Illustration by Christine Hipp

Jan. 18 marked the end of an era. After nearly five turbulent years on the job, Mark Yudof announced he’ll be stepping down as UC President this August. With the regents currently in the midst of a nationwide talent search to find his successor, it’s high time that we as students reflect on what direction the UC system should be moving in.

The last five years have not been kind to higher education, and UC is no exception. Yudof began his term in 2008 at a time of unprecedented cuts to UC’s state funding and general financial turmoil. Since then tuition has nearly tripled while faculty and program budgets have been slashed.

Yudof undeniably faced an uphill battle from the moment he took office, and the responses of the UC system to its fiscal woes cannot be attributed solely to him. Some of those responses are commendable and should be continued in the future. The Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, which extends grants to students of families making less than $80,000 a year, is perhaps the best such example.

In other ways however, the direction that the UC system has taken in the last five years is less hopeful. For the first time since its creation, we now receive more money from student tuition than from state funding. Yudof also launched “Project You Can”, which seeks to raise a billion dollars in private donations to supplement losses in state funding.

Over the last 10 years, the UC has also become increasingly reliant on construction bonds backed by student tuition as a way to continue expansion despite falling state funding. At the same time, the hiring of administrative staff has skyrocketed relative to the hiring of instructors and other staff.

This increasing privatization of the UC system must be examined closely and critically by the next president.

When the Master Plan that created the UCs was enacted in 1960, it envisioned a system of universities and community colleges that would function as a public good, not as an enterprise that exists solely to turn a profit. Furthermore, the increasing privatization of the UC system has also paralleled what many students and faculty see as an increasing lack of transparency.

If the UC is ever going to achieve its full potential as public center of higher education, it is imperative that students, faculty and the public at large have a voice in the UC’s decision making process.

California’s recent passage of Prop 30, which avoided a $250 million cut to the UC system and prevented a potential mid-year tuition hike of 20 percent, can be taken as a sign that the public is beginning to appreciate how important our university system is to a healthy state. That sentiment, however, will be squandered if the UC system continues to transform itself into a private institution.

No one will deny that the UC system must continue making changes in the years to come. Although California’s budget crisis looks like it has almost abated, alleviating one major source of concern, the UCs and higher education as a whole are in a transitional period.

The next president of the UC system will be responsible for bringing us into the era of online education, and must do so in a way that embraces these new technological opportunities, but not at the expense of the quality of a UC education. Doubtless the input of students and teachers will be instrumental in achieving that goal.

As the UCs move past the worst of their financial woes, it will be more important than ever for their next president to remember the values of the Master Plan, which stressed quality, affordability, accessibility and innovation, but not profit for profit’s sake. During this time of uncertainty, the UC’s next president would do well to remember that a public education means just that.

Data released by UCOP on April 17 reported that an unprecedented 160,939 students applied for the fall 2012 quarter UC-system wide, with 80,289 admitted. Out of those students admitted, 10,309 were from out of state.

UC Santa Cruz admissions adviser Robert Szemeredi said in a brief interview that UC admissions officers “don’t really care whether students are from California or not … we offer admission based on whether or not [students] meet and exceed UC requirements.”

UC Santa Cruz received 40,622 total applicants. Out of the 19,936 freshman undergraduates who were admitted, 1,082 were out-of state-students and 589 were international students. UCSC admitted 514 more non-California resident students than last year. Non-resident students currently pay $23,000 more than California residents in annual student tuition fees.

The website for the University of California budget shows that the 2011-2012 budget was the first time in UC history that student fees and tuition contributed more to “core operating funds” than did the California state general funds.

California state spending on education has decreased by $6 billion over the last year, according to a study conducted by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University.

Campus provost Alison Galloway said in an on-campus budget forum Feb. 27 that the UC faces a potential $200 million budget reduction. This loss in state funding would create holes in the budget that would need to be accounted for.

Galloway said under “optimistic” conditions, the cuts in the overall UC budget could “trigger” up to a $4.5 million funding reduction for 2012-13.

While admission of out-of-state students has increased, numbers show that California residents aren’t necessarily being pushed out of the system. Admissions have been cut back on the whole due to a lack of resources. At UCSC, 18,265 California high school seniors were admitted for the fall 2012 quarter, up from 17,917 last year. However, admission offers to UCSC for all applicants have decreased from 68.1 percent in 2011 to 60.5 percent in 2012, indicating increased competition among UC admissions.

Szemeredi said non-resident students make up less than 2 percent of the student body, a fact that is “dissuasive” to potential applicants who feel that UC Santa Cruz is dominated by Californians.

“We’re really desiring diversity,” Szemeredi said.

Illustration by Amanda Alten.

According to NPR, the average debt for students graduating from a public institution has risen from $10,700 in the 1999–2000 year to $12,300 in the 2009–2010 year. In September 2011, the U.S. Department of Education reported that the federal loan default rate had risen in public institutions from 6 percent in 2008 to 7.2 percent in 2009.

As student loans become more and more necessary to afford rising tuition costs, it would be beneficial for college students to better understand how to handle their personal finances and avoid disasters like defaulting on their loans.

According to a poll conducted five years ago by Savings Without a Budget, a website that gives financial advice to help readers increase their savings, 89 percent of those surveyed said they believe personal finance should be a required part of every child’s education.

Although finances can be taught in the home, financial knowledge would be more effectively and equally dispensed if taught in our public school institutions, at either the high school or college level. This would ensure that students were equipped with the necessary tools to tackle student loans and other important financial responsibilities.

According to the article “90% of People Believe Personal Finance Should Be Taught in School,” written by Brian Carr in 2007, there are problems with teaching personal finance at home. It tends to keep poor students in a state of poverty and gives rich students a leg up on handling their personal finances successfully.

If there is to be any hope for equal footing, personal finance should be taught in schools. Some high schools already offer life skills classes in which personal finance is taught, but it is not yet a general requirement for all students, and it should be.

Finance education should be taught in high school as a broad public school curriculum requirement. Select programs exist that teach high school students how to balance their checkbooks along with other relevant finance knowledge, but not every public school has the same resources.

If personal finance is to be taught in high schools, it needs to be more accessible and equally applied as part of high school requirements. Since this curriculum doesn’t already exist, it is up to colleges to take note and compensate.

UC Santa Cruz’s economics department offers courses like public and international finance, but these cover world markets rather than applicable financial knowledge for a student’s personal life. UCSC teaches personal finance at its extension campus in Silicon Valley although there is still not a personal finance class offered at the main campus.

UCSC students taking out student loans complete “Pre-Loan Counseling for Student Loan Borrowers” a service offered by Student Business Services to help students understand loans. This online tutorial is insufficient because it only scratches the surface of loan counseling and can easily be completed by parents or family members, cheating the student of any education at all. Counseling of this type would be most effective if offered in person.

Better yet, loan counseling, taught alongside other personal finance topics including credit card management and understanding mortgages, could be a general education class at UCSC.

All of this does not mean students should not also be responsible with their personal financial decisions, but it does mean that we need a solid base platform of knowledge from which all can jump.

Knowledge is power, and students have a right to power over their personal finances, even if we sometimes feel powerless over rising tuition costs.

Illustration by Louise Leong

At more than $1 trillion, total student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed total credit card debt, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Combined with credit debt and local, state and federal government debt, Americans today face a seemingly insurmountable task in obtaining an education at a reasonable cost.

In this time of uncertainty and recession, it is time to reevaluate our public education system and the financial options available to students. The impact of the student loan debt crisis does not only hinder college graduates — it damages the economy as a whole.

In California, we once had a policy called the Master Plan that kept the cost of attending UC affordable. Far from keeping to the plan, fees have risen astronomically in recent years.

To pursue students who have defaulted on $67 billion’s worth in college loans, the Department of Education has hired 23 private collection agencies. Many graduates cannot afford to make large payments every month and ultimately stop paying altogether.

The federal government offers three lending programs:

1.    Stafford loans, subsidized and unsubsidized rates
2.      Parent loans for undergraduates, PLUS loans for graduate students
3.      Need-based Perkins, set to expire this year

These loans provide advantages over private loans and credit cards because they offer fixed interest rates and deferments on repayment, among other consumer protections. However, students do not have the option to declare bankruptcy on federal loans. Payment plans are generally inflexible once one is out of school and unemployment is still a large problem.

By launching its “Know Before You Owe” student loan project on April 11, the CFPB has made strides toward educating families about college costs. A new government website allows prospective college students to compare costs of various undergraduate and community colleges.

However, more drastic changes must be considered to alleviate the burden many graduates must shoulder. The editorial board of UC Riverside’s student newspaper, The Highlander, released a proposal in January 2012, the UC Student Investment Proposal. Also referred to as Fix UC, the proposal allows students to attend a UC at no upfront cost and requires them to pay the university 5 percent of their annual income for 20 years after graduation.

This type of radical change in the way students pay for a public education could mean a more stable way of generating revenue for the UC and an accessible payment plan for California public college students. A similar proposal has been made to address CSU budget problems.

On July 1, 2009, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 was enacted. Its income-based repayment plan allowed graduate debt for the class of 2012 and beyond to be forgiven after 25 years of payments capped at 10 percent of one’s annual income.

President Obama proposed a change in his 2010 State of the Union address — which Congress quickly passed — that lowered the length of payments to 20 years and reduced payments to 10 percent. This type of alternative policy is a step in the right direction.

Australian universities use a system similar to the Fix UC proposal. In Finland, there are no tuition fees for university students.

The student debt crisis is out of control, and a return to the essence of the UC’s tuition policy laid out in the Master Plan is key to a viable solution.
More info about Fix UC program:

Fix UC website: www.fixuc.org
Petition for Fix UC: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/fixuc/

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

This June I will walk away with a piece of paper that somehow legitimizes me and my abilities. But I’m leaving when it seems my education is barely beginning.

And when I walk, I will be the first in my family to hold a diploma from a four-year university. I will be one of the few in my family to have seemingly escaped the traps and pitfalls of poverty. My graduation is not about me but about my family, the communities I come from, and the advancement of a group of people that has struggled to rise above the positions of store clerks and office drones.

But while my graduation means so much to so many others, it means nothing to me.

As a first-generation student, I had very skewed perceptions of what university would be like — my visions were much more akin to the things I’d seen in movies than reality. I wanted to sit in musty libraries and engage in heated conversations, take that class with the professor who would change my entire way of thinking, and find a purpose and a cause. I wanted to become passionate about my education in a way I had never been before, which I hoped to gain here.

But two unimpressive years went by, and I began to believe I was a number, a tuition, a walking dollar sign, and my successes and failures were only part of statistics and schematics.

I was not growing intellectually, but completely stagnating. No one was pushing me to question and no one was asking me to think critically — I could simply regurgitate the words my professors and TAs said and I’d be golden. It felt like high school with a much bigger price tag.

It wasn’t until last year when I stumbled my way through a City on a Hill Press interview and managed to nail down a job at the Ethnic Resource Center that I found what I was looking for.

Everything I ever learned at UC Santa Cruz I didn’t learn in a classroom. I have learned from my peers, from student organizers and leaders, from people who work hard to insure we as students get the most out of our education, because — honestly — the academic system itself isn’t delivering.

I have met students who have interests completely divergent from my own — environmental justice, race and politics, feminist studies, international relations and foreign policy — and I have grown because of them. I’ve talked to them, traded reading material with them, and engaged in conversations I am not having in the classroom. And because of these students, I have unearthed interests and passions of my own that were never explored in the confines of a class.

Where the UC — and where public education overall — has failed me is in ignoring me and numerous students like me. By being a business first and an institution of higher learning second — by raising my tuition, cutting resources and limiting my access to classes that piqued my interest — the UC put the mighty green before my intellectual growth, and I was never given the opportunity to realize my abilities.

I was too consumed with finishing my major and my general education requirements that it isn’t until now that I have the time to take the classes I’ve always wanted to — I’ve never enrolled in an anthropology class, a politics or economics or art class. The closest I’ve come is sitting silently in the back of a lecture hall, absorbing information I would otherwise not have an opportunity to learn because my name isn’t on a roster. It isn’t until now, the end of my fourth and final year, that I have the ability to round out an education that would otherwise have a very narrow scope.

There’s something wrong with our educational system, something much bigger than the UC itself, when we are only churning out students and improving our graduation rates without a second thought to what it is these students are walking away with. I was lucky enough to find peers — and eventually professors and advisors — who care about my success, but how many others will graduate without that experience?

The success of one means nothing if the collective is still struggling. The reason my professors, advisors and peers are invested in my education — and I theirs — is because my success is contingent upon their success. If the majority is stuck in a system that leaves us hungry, unfulfilled and still searching, what do the achievements of a few mean?

In the end, what I’ve learned from my time at UCSC is that in order to succeed, we must make our education our own. If we never stray away from the standard, if we never look elsewhere, if we believe the classroom is the start and end of our education, we may burn out, disillusioned and dissatisfied. As students, it’s important we realize while the institution is the beginning, everything amazing, delicious, thrilling, interesting and entirely overwhelming we could learn is outside of lecture halls. It’s in experiences and conversations.

Even as students rally and demonstrate, we’re learning. We’re embracing our education in a way the classroom doesn’t allow. We’re experiencing something that can never be experienced from a textbook: activism to create create substantial change.

Even in this climate, we as students can — and still are — defining ourselves by the education we are choosing for ourselves.

“Tax, tax, tax the rich — we can stop the deficit!”

Around 300 students, teachers and community activists encircled a statue of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella in the state Capitol’s rotunda as they chanted for a change in state budgetary priorities.

Roughly 60 UC Santa Cruz students joined teachers from the California Teachers Association union (CTA), community activists and other college students in Sacramento on Monday. Students from CSU Sacramento were expected to have a larger presence, but some UCSC students said they may not have been informed.

Photo by Sal Ingram.

The rally over budget cuts and just taxation of corporations and the rich ended with 68 total arrests, including 23 UCSC students. Despite the expectation of a larger turnout, fifth-year Melissa Cornelius said the mass arrest was effective in terms of publicity.

“They’re putting so many cuts on vulnerable people in the state, so I think the [mass arrest] was a beginning response to that,” Cornelius said. “It plays a role in bringing attention to the issue … People don’t have to take state legislation if they don’t want to.”

Numerous CTA members from across the state did not teach on Monday in order to travel to Sacramento to participate in the rally and voice their opinions.

“If we don’t have [tax] extensions, there will be 35–40 kindergarten through third grade students per teacher in our district,” said second grade teacher Greta Benavides from South Whittier.

Kindergarten teacher Jessica Hobbs from San Francisco had a different reason to be there, as she marched in the sea of matching CTA light blue shirts reading “We Are One.”

“We need to change our tax structure where corporations and the rich are justly taxed,” Hobbs said. “That’d save our budget deficit situation.”

Around 200 CTA members were present, and six stayed and were arrested, second-year Noah Miska said. UCSC students said it was hard to occupy the Capitol, as the CTA members had multiple priorities and many were on the fence about staying.

“It was difficult to get a clear message from everyone on what they’d do,” Miska, who was arrested, said. “If everyone at the rally would’ve stayed we wouldn’t have been arrested.”

The majority of CTA members left after the hour-long rally when their permit to be in the rotunda expired at 6 p.m.

“They were using the imagery of what happened in Wisconsin, but were lobbying,” Cornelius said. “That’s not what happened in Wisconsin.”

Photo by Sal Ingram.

The rally caught the eye of San Rafael City Council member Marc Levine. While most passersby clad in business attire walked through the crowd of activists without paying attention, Levine clapped with the beat of the chants and reminisced about his experiences protesting 16 years ago as a CSU Northridge student.

“I have awe and respect for them,” Levine said. “I’m here to support them.”

Neha Sobti, a community activist, came by bus from San Francisco. Sobit said she found activism of this nature important in general, as she’s pursuing a career in education, and on this day particularly, because she could afford to be there when others could not.

“I can use my body in place of teachers who can’t,” Sobti said, about rallying on a school day.

The activists who stayed past 6 p.m. continued chanting, “We’re doing this for your children.”

Miska said it had an impact on the California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers, who were more courteous than the police officers.

“[CHP officers] didn’t want to make eye contact,” Miska said. “They were just following orders.”

After the arrests, the activists were eventually taken to the county jail, where they were kept in holding cells.

“They were disgusting, like being in a public bathroom for seven hours,” he said.

The students were released the next morning starting at 3 a.m., and Miska and Cornelius said they were thankful supportive students waited around for them.

Though first-year Adam Odsess-Rubin did not stay for the full occupation, he said everyone’s presence was essential.

“Unless students stand up, the government will keep cutting,” Odsess-Rubin said. “That’s why I’m here. My education is important and I value it.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Students, staff and faculty mobilized across all 23 California State University campuses, one UC campus and numerous campuses nationwide yesterday to protest the degradation of higher education. The mobilization, deemed the “Class Action” defense of public higher education, was endorsed by the California Faculty Association (CFA) and joined by students and staff.

The CFA declared the day of action as a “critical” move to “win a fair contract for faculty and staff and protect quality education for students.”

“This was no small thing,” said spokesperson for the CFA Brian Ferguson. “We are a unified voice, we are not going to fight for the scraps of what is left in the budget. We need to take steps to ensure that the education that was there for us will be there for the next generation.”

Ferguson estimated that around 12,000 individuals participated in the day of action across the 23 CSUs, including CSU Humboldt, where an estimated 500 individuals mobilized. Sit-ins were attempted at 12 CSUs and carried out at 11. At CSU Long Beach the attempted sit-in was halted because the building had been shut down prior to their arrival. Sit-ins also took place on campuses ranging from San Francisco State University up to Humboldt State.

Ferguson said that while the CFA supports the sit-ins, the action was coordinated by students. At CSU Sacramento, faculty engaged in the sit-in with students. Ferguson said that the sit-ins were generally successful, as students and administrators met and in many cases reached agreement on the protestors’ demands.

“Many sit-ins got meetings with administration and got localized demands met,” Ferguson said. “The publicity got the message across — that students are paying attention and invested in higher education. Even at Long Beach, where they did not sit-in, they managed to shut down the building.”

As of press time, students and faculty engaging in the sit-in at CSU Sacramento were meeting with administrators and had only one demand left to be met.

The day of action was nationally recognized by Universities in New York and New Jersey, including Rutgers State University. Ferguson expects that the day of action will be met with further mobilization.

“This is not a one-time event,” Ferguson said. “This is the start of a campaign.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

“Double tuition.”

This looming threat, though a speculative comment made by Gov. Jerry Brown in a speech last week, becomes more and more of a potential reality for UC students and Californians with each day that passes and an all-cuts budget remains the likely option for Brown to sign off on.

Brown just traveled to Riverside to rally Californians into pressuring four state legislature Republicans to allow tax extensions to be on a June ballot, and thus allow Californians to vote on the matter. If the extensions do not make it on the ballot, or if Californians do not vote for them, the extensions will expire and the UC will likely face a $1 billion cut to its operating budget.

Such a cut, Brown speculated, would mean that students in the UC may see a twofold rise in their tuition. Brown also mentioned campus closures as a potential way of coping, if the tax extensions are not enacted.

The behavior of the Republicans in the legislature is abhorrent. They are not doing their job, which is to let the people of California vote.

The fact that doubled tuition is even a possibility for the UC system is absurd. Such a move would have devastating impacts. It is understandable that cuts need to be made to every facet of the state — and as hard as it is to face, even to the UC system — but to make this kind of cut would be detrimental and extremely shortsighted. Cutting $1 billion from the UC would not be just a cut. It would be the elimination of the public institution.

For students in the UC system and families supporting their children in the system, this would not be an issue of needing to save more, work more or taking out more loans — it would force many students to drop out. If enacted, students in the UC system would be trapped into paying private school tuition, despite the fact that they enrolled at a public institution.

Brown’s statement that closing some campuses would be another possible solution is also shortsighted, for a number of reasons. Closing down any UC campus would make entrance into the UC system that much more difficult, flooding more students into state universities and community colleges — schools that are also receiving immense cuts. This would not be a solution to anything.­­­ It would be deflection, moving the problem to another part of the state’s budget.

Furthermore, any closure of a UC campus would mean thousands of employees without jobs. A closure to universities of that size would overwhelm the state with more unemployment.

Either move — closure of some UC campuses or doubling tuition — violates the objectives that this beautiful system was founded on: affordability, accessibility and the advancement of knowledge. While each of these facets of the UC have been jeopardized in the past few years as dramatic raises in student fees and tuition, increases in class sizes, and the reduction in number of teaching assistants have been implemented, these two moves would be a complete affront to the more than century-old system.

There has been a disillusionment with placing blame for the absurd climbs in student fees, for the forced furloughs, for the laying off of numerous employees, for the increased class sizes and the decreased accessibility, but blaming will not be a means for saving the UC. We all need to rally the state into providing more funding for higher education and to push the Republicans to let Californians vote. After all, it is our system.

We cannot keep blaming just Yudof, UCOP and the chancellors and looking within the UC for a solution — the fact remains that the state has all but stopped investing in higher education. The solution cannot be found in parading to chancellors’ and vice chancellors’ homes and blaming just the higher-ups in the UC system. The solution must be found in all of us: in our parents, our neighbors, our family friends, in Californians. The disillusionment must end. Everyone contributes to this system, and if we want to save it, we all must take part in that. We must join forces rather than splinter.

If this system is going to be saved, all Californians need to rekindle their sense of ownership and pride for the system that once had international prestige — the UC is all of ours, and Californians need to remember that.

Like one editor’s grandmother said to her husband when she first saw the library at UCSC, “This is ours, we support this, and can you believe that?”

That is the attitude that will save the UC.

Ilustration by Bela Messex

The teaching assistants at UC Santa Cruz usually grade your essays and finals, lead discussion sections, provide a connection to the professor, and help establish the curriculum and teaching style of the class.  Let’s take a moment to realize just how important TAs are to the University of California, though they deserve much more than just a moment.

Granted, there is some overlap in workload with the professors, but they need TAs just as much as we, the students, do.  How else would a class of 200 students receive their essays or tests back in a timely fashion?

However, the TA is a dying breed, due greatly to constant budget issues that have plagued our university system for years. And now, we face the possibility of losing an additional 120 TAs.

We need our TAs now more than ever, and making cuts to that sector of our university would be doing a huge disservice to the students who essentially fund every aspect of our university at this point.

It’s our money, so we should be able to say what we want to keep — and what we want to keep is our TAs.

Hang with us here, because as crazy as this may sound, the TAs are integral to our learning environment.  If we take them out of the system, we’re going to be the ones facing the repercussions.

Let’s build up some of this nightmare.

Cutting TAs would mean: less student-instructor interaction in larger classes, more difficulty enrolling in smaller courses (since the number of TAs usually dictates the class size), and even fewer places to engage in open discussion and refine our perspectives.

And that’s just what we’re able to perceive. Who knows what else would follow in the aftermath of more cuts? It’s probably safe to say there would be more protests, and deservedly so.

Our university is hemorrhaging.  It’s an issue that California is dealing with, from state jobs to the housing market and even NBA basketball teams (farewell, Sacramento Kings). The issue is universal.

We just want to know that the university is truly looking into all aspects of their spending, and that they aren’t just figuring that these graduate students — who give up their time, blood, sweat and tears — are not just a dime a dozen. Individual TAs can’t be easily replaced, especially while they’re getting screwed over as a whole.

City on a Hill Press has always suggested looking at cutting from the top, because top UC administrators’ salaries could easily pay for many TAs.

Another possible solution is offering class credit to TAs instead of paying them. This is something that is already done in some departments, such as psychology and economics, and college core courses.

These are hard times for everyone in California, especially within the UC system — with an additional $500 million in cuts on the way, and the possibility of even more.  However, making cuts to the TAs, the very people who arguably have the largest connection with students and the way that they learn, is not the right move for the UC system.

Photo by Devika Agarwal.

The University of California’s Commission on the Future released its first recommendations on how to balance the ideals of accessible and affordable education with the current realities of dwindling financial resources.

Victor Sanchez is the UC Student Association President and UCSC Student Union Assembly External Vice Chair. The fourth-year Latin American/Latino Studies and sociology double major is also one of the three students on the Commission on the Future. He sat down with City on a Hill Press to discuss the Commission’s recommendations and how a few in particular might cause a riot.

~~~~~

City on a Hill Press: How will the Commission on the Future influence UC polices?

Victor Sanchez: Chairman [Russell] Gould and President [Mark] Yudof are the co-chairs, so it’s hard to say that there won’t be any kind of big, significant reforms.

CHP: What kind of influence, as a student, do you have on the commission?

VS: When you count me and [the two other student regents] we could be a real thorn in everybody’s side. Ultimately, by myself, I was speaking up a lot about the recommendations and the concerns I had in terms of the dependency and reliance on student fees.

CHP: Did you propose any of the 29 recommendations?

VS: The institutional aid for undocumented students. It is a campaign that has been wanting to be won for years in terms of allowing students who have paid into financial aid for years to get some in return. (*Editor’s note: currently, undocumented students pay in-state tuition but are not eligible for financial aid) This recommendation will allow them to see access to those funds. We [the student regents and I] are going to push really hard on that proposal. That’s the golden chip we are looking to take with us and move forward.

CHP: Which, if any, of the proposals do you disagree with?

VS: There are some very poor ones. Specifically when you look at funding strategies. There are two proposals. One is to allow fees to increase 5 percent each year for five years … basically bringing fees up to around thirteen thousand dollars. The second [proposal] is for fees to rise 15 percent each year for five years, allowing it [tuition and fees] to get upward of around twenty thousand dollars per year.

It was funny because when we started off with the remarks they had one slide [with the] regent’s priorities and I didn’t see [ a priority of having] ‘no student fees,’ so I made a comment, ‘This is great because we keep hearing that you guys are so reluctant to raise our fees yet it fails to show up on a priority list.’

Ultimately, it’s just unfortunate that they can’t come up with any better solutions than to put the burden on [students’] backs.

I told a [commission member] on the side, ‘If you all pass these funding strategies to raise fees for five years … you’re gonna have riots … it’s going to be real bad.’

CHP: Were there any other solutions other than to raise student fees?

VS: The conversation about alternative sources of revenue hasn’t happened [on the commission] and [commission members] do not want them to happen. There is a need for them to expand the conversation and start having it.

CHP: Were there any proposals you did not expect?

VS: One was the differential fees by campus. That to me totally undermines the mission of the UC. It deters people away from the University of California. You would now have all these little private universities and it’s like, what’s the point? That was one of the pretty far out proposals that we saw. They want to cut down majors instead of looking at GE requirements, which is a good way to slim down stuff.

CHP: Which ideas do you support?

VS: Institutional aid is one and the three-year undergraduate degree option. A lot of students already do that anyways. That option would be good to have for a lot of folks who are prepared and ready for college. I don’t think there’s anything else though.

Photo by Kathryn Power.

Photo by Kathryn Power.

Photo by Kathryn Power.

Thousands gathered at the Capitol, on campuses and in the streets — more specifically the freeways — across the state last Thursday. Students, parents, educators and administrators from K-12 public schools, California community colleges, California State University (CSU) campuses and the University of California united to protest cuts to California public education.

UC Berkeley students Meegan Brooks, a fourth-year political science major and Eden Amans, a first-year English major, said they made the trip from their campus to the Capitol to join the group of 2,000 advocating for public education alongside the California Faculty Association.

“We’re really just showing support,” Amans said. “That’s what’s really going to get the most attention — the fact that all of us are here from all over and we’re all united in this one cause.”

The actions at the Capitol and on individual campuses garnered the attention of national media like “Saturday Night Live,” the San Francisco Chronicle, and CNN.

UC Davis specifically was criticized for extreme actions taken by protesters on campus. An estimated 300 protesters attempted to march onto Interstate 80 after gathering on the UC Davis campus. More than 120 campus, city, county and highway patrol law enforcement officers resorted to the use of force in an attempt to halt the crowd’s progress onto the highway. Officers wielded batons and fired pepper balls at the advancing crowd. They arrested one student.

On campus, protesters pulled fire alarms, disrupting classes and library patrons.

Julia Ann Easley, senior public information representative for the UCD News Service, said March 4’s events were extraordinary for the Davis campus.

“For the most part, our campus protesters are peaceful and law-abiding,” she said.

Easley, who has served on the UCD campus for more than 12 years, said the administration’s primary concern on March 4 was student and community safety.

“It’s the first time I’ve known students to try to lock up the interstate,” she said. “It made my heart sink out of the danger.”

Although rumors of violence and disruptive behavior at UC Santa Cruz circulated on Thursday, it has been determined that the protest was nonviolent, and reports by the administration of destructive behavior were misinformed. The rear windshield of a single car was broken when the vehicle attempted to forcibly cross the picket line, and, contrary to initial reports from the UCSC administration, thus far no police reports have been filed indicating the use or presence of weapons at the demonstration.

In Sacramento, representatives from the California Faculty Association and members of the legislature and state Senate addressed the crowd on the north steps of the Capitol building. Assemblyman Alberto Torrico was one of several politicians to speak at the podium, but he was the only one scheduled to do so.

Torrico focused on promoting Assembly Bill 656, an oil severance tax that would fund public education. Torrico, who authored this bill, is an advocate for higher education.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg also spoke, and applauded the protesters’ actions as a means of protecting California’s economic future.

“If we are going to create jobs, if we’re going to improve our economy, if we’re going to have a better budget, the last thing in the world to do is to cut public education,” he said.

Reid Milburn, president and regional senator representing Sacramento for the Student Senate of California Community Colleges (SSCCC), also addressed the crowd at the Capitol. Reid and members of the SSCCC are organizing a second march on the Capitol for March 22, and expect around 8,000 participants from across the state.

“I highly encourage any and all UC students — and any students or educational supporters from across the state — to join us,” she said in an e-mail to City on a Hill Press. “It is about time students stood up and helped California understand that the first priority in a fiscal crisis such as the recession should be to educate its people.”

Steinberg encouraged students on March 4 to continue their involvement in actions like the March 22 rally.

“You have already made a huge difference,” he said. “You have already changed the debate, but there is a long way to go. Let this be the beginning, and let this — once again, because of your activism, your advocacy, your stubborn unwillingness to take no for an answer — let this be the year that we begin restoring the California dream of public education.”

Photo by Arianna Puopolo.

Assemblyman Ira Ruskin is the co-chair of the California legislature’s Joint Committee on the Master Plan. This committe is reassessing California’s public higher education system during the year of the Master Plan’s 50th anniversary. Photo by Arianna Puopolo.

Illustration by Kenny Srivijittakar.

2010 marks the 50th anniversary of California’s commitment to higher education.

One half-century ago, California implemented its Master Plan for Higher Education. Since, it has become one of the state’s most lasting achievements.

“I think nothing has been more important in the past 50 years to the economic vitality and the quality of life in California than the Master Plan for Higher Education,” said Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, who currently co-chairs a joint legislative committee on the Master Plan.

In 50 years, California’s public universities have become some of the most esteemed in the world, educating millions with instructors who make groundbreaking research — even some who hold Nobel Prizes.

But in the past 30 years, the universities have increasingly become underfunded, budgets sliced by lawmakers at the state capital. Still, the California Master Plan for Higher Education continues to shape the debate on how to educate California’s, the nation’s and the world’s young people.

The Master Plan created a new structure of college education in California — a system dedicated to enabling students from any background to attend college.

“The important accomplishments of the Master Plan,” said Todd Greenspan, director of academic planning for the University of California Office of the President, “were reducing costs and promising access to everybody.”

The Plan

By 1960, California had almost 16 million residents, many of whom were World War II veterans who had moved west after the war. Their sons and daughters, members of the “baby boom” generation — almost 80 million Americans, born between the end of World War II and the early 1960s — were soon to enter California’s colleges in droves.

“We had a huge wave of students coming [to begin college],” Greenspan said, “and no real clear way to educate all of these students.”

The Master Plan for Higher Education was an attempt to efficiently funnel these young Californians into college. It sounded simple enough.

In 1960, Gov. Edmund Brown signed the Donahoe Act, dividing the three systems of public higher education in California — the UC, the California State University (CSU) and community colleges — into three specific functions. This act was the part of the Master Plan enshrined into law.

The University of California became foremost a research university, which would confer undergraduate and graduate degrees plus professional degrees, such as law degrees and MBAs. The California State University would emphasize teaching and award undergraduate degrees and master’s degrees. Community colleges would become two-year preparatory schools, facilitating transfer to a UC or a CSU, focusing on lower-division classes while also providing vocational and remedial training.

This division was an attempt to reduce the costs of administering California’s large higher education system while still providing admission to students interested in pursuing a college degree. With the three-tier system, UC and CSU campuses could take their capacity of students while the rest could go to a community college for two years, then transfer to the CSU or UC of their choice.

The Master Plan allowed the UC system to add two new campuses, UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz, while the CSU opened three.

Clark Kerr, an architect of the Master Plan and president of the UC in 1960, described it years later as a bold and pioneering blueprint for educating college students.

“We started [the] Master Plan asking the state to commit itself … to creating a place in higher education for every single young person,” Kerr said during a 1999 committee hearing on the Master Plan.

“It was the first time in the history of any state in the United States, or any nation in the world, where such a commitment was made — that a state or a nation would promise there would be a place ready for every high school graduate or person otherwise qualified,” Kerr continued. “It was an enormous commitment, and the basis for the Master Plan.”

The Master Plan has had a tremendous effect on the education levels of California residents. According to a 2005 presentation to the Assembly Higher Education Committee, enrollment in higher education jumped from around 300,000 in 1958 to over 1.8 million in 2003. By 2008, the California Postsecondary Education Commission concluded that 2.45 million students were enrolled in some form of higher education in California.

The Plan’s Unwritten Commitments

The Donahoe Act specified the role of each university in California’s broadening higher education system. However, the Master Plan was also an expression of certain goals not written into law.

First among them was a student enrollment formula. Access and affordability was key. The authors of the Master Plan proposed that the UC guarantee admission to the top 12.5 percent of high school graduates in the state. They further proposed that the CSU promise spots for the top third of the graduating class, and the rest would find space in community colleges.

Second, the Master Plan pledged to continue California’s century-old tradition of keeping higher education tuition-free to residents of the state, but recognized that students should pay supplementary costs for housing, athletics and other student activities.

This idea — of a college education affordable to all — has become a point of contention during the recent state budget crisis, which has prompted student fee increases and campus protests.

The State of California, which provides funding for the bulk of instruction at California’s public universities, has slowly shifted funds away from these institutions.

“I think the problem now is that the state is not committed to funding it,” academic planning director Greenspan said.

While legislators engage in fiscal fistfights over balanced budgets, taxes and spending cuts, higher education has seen less and less money. The UC and the CSU have been forced to rely more and more on student fees.

Steve Boilard is the director of higher education policy at the California Legislative Analysts Office, the nonpartisan policy analysts for the California State Legislature.

“The idea that the state should not charge tuition has really gone by the wayside,” he said. “Ten thousand dollars to go to a UC — even though we call it fees, in effect that’s tuition.”

The Current Review

This year, the first members of the “baby boomer” generation will reach retirement age and begin their generation’s exit from the American workforce.

Fifty years after the California Master Plan for Higher Education ensured a place in college for this retiring generation, legislators at the state Capitol in Sacramento are beginning to reassess the Master Plan.

The California legislature has convened the Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education. It is headed by Assemblyman Ira Ruskin from the 21st Assembly District, encompassing San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod from the 32nd District, which includes the cities of Pomona, San Bernardino and Montclair.

This is the legislature’s eighth review of the Master Plan. During the last review in 2002, ideas for a master plan from kindergarten to college were discussed, but no laws were ever formalized.

“The last Master Plan review really didn’t result in any changes,” said Boilard, who testified before the current committee. “[But] it’s a good thing to have these conversations.”

The committee has held three hearings: an opening hearing, one on universal access and one on affordability and financial aid.

Assemblyman Ruskin spoke from his office after the hearing on affordability and financial aid on Feb. 17.

“The most important reason for convening the committee,” he said, “is that our system of public higher education is at risk, and we to have to take an objective and honest look at the system and make decisions about it.”

The committee has scheduled three more hearings, after which its members hope to put forward bills to amend or update the Master Plan. Some ideas, like major increases in financial aid in conjunction with higher student fees and a reorganization of the original division in the Master Plan, have been discussed by committee members and speakers invited to testify for the committee.

The goal of the committee is not to find a short-term fix for funding problems and fee increases, but rather to fashion a long-term vision for the state’s role in public higher education.

“If we recommend modification of policies, we need to do it with the long term in mind,” Ruskin said. “We owe that to the people of California. That’s what the people did who set the Master Plan.”

“The world has changed since even the last review of the Master Plan,” he continued. “We are now in a global market, and our graduates have to compete in a global marketplace. … So higher education has to be viewed through that lens more so than ever before.”

The committee is addressing ideas for amending the Master Plan, while also trying to ensure that California can educate enough young people to keep its economy competitive.

“In order to replace the baby-boomer generation, it’s important that young people from disadvantaged communities go to college and university and graduate,” Ruskin said.

Some higher education policy analysts believe the committee should propose laws that concretely address the fundamental idea of the Master Plan: access and affordability.

“On affordability, there should be a clear policy on what’s the basis for fees, how much we can charge [and] how much they can grow year after year,” Boilard said. “There are no targets for how many students should be enrolled in the university or what percentage of the state population should hold a B.A. There’s no goals for that, and [the Legislative Analysts Office] thinks it would be very helpful if the legislature would adopt some of those roles.”

A Legacy Going Forward

In 1960, the Sacramento Bee quoted Gov. Edmund Brown regarding the Donahoe Act, the part of the Master Plan enacted into law. “I am proud that with this bill, California takes the lead among the nation’s states in giving direction and purpose to higher education,” he said.

States like Oregon, Texas, North Carolina and Indiana have all modeled their college systems on California’s, but in 50 years California has yet to set the Master Plan on an updated course for the 21st century.

“A number of other states over the years have adopted a framework similar to what [California] had adopted. In recent years, a lot of them have gone far beyond us,” Boilard said.

“There’s new approaches that are being adopted [by other states], such as performance-based funding, better kinds of accountability system, … better goal-setting — having quantitive, measurable goals for higher education.”

Illustration by Joe Lai.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a constitutional amendment to cement spending on higher education at 10 percent of the state’s budget. Following this proposal, Schwarzenegger released his 2010-2011 budget, which increases funding for higher education and restores some one-time cuts to the University of California.

“We can no longer afford to cut higher education. … I will protect education funding in this budget,” Schwarzenegger said on Jan. 6 in his final State of the State address. “Never again do we spend a greater percentage of our money on prisons than on higher education.”

The governor’s $82.9 billion budget proposal for the 2010-2011 fiscal year will eliminate the State of California’s $19.9 billion revenue shortfall with spending reductions and a reprioritization of existing spending.

If passed by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the state legislature, higher education will become one of the few budget items to receive an increase in funding compared to the previous year.

Overall, Schwarzenegger’s proposed constitutional ammendment would increase allocations to higher education by $224.5 million from last year. The University of California would receive $79 million of the $224.5 million increase.

In addition, the University of California would receive $51.3 million for a 2.5-percent projected enrollment growth, and a restoration of $370 million in previous one-time cuts from the last two years.

At the end of last year, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) requested that $913 million be restored from previous cuts.

In response to Schwarzenegger’s proposed constitutional amendment, as well as his plan to increase education spending for the 2010-11 fiscal year, UC President Mark Yudof released a statement saying, “These restorations, in addition to the governor’s proposed constitutional amendment earlier this week, are clear evidence that the governor understands the vital role public higher education plays in California.”

The governor’s proposed amendment would cap the yearly contributions to California’s prison system from the state’s general fund at a maximum of 7 percent, while allocating a minimum of 10 percent to higher education.

Last year, California prisons received 11 percent of the state’s general fund while 7.5 percent went to higher education.

In order to make cuts to state prison funding manageable for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDC), which runs state prisons, the governor’s plan would allow them to contract with private corporations.

“If California’s prisons were privately run, it would save us billions of dollars a year,” Schwarzenegger said. “That’s billions of dollars that could go back into higher education, where it belongs and where it better serves our future.”

This aspect of the governor’s proposal has caused contention.

“Privatizing prisons is not a good way to go in preserving state morals and values,” said Victor Sanchez, a UC Santa Cruz student and president of the UC Student Association (UCSA), a UC-wide organization that advocates for UC students in state and federal government.

“I don’t think it’s the right answer,” Sanchez said. “[The state] will be looking at a lot of problems. Civil and human rights … may be interrupted, if not infringed upon.”

The trade of funding between prisons and universities must first be approved by a two-thirds vote of both the California Senate and the California Assembly in order to be placed on the ballot. A majority of California voters would then need to pass the initiative in the November 2010 election for the amendment to be added to the California Constitution. The two spending restrictions would take effect in the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

While reactions to details of Schwarzenegger’s proposal have been mixed, the governor’s new emphasis on higher education has drawn praise from many.

“I appreciate that the governor recognizes the irony that California spends more on prisons than on higher education,” said Assemblyman Bill Monning, who represents the city of Santa Cruz and its surrounding areas, in a statement released after the State of the State address. “However, his idea to pass a constitutional amendment is not necessary to achieve reprioritization of the budget.”

Sanchez said, “In principle, [UCSA] supports the increase in funds for higher education, but we have extreme reservations about where these funds are coming from.”

Illustration by Maggie McManus.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

“Citing decreased state revenue [the governor] has ordered the UC system to absorb an emergency budget decrease for the current fiscal year … The UC Regents will probably institute a student fee surcharge for the spring quarter.”

This passage, sounding like it could be drawn straight from today’s news stories, is from a City on a Hill Press article from 1981. That year the governor, Jerry Brown, instituted cuts to the University of California that led to a 28 percent student fee increase for the 1981-82 school year and 30 percent increase the next year.

State funding cuts to the UC are not a new phenomenon. The measure passed by the UC Regents two weeks ago to raise fees by 32.5 percent within the next year will mark the 15th time UC undergraduates have seen their cost of education increase by 10 percent from the previous year. During this same time, the state of California — the largest single contributor to the UC’s budget — has halved its contributions.

The Current Crisis

“The reason the UC’s are getting less state funding is because the state has less funding. It’s that simple,” said Steve Boilard, the director of higher education for the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the California Legislature’s nonpartisan policy analysts, in an email. “[This past year] the state has experienced a drop-off of tens of billions of dollars.”

In fact, the past three fiscal years in the state of California have been doleful at best. According to the California Department of Finance website, the state’s general fund has dropped from $102 billion in the 2007-2008 fiscal year to $84 billion for the current fiscal year.

“Revenue coming into the state treasury is highly volatile, resulting from the way our taxes and other income streams are structured,” Boilard said. “Almost all sectors of state government have experienced significant declines in state funding, including social services, health, resource protection.”

The State of California has four main funding priorities: K-12 education, prisons, Health and Human Services, and higher education. All four took hits in this current major economic crisis. According to the California Department of Finances, in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, K-12 education lost 20 percent of its funding from the previous year, while higher education lost 14 percent. In the same fiscal year, Health and Human Services and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation lost 13 percent and 17 percent of their funding, respectively.

But for the last 40 years, according to statistics on the Department of Finance website, it has been higher education that has seen continuous funding cuts, receiving a smaller and smaller percentage of overall spending from the state’s general fund.

“You can see that the state has other priorities,” said Patrick Lenz, the University of California’s Vice President for the Budget, “[and] the problem is in the state’s fiscal system.”

In 1976, higher education received 1.8 billion dollars — almost 18 percent of the $10.37 billion in the state of California’s general fund. In the 2009-10 school year, higher education will receive 12.5 percent of the $84.5 billion of the state general fund distributions. This is while the population of students in the UC system has nearly doubled since 1976, growing from 121,791 to 222,000 in 2009 according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

“Demand has never been greater for higher education,” Lenz said. “We [the University of California] have 14,000 more students than the state pays for — that costs an extra 155 million dollars.”

In contrast, the other three main state programs have seen increases in their proportion of the California budget since the late 1970s. K-12 education has seen the biggest increase, from 27 percent in 1976 to 41.5 percent in 2009. This can be partially attributed to Proposition 98, a ballot measure approved by California voters in 1988, which mandated a minimum amount of funding for K-12 schools and community colleges.

Funding for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has also received an increasing percentage of state funds, almost tripling from 3.4 percent in 1976 to 9.7 percent in 2009. This follows the rise in incarceration rates in California. California has the third largest prison system in the country, trailing only the federal government and the state of Texas. Prisons also have powerful advocates in Sacramento. In a 2004 article Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters called the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a union representing 30,000 correctional officers in the state, the “state’s most powerful union.”

The State and the Student

Money from the state along with student fees and the UC general fund (nonresident tuition and operating costs from the state and federal government) are the core of the University of California’s budget, making up 28 percent or $2.5 billion of the UC’s $19 billion in funds.

This $2.5 billion pays the salaries and benefits for faculty and staff, funds the costs of equipment and utilities and extends financial aid to students in need. The remaining $16.5 billion are restricted funds, or funds that are given to the UC for grants and research and can only be used by certain institutions, departments or labs.

The State of California has contributed less and less to the UC’s overall budget: from 29.6 percent of its expenditures in 1967 to 16.6 percent in 2008. To make up for this decrease, the UC has relied more and more on student fees, which have increased 427 percent since 1965 when UCSC first opened. In this time, student fees have risen from $245 in 1965 (calculated to inflation it is $1,875 in 2008 dollars) to its current level of $8,020 a year.

Since 1967 the percentage of student fees and state expenditures in UC’s core funds have diverged dramatically. In 1967, money from the State of California’s general fund made up 89 percent of the UC’s unrestricted core funds, while student fees made up 6 percent. In 2008, state funds made up only 58 percent while student fees contributed 30 percent.

“Clearly,” Lenz said, “there is a disconnect with the state of California and its system of higher education.”

Solutions?

While UC appropriations from the state of California ebb and flow along with the revenues, neither California citizens nor university leaders see a way to fix this issue.

“The financing of higher education is broken,” said UC President Mark Yudof in an interview with UC student media organizations.

Yudof said he was hesitant to push the UC to ask for refinements in the state’s appropriation process.

“I don’t really think a public university can be the leader in actually proposing reforms,” Yudof said. “I don’t want to politicize us like that. But we stand ready to cooperate with whoever is seriously thinking about these issues … I guess the right role for the university is to play a facilitating role.”

But in an interview with the Sacramento Bee, Yudof cemented the UC reliance on state funding.

“I still think the primary responsibility [of funding] lies with the state of California,” Yudof said. “I have not given up on the state.”

In October, President Yudof issued a report calling for “an expanded federal role” in higher education and asked UC affiliates to “aggressively lobby our lawmakers in Sacramento to have … our funding restored.”

While university leaders are in a quagmire over reliance on the state and its lax funding, residents of California pointed their anger at state officials. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), a state-based think-tank, released a poll earlier this month called “California and higher education” that surveyed Californian’s sentiments on higher education.

Those polled were critical of California’s leaders, with 61 percent disapproving of Governor Schwarzenegger’s handling of public higher education while 68 percent disapproved of the legislature’s job on the same issue.

Seventy percent characterized budget cuts to higher education as a “big problem,” while 62 percent were very concerned about increasing tuition and fees for students to deal with state budget cuts.

While 72 percent of those polled believed in the importance of California’s public higher education system to the “quality of life and economic vitality of the state over the next 20 years,” 56 percent of those polled were unwilling to pay higher taxes to make up for state budget cuts to higher education and 68 percent of those polled did not want to increase student fees for the same reason.

“[This poll] came out saying how important the University of California is to Californians,” UC Regent Chairman Russell Gould said. “[Sacramento must] fund it. Stand up for it and fund it!”

The Legislative Analyst’s Office recently estimated that the State of California is facing a $20.7 billion budget gap for the impending 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Next year, if faced with similar cuts from the state, Yudof did not fully rule out any further fee increases.

“I can’t make any categorical promises,” Yudof said, “but I would be very reluctant to do that.”

Illustration by Joe Lai.

Illustration by Joe Lai.

You’re on your way to the bookstore and you look up. After scanning the crowd, you make eye contact. You frantically try to think of an alternate route but it’s too late. They’ve spotted you.

“This is democracy in action,” said one anonymous petitioner in downtown Santa Cruz, trying to garner signatures to legalize marijuana.

The initiative process has given us low property taxes, full prisons and a ban on affirmative action. It’s expanded welfare for chickens and made marriage illegal for same sex couples. Lesser known though, is the fact that this familiar process has had a profound impact on the financial turmoil of our state’s budget as well as the shaky state of the education system.

Today a significant portion of California’s state budget is pre-determined because of voter-passed initiatives. When legislators have to make cuts because of falling revenue, they are forced to take funding from higher education and social services, some of the only parts of the budget that aren’t protected by voter passed initiatives.

For better or for worse, ballot initiatives, often referred to as “the fourth arm” of California government, have made the state what it is today by giving ordinary citizens the power to make law.

The idea that voters should be able to create their own laws, rather than rely on the legislature, wasn’t always a part of American politics. The idea of a direct democracy, rather than the representative democracy that exists at the federal level, didn’t arise until the Progressive movement of the early 1900s.

Daniel Wirls is chair of UCSC’s Politics Department and specializes in American politics.

“The idea was, if you could somehow take important decision-making and put it elsewhere, give it to some other group, you could break up these [political] machines’ power,” Wirls said. “Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing in the end is another question.”

Options are Limited

In order to pass an initiative, voters have to gather an amount of signatures equal to either five or eight percent of the voting population of the last governor’s election, depending on whether the proposal is a statute or a constitutional amendment.

Ryan Coonerty, a Santa Cruz city councilmember and lecturer in the politics department at UCSC, feels that the system created by initiatives is largely to blame for the state’s recent divestment in education and social programs.

“It’s not that people don’t support higher education,” says Coonerty, “In fact, I don’t think there’s a member of either party who just wants to cut opportunities for higher education, but they’re operating in a system where they’re not given any other choice.”

Assemblyman Bill Monning represents California’s 27th district, which includes Santa Cruz. Monning said that the lawmakers are left with few options in times of budgetary stress.

“Some of the fixed budget costs indeed support very important valuable programs [like K-12 and community college education], but the changing revenue of the state in the time of recession — where there’s no new revenue, there’s no cushion — can create very tough positions for the legislature,” Monning explained.

Prop 13 and the Initiative Revolution

Proposition 13, passed in 1978, was known as the beginning of the taxpayer’s revolt in the United States. The measure drastically limited property taxes in California and passed with almost 65 percent of the vote.

Limiting property taxes made it easier for Californians to stay in their homes, but it also drastically cut down the amount of money that was available for education spending, as property taxes are one of the main sources of funding for education in California. Prop 13 also imposed a rule that two-thirds supermajority of the legislature had to approve any tax increase, as well as the yearly budget, in order for it to pass.

Jessica Levinson is the director of political reform at the University of Southern California’s bipartisan Center for Governmental Studies, which analyzes government practices. She explained that requiring a supermajority in a state as large as California allows for a small group of lawmakers to squash any new tax, even when it might be favored by over 50 percent of Californians.

“There are only two other states that have the two-thirds requirement [to pass a tax] and those are Arkansas and Rhode Island — together Arkansas and Rhode Island have roughly the population of L.A. city,” she said. “I think that we really need to re-evaluate the wisdom of such a high threshold [for passing taxes] in a state that is as large and populous as California.”

In the 1980s Californians voted on 62 initiatives, as voters were attempting to secure funds for a wider array of programs and services. In 1988, Prop 98 guaranteed a portion of the budget to K-14 education, which includes K-12 education and two years of community college. In addition, several propositions passed to guarantee funding to state parks, roads and infrastructure, and after-school programs.

In 1994 Prop 184, or “the three strikes law,” was approved by the voters and increased prison populations. This contributed to California’s current practice of spending more than six times more money per prison inmate than per student in the public education system.

Coonerty believes that initiatives have protected valuable causes, but have also encumbered the state during difficult times, and excluded other important programs like education.

The Future of the Initiative in California

Most citizens of California are hyperaware of that fact that the state is in a budget crisis, and yet it is not always as apparent that initiatives have played a part in this crisis.

As a law maker, Assmeblyman Monning believes that the supermajority requirement of Prop 13, as well as other propositions, have contributed to the budget problems.

“I personally believe that the two-thirds threshold encumbers the state of California from effectively dealing with the massive challenges we face,” Monning said. “It would be in my opinion the most important reform to have budgets brought in on time, and to have the California budget reflect the will of the majority of Californian voters who’ve elected a majority in both houses.”

Despite evidence that voter-passed initiatives have gridlocked the California budget and government, the popularity of the initiative process has grown since 2006.

As of 2008, six in 10 Californians, regardless of party affiliation, trusted public policy decisions made by the voters to be better than those made by the legislature or the governor, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Although 24 states have the initiative process, few make it as easy for citizens to pass laws and amend the constitution as California does. Levinson, of the Center for Governmental Studies, thinks that California voters feel that the initiative process sets them apart from residents of other states.

“Californians have always seen ourselves as a progressive bellwether state and I think that the fact that we have the initiative process plays into our view of ourselves as an active citizenry,” Levinson said.

Sharon, a petitioner gathering signatures for a marijuana legalization initiative in downtown Santa Cruz who wished not to reveal her full name, agreed that the process is important for Californians.

“I think the petition process is important because it shows people that their vote is important. People are more informed,” she said.

Levinson feels that despite potential budget issues caused by the initiative process, it will remain important as tool for voters to pass laws that are unpopular with the legislature. It provides a pathway for laws that have an important purpose but that politicians would be unlikely to vote for out of self-protection, such as campaign finance and redistricting reforms.

“I think that the key to it is to make sure that the initiative serves the purposes it was intended to,” Levinson said.

The Ballot’s Role in Reform

Despite the fact that the initiative process is partly to blame for California’s budgetary woes, it is also the most likely way that state will be able to fix its problems.

Unless otherwise specified, legislators cannot overturn a voter-passed law. Therefore, aside from the initiative, the only other path to reform of the state’s gridlocked governance system would be a constitutional convention. This entails a complicated process.

As Levinson explained, the California constitution is longer than the United States constitution, and those of most countries today.

“It’s one of the largest governing documents that any government has right now,” said Levinson. “It’s been amended 512 times.”

Nevertheless, Levinson reflects the feelings of many Californians when she says that reform is needed.

“Whether we do it initiative by initiative, or whether we do it through a constitutional convention, I think that the larger comprehensive governmental reforms that the constitutional convention could address are very important for Californians for a whole to look at,” she said.

Among many initiative proposals currently circulating for the 2010 ballot is a law that would change the requirement to pass a tax from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 percent. There are also two initiatives that would begin the process of calling a constitutional convention.

Other propositions for 2010 are as diverse as a law to make divorce illegal in California, a proposition that would require schools to provide an opportunity for children to sing Christmas songs near the holidays, and three related to marijuana legalization and taxation.

Among multitudes of initiatives, Ryan Coonerty shares many people’s hope that reform will come soon.

“It just has to be fixed,” he said, “because right now the state is headed towards collapse and there’s actually very little our elected officials can do about it.”

Illustration by Joe Lai.

Cuts hurt. From the student who must take out more loans, increasing their burden of debt in future years, to the librarian promised a job at one of the greatest learning institutions in the world, only to be furloughed.

These cuts are part of a familiar cycle ­— the dysfunctional state government, constantly without money, slices more and more from its once great system of public higher education.

As much as students, parents and faculty moan and groan, complain and protest, the fact still remains that Californians have forgotten about higher education.

According to the California Postsecondary Education Commission, state contributions to the UC, which make up a sizable portion of its overall budget, have shrunk by almost half since 1967, yet enrollment has increased 178 percent. While money from the state has plummeted downward, student fees, which fill this sizable gap, have gone up about 449 percent in the past 40 years.

UC officials have offered no clear solution to the state’s divestment in higher education. “I don’t really think a public university can be the leader in actually proposing reforms,” UC President Mark Yudof said in an October interview with various student media organizations.

In Sacramento, there are two big interest groups: the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and California Teachers Association. One advocates for the ever-growing California Department of Corrections; the other for increased entitlements to K-12 education.

Both of these powerful interests have something we don’t: lobbyists in Sacramento who kick and scream to fight for their clients, infiltrate the capital and ensure a share of the state’s expenditures.

It might sound a little scary — lobbying is a pretty taboo word these days — but in a democracy, interest groups move opinions and, more importantly, they move money.

Lobbying is not just hiring a fat cat lawyer to wine and dine legislators. It’s talking to your state senator or assembly member and letting them know how student fees and budget cuts are eroding our education. Our state legislators control how much money the UC will receive, yet most of us could not name either of our district’s representatives.

Aside from organizing a letter writing campaign — sending a few cookie-cutter letters to the governor’s office that will passed to an acne-faced intern and answered with the template, ‘Thank you for getting involved,’ response — it comes down to organizing teacher and student groups and parading through the state capital in Sacramento, showing the people who vote to put money in prisons instead of labs or lecture halls just how many people they are affecting.

This summer, I saw hundreds of tea-baggers railing against the Obama-socialist-Hitler-Marxist big government takeover. No matter how much we laugh and poke fun at their absurd name, they were getting their message across — and not because they are some radical right-wing group or because they occupied a building, but because they got into legislators’ faces, forcing them to pay attention to their grievance.

What if students did that? Instead of overrunning buildings and walking out of classes, go “occupy” the state capital: flood the halls of the capitol building with students and faculty, impatient with the way legislators blow off higher education. There are more fed-up students, willing to go to Sacramento to explain how the state’s future is being sold out, than there are tea-baggers who can compare our president to Stalin.

Fixing the UCs’ and CSUs’ budgets, with a promise to return to the ideals of the 1960 Master Plan — the one that proposed education should be tuition-free because it is an investment in our future — could spark an Obama-like fervor in the youth. With a pledge to reinvigorate public higher education and to reinvest in the institutions that create future prosperity, any candidate, Republican or Democrat, could gain an army of student volunteers.

If university leaders, faculty and students don’t get involved and don’t demand a change from the state, then we will end up with more of the same: an endemic stalemate and partisanship in the legislature that decides that higher education is not worth its time, and another administration that cares more about stogies than students. If we are the most important part of California’s economy — its future leaders and discoverers — we must prove it.

Congressman Kevin Deleon and Victor Sanchez (left), the external vice chair for UCSC’s Student Union Assembly, discussed the drastic cuts at last week’s state budget hearing. Photo by Arianna Puopolo.

Twelve hours after leaving UC Santa Cruz, the caravan of student government officers and interns prepared to leave Sacramento behind. Hundreds of UC, CSU, and California Community College system (CCC) students filed out of the Capitol Building, clinging to the hope that legislators might heed their testimonies. 

“What is at stake here,” UCSC Student Union Assembly (SUA) external vice chair Victor Sanchez said to the budget committee, “is more than the future of our system of higher education, but that of the state of California.”

This public hearing, during which the public was allotted time to address a special budget committee, was scheduled in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent budget proposal.

The proposed statewide cuts would cut academic preparation programs; slash UC, CSU and CCC budgets; eliminate the Cal Grant; cut subsidized child care programs; release nonviolent prisoners one year early; eliminate the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids Program; shut down 80 percent of California’s state parks and beaches; and reduce or eliminate various public healthcare programs.

Originally scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. with comments from advocates of public healthcare for children, the hearing ran several hours late. Students and employees of California higher education systems formed a line obstructing any walking room in the halls outside the hearing facility. 

Of 11 UCSC SUA members present at the Sacramento hearing, only two had the chance to deliver their personal stories and pleas to the committee.  

UCLA student government representatives drove to Sacramento the night before the hearing to have their chance at the podium. Only one of the four who made it was able to address the budget committee.

UC San Diego students who flew up for the hearing chose to reschedule their flight home to accommodate the scheduling delays, only to ultimately miss the hearing when student testimonies were delayed until late into the 4 p.m. hour.

The chancellors of the CSU and CCC systems and UC President Mark Yudof addressed the committee before students entered the chamber.  

Yudof attempted to convince Chairwoman Noreen Evans, of the 7th Assembly District located near Napa, of the importance of protecting Cal Grants and warned against the overarching implications of such a budget cut. 

“This will be, in many ways, an unraveling of a master plan in terms of access research and all the rest of what went into that great master plan that California adopted about 50 years ago,” he said, referring to the establishment of the California Master Plan for Higher Education (CMPHE).

The CMPHE was developed in 1960 by a survey team organized by the UC regents and the California Board of Education. Its goal was to define the objectives of the UC, CSU and CCC and establish the admissions standards to be used throughout the UC system. Additionally, the CMPHE established that every Californian is entitled to higher education regardless of economic standing. 

This focus on accessibility to higher education for all Californians was central in Yudof’s argument against the cuts.

“The hardest hit is on the low-income families, with [annual earnings] under $60,000,” he said. “That’s just the reality of it.”

UCSC SUA treasurer Eric Piccolotti is a second-year feminist studies major affiliated with College Ten. He was one of several students denied the opportunity to speak at the budget hearing due to time restrictions.  

Piccolotti said he trekked to Sacramento because Cal Grants and curricular diversity are important to him, and he fears the implications of the proposed budget cuts to these areas.

“Education is a right for all Californians,” Piccolotti said. “These budget cuts are infringing upon that right.”

Olgalilia Ramirez is the director of the Office of Governmental Relations for the California State Student Association (CSSA) and an alumna of CSU Sacramento. She attended the budget hearing as a liaison for CSU students.  

“It’s important that students give their story, because they’re the only ones that can give that story and that is very valuable for the community to hear,” she said. “[It is also important] to get across the message that investing in students is an investment in California’s future economy and also our present economy.” 

Ramirez and Clais Daniels-Edwards, the legislative director of UC Students Association (UCSA), collaborated to organize students present at the hearing.  

As an indication of solidarity between California public higher education institutions, students wore yellow bands on their wrists, which they raised every time a fellow student said “California” during their testimony. 

Callin Curry, a UCSC first-year and SUA intern, relayed his personal story to the committee. 

With the proposed elimination of Cal Grants, and having come out of the California foster care system without family to help him cover the costs of a university education, Curry faces an ominous future. 

“With the government’s current proposal, a dream 19 years in the making [of attending a four-year university] is slowly being destroyed,” Curry said. “I have protested as I have watched higher education take those devastating cuts, with affordability and access decreasing exponentially. This current situation is one of the biggest threats to education.”