University of California seeks alternatives to 16% tuition hikes

[alp227]

Source: CNN

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Faced with a state budget crisis, the University of California system on Thursday began examining a possible tuition increase up to 16% in fall 2012 and continuing that increase over the following three years, nearly doubling tuition, if state funding is flat.

The UC Board of Regents considered a four-year plan to address a $2.5 billion budget shortfall by 2015-16 that would call for tuition increases of 8% to 16%, depending on whether the distressed state can boost current financing.

The regents discussed potential four-year scenarios Thursday and decided to report back to the chairman in 10 days about alternatives to tuition hikes, said Dianne Klein, spokeswoman for UC President Mark Yudof.

Those ideas, broached in Thursday's meeting in San Francisco, include holding a ballot initiative to raise taxes, raising revenue from the private sector for scholarships, organizing a public service campaign financed by Google or another firm about the UC system's contribution to the state, and working with state lawmakers on securing more public funding, Klein said.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/15/california.university.tuition/index.html

[villager]

1. well, anything that keeps them from jettisoning, utterly, the social contract they've had

...with California, and had with Golden State alums like me and hundreds of thousands of others, would be good...

[mike_c]

2. just to be clear, the Assembly, governor, etc are leading the way...

...in jettisoning those promises. Have been for the last several years. It doesn't help that the CSU chancellor actively seeks privatization of the "people's university." My understanding is that the UC is actually doing better in the sense that it doesn't WANT to dismantle the master plan for higher ed-- it's just being strangled by the Assembly and has few alternatives (well, few alternatives other than cutting executive compensation).

I'm heartsick about what's happening in the CSU, however. In the spirit of disaster capitalism and letting no crisis go unexploited, the Chancellor's office is betraying California families and students.

[villager]

4. Indeed, mike_c, there is plenty of betrayal to go around. And much, as you noted, comes from

..."our own" Democrats, as well...

Now about those vastly overcompensated UC/CSU administrative bureaucrats...

[Cal Carpenter]

3. Um, how bout TAX THE RICH

:shrug:

[bluebuzzard]

5. tax the UC Davis Medical Center executives

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/09/uc-panel-approves-raises-for-h.html

[Blandocyte]

6. 20% tuition hikes?

Alternative indeed.

[truedelphi]

7. Funny that there is not one single word that I saw in the article about

The lavish retirement perks and benefit increases that the UC Regents recently approved.

We live inside a society wherein the inner circle of every group makes huge gains at the expense of those that they are supposed to be serving.

if those lavish perks and benefits' "adjustments" had not been made, then this whole nonsense about needing sixteen percent more would not be necessary.

The increase is only necessary because the regents allowed the benefits for the professors and administrators to be so drastically increased. With the sorry excuse that if UC doesn't provide such, these wonderful people will have to go elsewhere... Who are they kidding? No educational system in the USA is swimming in gravy., Rescind the damn increases, and put those millions of dollars back into the school system, an if some administrator making over 200K a year doesn't like it, let them go elsewhere!

[Igel]

8. Not such a big deal at the undergrad level.

Lethal at the grad level.

I was at UCLA for a round of budget cuts in the early-mid '90s. My dept. lost half the faculty I wanted to learn from. A fair number of grad students saw their advisors leave while they were disserting. Yeah, they could keep their advisors on their committees--provided they would pay for their trips back from overseas (when convenient) to supervise or to attend meetings. With Skype it's a bit easier.

The real problem is funding: When those students' advisors left, so did their funding. Paying for their airfare is child's play compared to the loss of tuition/fee/health-insurance waivers and the stipend or income needed to survive in and around Westwood.

The school's "creative" way of dealing with a second and third round of faculty reductions was to allow the faculty members to come back and teach, supporting their depts until funding could be restored and tenure lines reinstated. Except that never happened. The grad program I was in still exists but has no students; were it to acquire a student, it wouldn't be able to mount the first year MA courses, much less the entire MA program or even the MA/PhD program. One faculty member remains for the program.

It was one of the top 3 or 4 in the country in '94. It wasn't alone in being gutted. Do that a dozen or two dozen times, and it's a good factory for producing bachelors degrees and little more.

[trackfan]

9. For those who don't know: tuition was ZERO at UCLA when I went

1977-1981.

What a crappy country we've become.

[No Elephants]

11. Soon after that, the disparity between rich Americans and all other Americans began increasing

dramatically, as did the number of lobbyists in K Street. As did the hold of conservadems over the Democratic Party.

I'm sure there's no connection between or among any of those events, though. After all, what does D.C. have to with colleges?



"GREED is good." Gordon Gekko, Oliver Stone's Wall Street.

[Moravecglobal]

10. University of California 50% increase for same service

How does it cost 50% more (after adjusting for inflation) for
University of California (UC) Board of Regents Chair Lansing
and President Yudof to provide the same service?

Total expenditures in the UC system in 1999-2000 were $3.2
billion to educate a student population of 154,000. Converted
into 2011 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI
calculator gets us to $4.3B in 2011 dollars, which comes out
to $27,850 per student.

In 2011, the total UC system budget was $6.3 billion dollars:
an increase of almost 50% after adjusting for inflation.
Enrollment also rose - to 158,000 students, a 3% increase,
yielding a cost per student of $39,750.

Costs went up 50% in 10 years.  And yet the news out of UC
President Yudof is that the UC system is "bracing"
for 'another round of budget cuts'!

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