses in the area, and I think there will be some joint actions.

The students have a web site and we have the beginnings of a web site for UCR Mobilize. 

We received a query from Jessica Luk, and would appreciate receiving more news about new professional degree fees.  Similiar increases have been proposed for Berkeley's School of Social Welfare.

I'm a graduate student in the Masters of City Planning program, and our department is looking to levy a professional degree fee (PDF) on incoming students in the amount of $6,000/student/year. Unlike the business and law schools, which are justified as falling on higher incomes upon graduation, this PDF has been created to cover budget short-falls. Are the Regents leveraging the potential for higher cuts to induce departments to fundraise, and in this case, at the expense of the students and WITHOUT student input? This is tragic, and I wonder if there are similar movements going on in other departments/schools?

Jessica