I had the unfortunate circumstance of entering college in 2008, the year the U.S. financial crisis began. When I entered as a freshman at the University of California, Davis, my tuition was $9,497. Flash forward four years, and not only has my skull began to crack under the pressure of my growing brain, but I am also paying $15,123 dollars – 60 percent more – for my senior year. Good thing I’m getting out soon, because tuition is only going up.
While tuition is rising all across the nation, the University of California (UC) system serves as a great case study for understanding what is broken about public higher education in the U.S. and the problem with how we are trying to fix it. Tuition increases are not only reflective of states’ budget crises, but a change in the attitude that a good public education should be funded by the state. The recent move toward privatization by using alternative sources to fund public higher education, such as tuition and private endowments, is the wrong step in finding a permanent solution. Instead, we need to guarantee funding from the state through a constitutional amendment that would institutionally prioritize higher education.
In 2009, state and local appropriations nationwide declined an average of 7-8% and tuition was raised an average of 4-5% to buffer the cuts, according to the report Trends in College Spending by the Delta Cost Project. That year was the closest tuition revenue had come to equaling state funding in that decade, and the situation has probably only worsened since 2009. For UC schools, for example, 2011-12 was the first academic year that tuition revenue surpassed state funding.
Such sticker-prices for in-state tuition no longer reflect the average cost to students in public institutions, either. In the search for quick fixes, more schools have turned to out-of-state students and other types of student fees to earn extra revenue. UC is already counting on increased out-of-state enrollment for an added income, with UC Davis considering a proposal to add an additional 5,000 new students to the undergraduate student body, comprised mainly of out of state and international students.
According to the report, the funding patterns that have been forming for the last two decades are characterized by the themes of privatization and polarization. Privatization is not only characterized by the increased dependency on tuition to fund the universities, but also the shift toward private sources. The article “Research and the Bottom Line in Today’s University” highlights some of the problems that arise when universities are forced to rely on private funding.
Such investments, according to the article, could skew research priorities away from serving the public interest to satisfying the interests of university benefactors, or allow sponsors’ agendas to place undue influence on university research. Reliance on such money will also exacerbate an already problematic focus on research faculty who help bring in corporate dollars, further lowering the priority on teaching. The article also warns against the danger of reduced focus on research that results, not in dollars, but in “human understanding, democratic advancement and social justice.”
Attempts to ease tuition increases by expanding student aid, such as UC Berkeley’s initiative to give extra aid to families who earn between $80,000 and $140,000 annually, are also not sustainable solutions. This type of fix ultimately relies on increasing the tuition for students whose families are deemed able to keep up with rising tuition costs to pay for those with middle-incomes, essentially shifting the burden from the taxpayer and state to students from higher-income families.
Instead, the solution needs to come from the state shifting its priorities back to education. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger highlighted this issue in 2010 when he proposed a constitutional amendment requiring that no less than 10 percent of the state’s general fund would be allotted for higher education and no more than 7 percent would go to the state prison system. At that time, 11 percent of the state budget was going to the prison system while only 7.5 percent was being used for higher education. The proposal was killed before it reached the ballot, and so did the approach of fundamentally shifting the way the state organizes its budget.
Since the California legislature has been ineffective in passing laws that change the state’s priorities on an institutional level, voters need to take it upon themselves to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot requiring a minimum percentage of the state budget be guaranteed to higher education each year. Living in a state that allows direct democracy, Californians have the ability to get an initiative on the ballot without going through Sacramento by collecting 480,000 signatures of registered voters 131 days prior to the state election. With over 200,000 students within the UC system, 400,000 in the California State University system, and more at community colleges, students have a very real potential to get the measure on the ballot and successfully lobby for it to pass.
While students in each state face different struggles in the fight to save public higher education, and different political obstacles to overcome them, it is important that we seek solutions that force states to put priority back on higher education, discouraging privatization at all costs.
Photo Credit: Fibonacci Blue
The Discussion
As a Californian and CC student, it saddens me to se what the UC system has become. I really wanted to transfer to UCI, but now CSUF seems to be the better economical choice. It's hard being a student in the middle of this mess. I just hope the politicians understand how they're hampering education.
The best way to control the steady increase in higher education prices is not to increase public subsidies to colleges but to shift financial risk to the consumer. Tuition is high because subsidized loans inflate a market bubble that leads to speculative overinvestment. Make students take responsibility for paying their own way at market rate tuition (which would be much closer to the out-of-stater rate), then increase grant-based financial aid for people who can't afford the sticker price. This makes schools less dependent on unstable state funding, and it forces students to consider the value of the education they pay for.
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There are several better ways to lower tuition costs, but here's one:
Change accreditation standards so they aren't based on the size of the schools' libraries or how modern their facilities are, or faculty-to-student ratio. The last one makes research universities look better than smaller schools whose faculty don't produce as much original research, though it doesn't impact the quality of education a school offers. These requirements increase expenses for existing schools and keep competing schools from opening. Guess how these affect the costs to students?
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Melissa,
Please take a look at the result of Prop 98 and the impact it has had on not only the state, but on all counties and cities in the state. Taking away budgetary flexibility has not only not had the desired impact on education in CA; more money doesn't solve the problem, it has worsened the situation as to the overall economy of CA. Based on this, I can't agree with your proposal of another State Constitutional amendment. The result would be the same and only exacerbate the problem. You addressed the need for vocational training in your previous article. How about extending that to partnerships with industry to help fund the degree programs they need?
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The national trillion dollar student loan debt crisis is only going to be exacerbated unless we get costs under control. I think the best solution I have read is to limit the legal amount that can be loaned to students annually. Universities would find that they could not keep raising the costs.
Good article addressing issues I think most university students and recent graduates face. I think a sensible policy solution for the raising of tuition during a students tenure is to lockin tuition at your first-years rate. Student Governments around the country should make this a priority.
UC Berkeley Foreign Students Don't Pay The Freight. UC Berkeley (UCB) pulls back on admission offers to California residents. Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau displaces Californians qualified for public Cal. with a $50,600 payment from foreign students. And, foreign student tuition is subsidized in th
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Having worked my way through a bachelor's degree while deployed on a Navy vessel, through self-study and online courses, I have trouble sympathizing with your rising tuition costs. I also wrote my undergraduate thesis in economics on the meteoric rise in tuition, so I'm fairly well-informed on the subject. You, like many other well-meaning individuals, are making the unfortunate mistake of assuming more money will somehow produce better outcomes.
It's not the privatization that is the problem, it's the government involvement. What you are seeing is exactly what happened to healthcare as well.
These kind of government programs deregulate the free market. If you do not have competition and choice, then the market is unable to adjust. When you have an entity buying up the bulk of things at X price, you are not going to be finding things at a lower price.
You've falsely assumed cause and effect in this article.
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I am a bit concerned fixing the state's contributions; higher education usually recoups the initial investment, but that constraint would open the door to carving up future budgets by percent, and tomorrow's priorities might be vastly different from today's.
Though California's public university system is iconic, and I'd personally like to preserve it, increased budget allocations treat the symptoms of the problem without addressing the root causes. I'd rather reform loaning practices nationally and have the state invest in a robust endowment. Perhaps profits at lower-tier schools could subsidize the prominent research universities?
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More funding does not inherently equal lower tuition. Colleges have an incentive to use this extra money to better their facilities, offer more classes, and basically anything that makes them more attractive to perspective students and more prestigious. No guarantee the money would lower tuition.
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The budget crisis in California is too great to simply say any particular program just needs more funding. Health programs in California have been slashed over & over. Many advocates think health programs should get way more funding. The money is just not there & the unions refuse to reform pension benefits in any significant way. We need to figure out how to efficiently use the state funds that are there & how to increase revenue for the state.
Each state should determine it's burden and responsibility to society. Though Arnold's solution was the best for education and CA, the legislature is more interested in increasing incarceration. The state has many problems. I'm glad I don't live there. Great place to go visit and I was going to build on our land in the mountains for retirement. That's out of the question now.
As the song says "California's all right. Somebody check my brain". A tongue in cheek remark that I laughed hard at when I first heard it before the CD was released. California has a spending problem. It has an illegal immigration and funding for them problem. There are fiscally sound solutions but none of them will be acceptable to a liberal state like California.
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We keep asking for the state to provide more money to higher education but at the same time fail to appreciate that not everyone needs a university education, and to take it further not everyone deserves university education.
The culture of pushing every single individual towards a univ. edu. is both unnecessary and unsustainable. This trend has led to people graduating with "degrees" and high student debts while doing simple jobs that simply do not require a university degree.
Society thrives on variety - people with different skills doing different things towards collectively .....
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