UC Regents Raise Fees 32% Amid Bleak Economic News

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As expected, a committee of the UC Regents voted on Wednesday to raise student fees by a total of 32 percent over the next year.  These hikes will bring the annual cost of a UC education above $10,000 for the first time ever.  The full board is expected to ratify these changes today.

There were massive student strikes at UCLA where the UC regents held their meeting and at UC Berkeley where many of Northern California Students Coalesced.

Meanwhile, the economic news was even worse Wednesday, as the LAO office reported Wednesday that the state will face a $20 billion budget deficit at least through June of 2011.  The result will be additional job cuts for stateworkers on top of the 7000 positions already eliminated from the general fund.  A spokesperson for the governor said it was likely that there would be additional cuts to employee compensation in the next round of budget cuts.

According to Mac Taylor, 

“Addressing this large shortfall will require painful choices—on top of the difficult choices the Legislature made earlier this year.  The vast majority of the new budget problem we have identified for 2009–10 can be attributed to the state’s inability to implement several major solutions in the July 2009 budget plan.”

Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s office released a statement Wednesday in response to the LAO report:

“The numbers cry loudly for California to focus on rebuilding our tax base.  The only tried and true way to do so is to use our fiscal levers to increase the number of high wage jobs. Putting more people to work earning decent wages will help overcome our deficit.  We need to protect our schools and universities, so as we create high wage jobs we produce a workforce able to fill them.”

SEIU President Bill A. Lloyd upon the release of the Legislative Analyst’s “California Fiscal Outlook”:

“We agree with the LAO that it’s time for California to make clear its priorities.   The state’s working people have never wavered from our commitment to stronger communities, opportunities for our children, and retirement security for all.

“In recent years, the devastating cuts to healthcare, home care, and human services endured by our children, seniors and people with disabilities represent a sharp departure from California’s commitment to providing opportunity for our younger generations and respect for seniors and people with disabilities.   As the Legislative Analyst correctly points out, California’s population is aging and the need for services is increasing, not decreasing. 

“Budget solutions must include new revenue to restore California’s fiscal solvency, protect kids and seniors, and lay a solid foundation for economic growth and prosperity.” 

According to published reports, students rush the UCLA building where the regents met and began throwing food, sticks, vinegar-soaked red bandannas (meant to look like blood).  The result was a modest 14 arrests for disrupting the meeting and resisting arrest.

Russell Gould, chairmen of the UC Board of Regents, seized on this news as a defense for the fee hikes, telling the students there was no way to avoid the fee hikes.  He told them that they were boxed in.  Mr. Gould told the Sacramento Bee yesterday that student objections do not influence his decision-making and that student fees must be increased.

However, not everyone agrees.  Senator Leland Yee issued a statement Wednesday accusing the Governor and Board of Regents of allowing the top executives to live high on the hoge while the students suffer.

“It is unconscionable for the Governor to cut funds to higher education while allowing the UC administration to act like AIG.”

He continued:

“Certainly the state needs to prioritize funding for education and that is why I voted against all such budget cuts and will continue to do so.  However, it is intellectually dishonest for the Regents to simply blame the state budget for student fee hikes while they are lining the pockets of executives.  Executive pay should be the first thing on the chopping block, not students.”

Senator Yee’s release cites a September interview with the New York Times, where UC President Mark Yudof, who receives nearly $1 million in salary and perks was asked, “What do you think of the idea that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the President of the United States, $400,000?” Yudof responded, “Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?”

Senator Yee responded:

“Unfortunately, this is the type of arrogance and cavalier attitude that plagues the university.  California deserves better from their public university leadership.”

Jelger Kalmijn, President of the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE-CWA 9119) said:

“UC has reserves in the billions of dollars that could be tapped, or UC could redirect its fundraising abilities, or use other sources of income such as the highly profitable medical centers, or call for a mild pay cut for the thousands of six-figure administrators.”

Lakesha Harrison, President of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME 3299), which represents patient care and services workers:

“UC is sounding the alarm bells of financial ruin and rushing to push the economic crisis on the backs of UC students, patients and workers.  But to many of us, this is another example of UC administrators’ misplaced priorities and lack of accountability to the public.”

Kathi Young, a Library Assistant and executive board member of the Coalition of University Employees said:

“The only crisis UC faces is a crisis of leadership.”

It is not all rhetoric, AFSCME Local 3299 has put together an alternative emergency budget measure to protect essential student and patient care services, while redirecting funds from areas that can most withstand temporary reductions.

The measure includes cutting the top 2 percent of earners saving $220 million, short-term borrowing to serve as a stop gap for $200 million, utilizing Medical Center profits for $100 million, restructuring a portion of its bond debt service which they believe could save $75 million, another 50 million could be found by borrowing less than 1% of UC’s unrestricted investments, and cutting wasteful spending could free another $40 million.

“UC must continue to cut non-essential spending—including, but not limited to, renovations of UC mansions, executive rentals of non-UC property, non-essential travel, and consultants’ contracts—before any consideration of cutting vital services. UC’s receipt of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds necessitates an especially judicious approach to reigning in excessive non-core spending.”

Proponents of the alternative plan argue:

“The proposals above represent a prioritization of UC’s core mission over profit-hoarding, executive pay and perks. UC must look to the areas most capable of absorbing a temporary redirection to balance the budget, and fulfill its mission as a university system serving the public.”

However, the regents have pursued continued fee hikes for UC Students that have received multiple years of double-digit fee hikes before the latest proposal for a 32% fee hike over two phases.  The full board is expected to meet today and approve the fee hike that will push total fees not including room, board, and textbooks, over $10,000 per year.

These fees led LA Times editorial writer Paul Thornton, himself a former UC Berkeley student, to wonder:

“With fees having doubled in less than a decade, is a UC education still a deal? Is there a student-fee ceiling at which it isn’t?”

—David M. Greenwald reporting

About The Author

David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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48 Comments

  1. Phil

    THe median household income for UC Berkeley students is higher thah for Stanford students, so any discussion of UC tuition should begin by recognizing that many very well off families have received a huge subsidy from the State at the UCs. Financial aid for students for less well off backgrounds should be part of the package. I teach at the CSU, so I am more familiar with CSU issues– in the last several CSU tuition hikes, a substantial part of the increase has been dedicated to financial aid. I hope this is the case at the UCs.

    THe most serious issue here is that the UC system is being gutted. Many of the best professors are leaving for private institutions which can pay more.

    THe CSU has also been hit very hard. This year furloughs have eased the pain but the betting is that next year the CSU faculty will not approve another year of furloughs so that further cuts are necessary. Frankly, many CSU administrators would love to see a 30% incresae at the CSU as well so this is actually good news.

    California cannot continue spending more than it takes in tax revenue. Schwartzenegger promised to balance the budget and has failed miserably–though its not all of his fault.

    The UC and CSU systems are quite cheap compared to most other state universities, especially when one considers the cost of living in CA. In the long run I see no more than a 20-25% subsidy from the state (with, I hope, more generous financial aid for those who truly need it). The sooner we get there the better since we risk destroying one of the best state university systems in the world.

    We have already destroyed K-12 in this state (outside of a few priveleged areas like Davis)–lets not do that at the UCs.

    Although I teach at a CSU, I think the consequences for the UCs are potentially greater since they have trouble competing with places like Duke University which offers faculty members over $200,000 in many fields. The UC still has a great reputation but its threatened right now.

    So lets keep this 30% tuitin hike in context. I see it as encouraging.

  2. David M. Greenwald

    Phil: As I understand it, the people most at risk in this are middle income students. The bottom tier will get support as long as they don’t cut some of those programs like CalGRANTS (which they threatened to do earlier this year). The upper tier can afford it. The middle class group though doesn’t have aid eligibility and they can’t afford it. They are the group most likely affected.

    Also I’m not sure using the median income for Berkeley students is a good representation for the rest of UC.

  3. Phil

    David:

    I don’t have data on all UCs though I am sure it can be found, but most UC students come from affluent families. Most of the “middle income” students go to CSUs. I am all in favor of making college affordable and as a college professor I’d love to see us spend more on higher education.

    The reality is that either tuition goes up at UCs and CSUs or the number of students enrolled falls (CSU enrollment will drop significantly next year due to budget issues) AND the quality of the UCs and CSUs will fall.

    I’d love to live in a society where college is free or very cheap. That was the case not that long ago but its not the case today and we will not be going back.

    We need to educate people in this country to be competitive and to be a democracy which is why financial aid is so important, but we cannot ignore fiscal realities.

  4. Greg Kuperberg

    Phil is right about one basic point: UC already buys most of its faculty at a discount. Yes, they are paid more than the janitors, but they are not paid as much as they would be at other universities. Hiring faculty or administrators is discredited until the salaries go back up.

    As for the protesters, they are wrong about pretty much everything. They refuse to acknwoledge the massive state budget cut. They refuse to accept that it’s a structural collapse and not a “rainy day”. They refuse to believe that the university needs to pay for like with like. They want the UC budget to look like the state budget. The state desperately shifts around money and raids cash cushions to stave off bad news, and that’s what they want UC to do. To them, anything better than that is “like AIG”.

    The simple truth is in the chart at the bottom ([url]http://ucpay.globl.org/funding_vs_fees.php[/url]) of Jeff Bergamini’s page. For a long time, a UC education cost about $30K per student per year in current dollars. The state used to pay for almost all of that, now it pays about $10K. Another $10K comes from student fees, and the rest takes its toll in the form of large classes and below-market salaries. It’s just plain unsustainable. The fee hikes are a necessary response to the state budget disaster. Raiding hospitals, raiding the endowment, or attacking administrators are not solutions.

    It would be a small, positive step to shrink the frivolous, money-losing varsity athletic programs. However, that step does not fit the resentment politics of these protests.

  5. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]I’d love to live in a society where college is free or very cheap.[/i]

    If that’s what the state wants, all that it has to do is pay for it. Recriminations don’t put students through college; funding does.

  6. Gunrock

    I don’t have a problem with fee increases- its a bargain at $10K. That being said, I do think that the Regents continue to protect an enormous layer of fat in campus administration that should be shed. You could close the entire office of the President of the UC system and no one would miss them…

    In tough times, focus on the mission-critical services. In this case, teachers.

  7. E Roberts Musser

    The article in the Davis Enterprise showing new UCD band uniforms at $125,000 at a time when a 32% student fee hike is being voted on is indicative of how arrogant the UC system is when it comes to frivolous expenditures. One has to wonder how many other frivolous expeditures are there that we don’t know about? It looks like business as usual despite the looming budget cuts…

  8. wdf1

    The Enterprise yesterday (11/18) had an article on how the enrollments at UCD continue to climb in spite of the bad budget situation. See article at bottom of page entitled, “UCD transfer student enrollment sets record”

    [url]http://www.davisenterprise.com/archive_pdfs/2009/20091118/pdfs/A1.pdf[/url]

    I guess it means that UC Davis can still raise fees and not drive students away.

  9. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]You could close the entire office of the President of the UC system and no one would miss them…[/i]

    This is one of the really crazy aspects the resentment-based protests against the fee hikes and wage cuts. In one breath, the protesters say that UC’s administrators are greedy bastards who are overpaid and distracted by fundraising. In the next breath, they say, hey UC, why don’t you use your fundraising prowess to get out of this. But logic says, if you throw fundraising prowess out the window because you resent it, then you won’t still have it to save the budget.

    The fact is that UC has a lot less fundraising prowess than you would expect from its prestige. That’s because most of the really good fundraisers with really juicy rolodexes are at other universities. UC can’t hire them, because their salaries would stoke too much resentment.

  10. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]I guess it means that UC Davis can still raise fees and not drive students away.[/i]

    Yes, and it’s more acute than that. Before state funding for UC tumbled over a cliff, in-state students and out-of-state students were in rough fiscal balance. The state paid about the same amount of money per resident student as UC collected in out-of-state tuition. But after the state budget slowly spun out of control in this decade and then took the huge plunge this year, out-of-state students became highly profitable. UC could better serve in-state students if it drove fewer out-of-state students away.

    At one point, there was a newspaper editorial that said that UC administrators were blockheads who couldn’t even think of simple solutions like taking more out-of-state students. Of course they can think of it, but…

    As usual, resentment politics is self-defeating. When word got out that Berkeley plans to take more out-of-state students, there was Leland Yee accusing those greedy administrators of disloyalty to in-state students.

  11. wdf1

    The article in the Davis Enterprise showing new UCD band uniforms at $125,000 at a time when a 32% student fee hike is being voted on is indicative of how arrogant the UC system is when it comes to frivolous expenditures.

    At first glance, I would agree with you. But now that I have read more carefully the article you reference, I’m puzzled by your conclusion (that UC Davis is being irresponsible in purchasing new band uniforms). See excerpt below from the November 13 Enterprise that you reference:

    [quote]The new uniforms , from DeMoulin Bros. and Co. of Illinois, cost $124,000 for a set of 200, plus four drum major uniforms and about 10 blazers for the director and student directors. The band also purchased some new instruments and repaired others.

    About $70,000 came from the proceeds from a $500,000 endowment created by alumni, and $80,000 from Campus Recreation.

    Slabaugh said that since the band became part of Campus Recreation in 2008, the department has helped the student-run band better manage its resources, paying off some outstanding debt and creating a plan to set aside funds each year for future uniform and instrument purchases. [/quote]

    You suggest that these funds for band uniforms come from my state tax dollars. To me it seems like the band uniform funds come from an alumni endowment (apparently for band expenditures), and from funds accumulated from student band fees collected over time for that purpose.

    Are you saying that this money should have been unilaterally requisitioned by the UCD administration to balance their budget? If I were an alumni donor to the UCD music program or UCD band student paying those fees, I would be alarmed by your statement. Does original agreed upon intent without subsequent consultation not matter to you?

  12. Jonathon Howard

    As a recent UC graduate (2007) I haver to say I’m grateful I got out when I did. I don’t know enough to say anything about the feasibility of the various plans. I would like to see more transparency from the regents though an open budget and open discussion about it might go a long way in explaining why these fees are necessary for the UC system to stay competitive.

    Another idea might be for the UCs to par down their offerings. Not every UC needs a music program, or a Russian program. The return of specialized UCs might be an answer though you won’t hear Professors or Lecturers advancing that option

  13. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]To me it seems like the band uniform funds come from an alumni endowment (apparently for band expenditures), and from funds accumulated from student band fees collected over time for that purpose.[/i]

    This is a shell game. It may be technically true that the band is paid for from alumni donations. However, the band is part of the varsity athletic program. The athletic department has various choices for how to move around its money and for how to ask for donations. If you take varsity athletics as a whole, it loses a lot of money for UC Davis. That would be okay if it were an important academic goal for Gunrock to beat Prospector Pete. It’s not.

    The one saving grace of the inane varsity athletic promotions is that they help UC’s image in a climate of irrational blame. As David warned us, the critics don’t want to hear logic. Maybe if they don’t want to hear logic, they’re happy to watch football.

  14. wdf1

    This is a shell game. It may be technically true that the band is paid for from alumni donations. However, the band is part of the varsity athletic program. The athletic department has various choices for how to move around its money and for how to ask for donations.

    So the resentment isn’t necessarily over band uniforms per se, but that athletic programs aren’t cut? I can see that marching band would be affiliated with football, but you’re saying that the marching band is also actually funded out of the athletics department (alumni funds)? That’s interesting.

  15. Phil

    According to NYT:

    “To help students who cannot afford the increasing fees, the Regents are also expected to approve the expansion of the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, for undergraduates whose family income is below $70,000.”

  16. Jonathon Howard

    It was either the SacBee or Capitol Alert that stated yesterday the Regents said 1/3 of the additional monies from the fee increase would go towards grants for low income students.

    a side note: any student can go from middle or upper class to poor by filing their own taxes and not having their parents claim them as a dependent. The grants I received doubled in size when I did just that

  17. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]I can see that marching band would be affiliated with football, but you’re saying that the marching band is also actually funded out of the athletics department (alumni funds)? That’s interesting.[/i]

    Let me say it a little more carefully before someone calls me on it. According to the web blurbs, the “Cal Aggie Marching Band” has a separate alumni association which is part of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association. I tacitly supposed that the marching band is part of the athletic department, but that looks incorrect.

    What is true is that many of the marching band’s gigs are athletic events. Now that UC Davis is Division I, these activities will be increasingly scheduled and branded together, even if the budgets are separate. It all becomes promotion for the sake of promotion. For instance, I’m sure that if the marching band needed money, the athletic department could subsidize it.

    Again though, until today I just thought of all of this as an inane distraction that would never be profitable for the academic side of the university. But maybe it’s not so bad to be co-branded with successful promotion. I admit that the marching band is a different case, but for instance the athletic departments can actually [b]brag[/b] about how much they pay their top coaches. It would be interesting if math departments could do that!

  18. wdf1

    Today’s Enterprise (11/19) has an interesting story by Jeff Hudson on the Mondavi Arts season. Apparently it’s going well:

    [quote]Overall ticket sales at Mondavi this year are stronger than at any point during the last five years – though they haven’t yet matched the torrid pace of tickets sold during the Mondavi Center’s first two season, when some people were buying tickets almost as much to experience the brand new hall as to see the performers on stage.
    [/quote]

    If budgeted and marketed appropriately I wonder if the varsity athletics program could be made more self-sustaining with its new football stadium.

    The relevance to the article excerpt above is that the economy is not driving away audiences from performance-type events like athletics or the arts.

  19. wdf1

    …for instance the athletic departments can actually brag about how much they pay their top coaches. It would be interesting if math departments could do that!

    I sympathize with you. Probably the best to hope for is that the math department could produce some graduates who become wealthy enough to fund endowed chairs in your department. Maybe there’s some new mathematical modelling that could be developed for more successful investment banking. Lord knows we could all use that about now.

  20. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]If budgeted and marketed appropriately I wonder if the varsity athletics program could be made more self-sustaining with its new football stadium.[/i]

    All of these units have a big incentive never to show a profit. There was an article about Berkeley’s athletic program recently. Berkeley is well beyond what the UC Davis athletic program could accomplish without moving to Division 1A, but even Berkeley’s athletic department usually runs a loss. Recently they had two years in a row in which they broke even exactly. What that suggests is that they actually could have made a profit, but they were allowed to keep it and give nothing back to the academic program.

    I would not be surprised if the Mondavi Center can engage in the same sort of behavior. The difference is that the Mondavi Center has a lot more academic value.

    [i]Probably the best to hope for is that the math department could produce some graduates who become wealthy enough to fund endowed chairs in your department.[/i]

    Yes, and I’ve seen that in the mathematical community. Jim Simons is a former math professor and a billionaire who has funded various activities in mathematics. There is also Landon Clay, who funds the Clay Mathematics Institute; and John Fry, who funds the American Institute of Mathematics; and others. But even then, no one in math brags about high salaries. I guess I don’t really wish that they did. As childish as it is to be jealous of six-figure salaries, it’s equally stupid to brag about them.

  21. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]Another idea might be for the UCs to par down their offerings. Not every UC needs a music program, or a Russian program. The return of specialized UCs might be an answer though you won’t hear Professors or Lecturers advancing that option[/i]

    Jonathan, I have no trouble being honest with you that there are programs that are larger than necessary. “Specialized UCs” would be a drastic step, but certainly at UC Davis there are top-heavy programs with relatively little academic value. I would prefer not to name them right here, because every program has backers. There is no reason for me to antagonize your classmates who major in those programs. Besides, it doesn’t take more than about two meetings of a sober faculty committee to identify programs to cut; they don’t need me to name names either.

    What we do need is an administration with sense and courage.

  22. Jonathon Howard

    Greg, It isn’t that drastic of an idea. I’ve also heard of spinning the UC system off from the state entirely! Making it a private institution that depends on private funding… That’s a radical idea! Senator Leland Yee introduced a number of bills this year that might have alleviated some of the problems, though some of them seemed punitive (part of that resentment politics)

  23. Phil

    Some professional schools (e.g., Hastings, Haas) are moving in the direction of going private and you arre likely to see UCs have a hybrid of public and private schools. Cornell has been that way for decades.

  24. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]I’ve also heard of spinning the UC system off from the state entirely! Making it a private institution that depends on private funding… That’s a radical idea![/i]

    That’s really more of a defeat than an idea. The average UC degree pays for itself many times over, and UC has plenty of leverage to charge what it actually costs instead of taking state cuts on the chin. It’s up to the legislature to decide how much it wants to subsidize a UC education. If they decide that they don’t have a red cent to spare, they will have privatized UC; it won’t be anyone’s “idea” or UC’s decision at all.

    [i]Senator Leland Yee introduced a number of bills this year that might have alleviated some of the problems, though some of them seemed punitive[/i]

    They were entirely punitive and they would not have alleviated any problems. Yee would rather list everything that he hates about UC management than talk about the state budget. (Or cynically acts like he hates.)

  25. Rich Rifkin

    [quote]you are likely to see UCs have a hybrid of public and private schools. Cornell has been that way for decades.[/quote] I did not know that. I always presumed Cornell was fully private, just like all the other Ivy League schools. Yet Wikipedia seems to agree with Phil:

    [i]”Cornell is a non-profit institution, receiving most of its funding through tuition, research grants, state appropriations, and alumni contributions. Three of its undergraduate schools/colleges and the graduate-level College of Veterinary Medicine are called “statutory colleges” or “contract colleges”. These colleges receive significant partial, ongoing funding from the state of New York to support their teaching, research, and service missions. For 2007-08, these colleges will receive $167.7 million in SUNY appropriations. Residents of New York enrolled in the statutory colleges pay reduced tuition. Furthermore, the New York State Governor, the Speaker of the New York State Assembly, and the President Pro Tem of the New York State Senate all serve as ex-officio members of Cornell’s Board of Trustees. The statutory colleges are an integral part of the State University of New York. [u]Despite some similarities, Cornell’s contract colleges are not public or state schools—they are hybrid and mostly private institutions that Cornell operates under statutes, appropriations and contracts with New York State[/u].”[/i]

  26. Phil

    Charging higher tuition at professional schools makes sense and is already happening. For example, SFSU’s executive MBA program charges much higher tuition than other grad programs in the CSU.

    The real issue is what to do for undergraduates.

  27. Greg Kuperberg

    Bouncing around e-mail is news of a big confrontation at Mrak Hall.

    This reminds me of the movie “John Q”, maybe not the actual movie but the reviews. (I didn’t see the flick; maybe the reviews are all wrong.) At least as reviewed, the movie mostly justifies an ordinary father taking hostages at a hospital so that his son can get medical care. That’s great — I believe in universal medical care too — but the script is stacked so that no one dies while John Q paralyzes the hospital.

    It’s the same here. I have nothing against a free college education, but if that’s what people want, the state should pay for it. Protests don’t create money out of thin air. Word spread that there is no real crisis and that the managers are all thieves, but that belief is both far-fetched and wrong.

  28. wdf1

    Bouncing around e-mail is news of a big confrontation at Mrak Hall.

    KCRA: Arrests Made At UC Davis Amid Student Fee Protest

    [url]http://www.kcra.com/education/21669598/detail.html[/url]

  29. Greg Kuperberg

    Another annoying feature of these protests is the way that people wait until the last minute, then go ape. There were no protests when the legislature passed devastating cuts to higher education. Only now, at the very end when there is no choice but to raise fees, the fees are “unacceptable”.

    I can sympathize with the students on one point. Students who started at UC with much lower fees have been caught with no good options. It would have been more livable if the higher fees were phased in for new students. But again, that isn’t the way that the state legislature played it this year — they needed cash and they needed it fast.

    On the other hand, the reports say that the money is not coming back in the forseeable future. California’s budget is going to be terrible year after year. Garamendi’s idea of using higher oil taxes to fund UC is garbage: Even if the legislature could pass the oil tax, they’d snap up the money for something else.

  30. David M. Greenwald

    Nothing unique about that, in a few years, you’ll watch the same situation play out with Water in Davis. No one comes to the water workshops, but when they discuss a 10 percent rate increase, the place is packed. Just wait until it becomes talk of a 100 percent rate increase, the fit will hit the shan. However, it will also be too late. Human nature I suspect.

  31. Ryan Kelly

    I’m not impressed by what I heard about the protest last night by the students or the police who responded, nor the Administration that allowed it to go the way it did.

    These are students.

    Lessons on both sides could be taken from how Chancellor Meyer handled the student protests (including a sit in in the Chancellor’s offices) during the Vietnam War. No police removal of the students, no arrests. Students were allowed to sit and chant and eventually it dispersed. the difference is that the students took over the office during office hours.

    Getting physical with generally compliant students does not look well. I do not want to hear about any charges of “assault on a police officer” or “resisting arrest” against the student. It will look petty.

  32. Greg Kuperberg

    Ryan: I wouldn’t want trespassers to get their paws on confidential files in Mrak Hall. There is a fine line between civil disobedience and vandalism.

    Anyway, one thing that has gone out the window is my frustration that the administration didn’t allow us to take furloughs on teaching days. Raising fees by 30 percent cancels that out and buries it. At UC, the teaching days question would only have been symbolic anyway, and symbols are an opposite of substance. On that argument, I’m happy to be extra nice to students while they cope with the fee hikes. The fees send the message better than any gripe from me that the state is cutting its still sizable subsidy for their education.

    One more comment. An undergraduate in the Aggie was quoted as saying, “We don’t want research! We need diversity on this campus.” My answer to that is, first, diversity and research aren’t opposites. Second, if he wants a university that puts teaching far above research, he can transfer to CSU. Even with their fee hikes, CSU is cheaper than UC was before.

  33. E Roberts Musser

    “You suggest that these funds for band uniforms come from my state tax dollars. To me it seems like the band uniform funds come from an alumni endowment (apparently for band expenditures), and from funds accumulated from student band fees collected over time for that purpose.

    Are you saying that this money should have been unilaterally requisitioned by the UCD administration to balance their budget? If I were an alumni donor to the UCD music program or UCD band student paying those fees, I would be alarmed by your statement. Does original agreed upon intent without subsequent consultation not matter to you?”

    The bottom line is if there were no purchase of new band uniforms, there would be $125,000 in alumni endowment and Campus Rec funds to spend on more pressing needs (you are assuming the alumni endowment was for band expenditures only – a huge assumption – perhaps it was for the entire music department – you don’t know), whatever pot of money the funds are coming from! Students fees are being hiked 32%, so students may not be able to pay band fees on top of that hike perhaps, so may have to forego band – then how will the band uniforms be paid for? I’m sorry, but I don’t consider band uniforms a pressing need (pardon the pun). Wait until the next round of budget cuts, in which music classes are cut, music staff are furloughed, and various other cuts are made to the music dept, and then see if band uniforms seemed like such a necessary expenditure!

    “This is a shell game. It may be technically true that the band is paid for from alumni donations. However, the band is part of the varsity athletic program. The athletic department has various choices for how to move around its money and for how to ask for donations. If you take varsity athletics as a whole, it loses a lot of money for UC Davis.”

    All of UC is a shell game, and so is the state and nation. The excuse always given is “this funding comes from a different pot of money allocated for this specific purpose”. But ultimately all the money comes from one pot – the taxpayers’ collective pockets – which is being tapped out! We, as a state and nation, need to be much more circumspect about how we spend our taxpayer dollars. And band uniforms or highly paid athletic coaches would not be at the top of my list!

  34. Greg Kuperberg

    [i]But ultimately all the money comes from one pot – the taxpayers’ collective pockets – which is being tapped out![/i]

    No Elaine, it’s not that simple. Incredibly, only about 1/6 of UC’s budget come from state taxpayers. The federal government is now a bigger customer of UC than the state government. Medical payments are another chuck that is also larger than the state compact. As of this year, the state compact is dropping to fourth place, because it is crossing places with student fees.

    So state taxpayers are giving up their influence over UC to bail out the sinking ship that is the state budget. But there are demagogues who try to lord it over UC as if the state still pays for everything. It’s the same as how some American demagogues treat the UN.

  35. Ryan Kelly

    “Ryan: I wouldn’t want trespassers to get their paws on confidential files in Mrak Hall. There is a fine line between civil disobedience and vandalism.”

    Greg, Give me a break! There was no vandalism. You are just making things up. There was no need to drag them out of the building. Why not let them stay for a while? I don’t understand the big hurry. It is my understanding that the girl has been charged with assault and resisting arrest. The arresting officers were Yolo County Sheriff deputies. VERY poor handling by the deputies in that they, once again, show that they cannot handle emotional situations without it turning into something so much worse.

  36. Greg Kuperberg

    Ryan, I didn’t mean to imply that there was vandalism. My point is, if taking back the university is more important than the law, where would the crowd stop?

    I saw how it was at Berkeley. The protesters would push until they got a reaction. I saw a riot once in which the residents of a derelict dorm had a bonfire in the street. They threw bricks and bottles; one of the firefighters or police was hospitalized because someone dropped a brick on his head. The protesters did all of this because they got no reaction when they did less.

    I don’t know that assault charges or resisting arrest really make sense. But it is just as well that they cleared out Mrak Hall before the protesters thought of some new escalation.

  37. Frankly

    Somewhat related to this topic… Michelle Rhee, DC schools chancellor is in an all out brawl with the local Washington Teachers Union and the intervening head of the 1.4 million members American Federation of Teachers. Because of a looming budget gap, Ms. Rhee laid off 400 DC school employees (266 teachers)… weeks after she finished hiring 934 new teachers. She did the layoffs of the 400 school employees “based on quality” not seniority. Prior to this, in the summer of 2008, Ms. Rhee offered up a plan to significant increase teacher compensation for giving up job security. In this plan, highest performing new teachers could make up to $78,000 (up from $45,000) and veteran teachers could make as much as $131,000 (up from $68,000). With Rhee’s plan, those that wanted to keep their contractual job could opt out of the bonus plan. The union soundly rejected it saying it was “an assault on tenure”. Of course the Washington Teachers Union filed a grievance and a law suit against Rhee for firing the 400 low performers due to budget issues.

    The reason to bring this up is not to again offer proof that the public teachers unions care more about their job security and will throw real student welfare under the bus to maintain it, but to make a point about the public-sector difficulty achieving or maintaining value relative to cost. Rhee is to be applauded for demonstrating leadership to fix the mess where the highest education costs ($14,000 per student per year) returns the lowest commensurate value. DC public schools have the highest dropout rate (40%) and the lowest academic performance in the nation. Even with this staggering evidence of a FU’ed mess, Rhee has to work like hell to move the needle one little step at a time.

    Many people make the point that UCD is already a great value and students should just accept the additional 32%. That may be the case, but contrast this attitude with any similar situation where the consumer expects a certain value returned. Raise costs 32% and the consumer will be pissed and look for alternatives. Few competitive businesses would do such a thing because of the ramifications. They would quickly move the needle to shore up other costs so they could deliver the lowest impact or provide more value to the consumer. Only monopolies and government-funded enterprises would stick it to the consumer… even though the consumer may be MORE pissed being a “captive customer”.

    If DC schools were private and supported by vouchers, the customer (parents and students) would reward the best performers and reject the low performers; thereby creating the free-market cycle of creative construction and destruction that keeps ratcheting up value relative to costs. Similarly, if UC severed its corrupting inflow of volatile state tax dollars and required students to pay the full REAL cost of tuition, students could make an informed consumer decision as to the cost relative to the value. The competitive pressure from within and without UC (which no longer has the state provided hand out), would cause UC managers to become “value seekers” instead of shrine builders who consistently whine about lower state funding.

    Now, to make education affordable for those unable to afford the higher costs, the government would need to implement tax credits and higher learning vouchers, and the colleges would need to fund endowments that would offer scholarships to the truly economically needy; however, over the long run we would see a less steep incline of costs relative to value from the UC leaders adopting the competitive value business model. College would likely be more affordable in the long run than it would with the corrupting influence of state inflows.

    So, how about we wind down all state funding of CA higher learning, and instead make those moneys available as state income tax credits and college vouchers, thereby giving the purchasing power to the consumer and not the shrine-building UC bureaucrats that seem to care little about the welfare of the students.

  38. wdf1

    Michelle Rhee, DC schools chancellor is in an all out brawl with the local Washington Teachers Union and the intervening head of the 1.4 million members American Federation of Teachers.

    Michelle Rhee is a very interesting figure to watch, regardless of what you think of her. She is actually significantly connected to the Sacramento area because she has worked with Mayor Kevin Johnson to develop his charter school (Sac High), and now she and Mr. Johnson are engaged. So I’m sure that we will be seeing a lot of her out here in the near future.

    You can see a lot of journalistic work on her at Learning Matters, a news reporting corporation that specializes in stories about education in the U.S. This is the latest on Ms. Rhee, which was featured earlier this week on the PBS News Hour program:

    [url]http://learningmatters.tv/blog/featured/michelle-rhee-in-washington-dc-episode-11-tensions-rising/3366/[/url]

  39. wdf1

    The bottom line is if there were no purchase of new band uniforms, there would be $125,000 in alumni endowment and Campus Rec funds to spend on more pressing needs (you are assuming the alumni endowment was for band expenditures only – a huge assumption – perhaps it was for the entire music department – you don’t know), whatever pot of money the funds are coming from!

    This below is excerpted from the Aggie newspaper, November 17:

    [quote]The Band-uh! purchased 200 uniforms from DeMoulin Uniform Company, at a total cost of $124,000. Seventy thousand came from the Band-uh!’s alumni endowment, and the department of Campus Recreation matched their contribution with $80,000 dollars – the remainder of which went toward instrument repair or replacement.[/quote]

    Perhaps you can quibble over the $80K from Campus Recreation (a little more research could determine what’s up with that), but again I think it’s very disturbing that you think you know what’s best for the Band-uh! alumni donors to be spending their money.

    It might have been gracious them to forego the expenditure and donate it to the general pot this year or at least prudent to hang on to it for now. But it’s still their money and not my tax dollars. Your original statement above —

    The article in the Davis Enterprise showing new UCD band uniforms at $125,000 at a time when a 32% student fee hike is being voted on is indicative of how arrogant the UC system is when it comes to frivolous expenditures.

    sounds wise and to the point, but was a snap judgement that overlooked certain realities of whose money it is and where it really came from.

  40. Frankly

    she has worked with Mayor Kevin Johnson to develop his charter school (Sac High), and now she and Mr. Johnson are engaged.

    wdf1: Thanks for the information. Somehow I missed that she and Johnson are engaged. That was a good video news piece except there was no discussion about the dismal performance of DC schools, and how underperforming teachers contribute to the problems. I know this was a story about Rhee, but it is infuriating that we get to ignore the big crappy-performance elephant in the room.

  41. wdf1

    Somehow I missed that she and Johnson are engaged.

    A couple of weeks ago:

    [url]http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2009/11/michelle_rhee_kevin_johnson_pu.html?hpid=news-col-blog[/url]

    except there was no discussion about the dismal performance of DC schools

    Some of the earlier piece from Learning Matters on Michelle Rhee touched on this. At this point, it’s the context for why she’s there and why she’s getting all the attention.

  42. E Roberts Musser

    Greg Kuperberg: “No Elaine, it’s not that simple. Incredibly, only about 1/6 of UC’s budget come from state taxpayers. The federal government is now a bigger customer of UC than the state government. Medical payments are another chuck that is also larger than the state compact. As of this year, the state compact is dropping to fourth place, because it is crossing places with student fees.”

    Yes, it is that simple. People pay federal as well as state taxes. Federal money that goes to UC is paid from the taxpayers’ collective pockets. So is grant money from companies ultimately, since the cost of the grant money will be passed on to the customer.

    wdf1: “Perhaps you can quibble over the $80K from Campus Recreation (a little more research could determine what’s up with that), but again I think it’s very disturbing that you think you know what’s best for the Band-uh! alumni donors to be spending their money.

    It might have been gracious them to forego the expenditure and donate it to the general pot this year or at least prudent to hang on to it for now. But it’s still their money and not my tax dollars. Your original statement above –“

    Yes, I can quibble about how Campus Rec money was spent. And yes I can believe it was not wise to waste money on band uniforms at a time when the alumni funding would be better kept for more pressing essentials, since tough budget times are ahead.

  43. wdf1

    Yes, I can quibble about how Campus Rec money was spent. And yes I can believe it was not wise to waste money on band uniforms at a time when the alumni funding would be better kept for more pressing essentials, since tough budget times are ahead.

    So what would you have Cal Aggie fees and Band-uh alum donations pay for instead?

  44. wdf1

    Here’s an interesting take on why student fees were raised:

    (take blood pressure medicine before reading)

    [url]http://www.cucfa.org/news/2009_oct11.php[/url]

    Follow up articles can be found at

    [url]http://www.cucfa.org/news/index.php[/url]

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