University of California is set to raise tuition 32-percent for the coming year at its colleges in order to offset budget deficits. Tough times, tough measures, correct? To no one’s surprise, students are protesting, and to no further surprise, it’s the richest students doing the most complaining. National Review’s Anthony Dick …
First and foremost, the protests are about privileged kids demanding subsidies from working people. The UC system will continue to be heavily subsidized by taxpayers, and the students who attend are among the most naturally gifted, with the highest future earning potential, in the country. This is especially true at the system’s flagship schools of Berkeley and UCLA, where the protests have been most intense. Narcissism and self-absorption are the norm on college campuses, but it really is pushing the limits to throw such a tantrum at the idea that you will be getting a smaller amount of free money taken out of the paychecks of strapped taxpayers, most of whom could never dream of the advantages and opportunities you enjoy.
Well, you have to be disposed to think that the students care about the “working people” and not canceling their iPhone service or buying cheaper coffee. Dick also makes a point that has been a sticking with me for years in regard to civil disobedience.
Second, these protesters claim the mantle of the free-speech movement, but it is a betrayal and a subversion of the principles of free speech to forcibly occupy a school building and block out its rightful owners and occupants (including other tuition-paying students). The very idea of free speech is to facilitate the peaceful exchange of ideas, without allowing the use or threat of force to distort the process. The whole enterprise suffers when thugs begin breaking out the chains and barricades and committing property crimes in order to get their way.
They do this because they get away with. Talking to friends from California, you have nearly murder someone to get jail time at all in the state. Anything akin to trespassing, whether you belong there or not, is laughed off. I’ve seen plenty of footage of Berkeley police dancing around molotov cocktails without so much as a glance. My guess (and Floyd is welcome to correct me on this one) is that the judges and sentencing guidelines in the state are a joke.
Whatever happened to the hoses? I miss the hoses.
This seems timely given that I mentioned just the other day how college education is subsidized by the federal guvment similar to the way healthcare is and has likewise seen it’s cost soar uncontrollably.
“Whatever happened to the hoses? I miss the hoses.” And attack dogs. Can’t quell a good riot without attack dogs.
If only four dead in Damn SoCal. Off to summon the ghost of Ohio Gov. Jimmy Rhodes.
God, Rhodes was a character. I worked at a full-service gas station in a small town in north central Ohio for a time. My boss told me Rhodes used to stop by and get gas from time to time when driving between Cleveland and Columbus. My boss told Rhodes he hoped “he would kick the motherf***ing s*** out of Celeste,” which Rhodes loved.
When Cincinnati rioted and the Democratic city government did little to halt the violence, many a person wished Rhodes was still around. He was the type that would have marched the riot police into the city himself.
I manage a high tech research team and over the years I’ve had to interview quite a number of PhDs. Now these are science and engineering types, not the dreary social sciences and lit bozos. I’ve found that the best candidates, those that work out in the long run, don’t come from Berkeley or UCLA or any of the other elite schools. They tend to come from the 2nd and 3rd tier schools where they’ve had to work their way through and the schools had to sell their graduates on what they knew not on where they went to take the same classes as every where else. My own experience with Stanford is that an undergrad degree there is a huge waste of money; you mostly get TAs for all your courses with the rare professor (ok, I did have a course with Paul Cohen, a world famous mathematician, and he was superb, but that was the exception).
The elite schools produce graduates who expect great things for themselves and expect them without any commensurate effort on their part; they are “privileged” because they spent some years in an elite environment. Generally, the majority are pretty much mediocre, no work ethic, almost impossible to manage, and never listen to anyone with a lesser pedigree…they are of the type that declares “if your work was important, I’d be doing it”.
CA taxpayers would themselves a favor by simply shrugging their shoulders and shutting the places and selling the extremely valuable land and buildings.
And the funny things is Kevin… in my small liberal arts university a student will rarely ever not have a Ph.D. professor except maybe in English 113 and 123 and the occasional adjunct in a gen ed history class. Of course we’re a teaching institution so we teach 4 and 4 and research goes back into the classroom with the occasional article or book.
My freshman history prof passed this year. We were friends for nearly 20 years. No one knew — or taught — American history better than Dr. Jacobs, but you won’t find his name much in the journal databases
Keven S has a point, and I was thinking about this earlier. Do we really need more sociology and poly sci majors that these schools spit out like bullets from a machine gun? It seems like both the federal and state governments pour an awful lot of money into institutions that teach unproductive programs. If you want to major in sociology or political science, fine, do so. But you shouldn’t expect me to contribute to your funding.
I also remember that my partial diff equations prof was about 135 years old. When he came into the classroom he took about 10 minutes to get to the blackboard. He then lectured from his textbook, and wrote out all equations in a slow painstakingly maddening method. I think he died about a week before the final but he continued to lecture.
These memories are from the 70s, so who knows, maybe it’s different now, but I doubt it. Places like Stanford value cutting edge research not teaching.
Devoted Daughter was home-schooled starting in sixth-grade. When time for college arrived we sent her to a local community college for the first year. This assured her classmates would be more mature and serious about academics, that her teachers would not be graduate students and would typically have considerable experience in the real world. After the first year she was able to transfer to the local university at the sophomore/junior level (CLEP tests are a wonderful thing) and save the $ differential between community college and university.
That said, a 32% increase in tuition in a single year is nothing to dismiss, especially for those students who are not being granted discounted tuition or financial aid. Thus is demonstrated the way subsidizing a product affects demand relative to the value of that product. Perhaps the hit could be ameliorated by heavily cutting student fees (which largely fund activities of no intrinsic value or interest to the average student who has no interest in underwriting a Howard Zinn lecture or such separatist groups as the Muslim Students Association or the Gay Lesbian Transgender Community. Zinn and his compatriots are widely available on You-Tube and the various social groups can meet on their own dimes.
I couldn’t find anything in the excerpts posted or at the Corner link addressing the question of whether UC has taken the steps typically employed by businesses before raising prices. have they frozen (or even, for such highly remunerated employees as school presidents or department heads) cut wages?
As well, perhaps the lawyers out there can address the issue of whether a school has an implied contract with enrollees that tuition (and other costs) will not be summarily raised? It is one thing to inform incoming freshmen and transfers that tuition will be up; it is wholly another thing to suddenly impose much, much higher higher costs on students who have already invested two, three, four years toward a degree. Certainly not a way to encourage alumni donations from those classes.
I’ve got an idea about how they could EARN, tuition…eh, never mind, it would require that they actually work for it.
I had an interesting conversation with someone recently. She was very sad about how unfair it was that the armed forces was the “last resort” for so many of our lower socio-economic children. Even if she were right (and I know there are some), and I didn’t ask, but I wanted to know what else they could do that would provide them with so much training and confidence and provide us with the incredible military we have. I guess in a perfect world everyone would be able to have whatever training they want/need just handed to them, but it’s rare being that can take what’s not been worked for with appreciation enough to make a life out of it.
Really long way of saying….no working for it is not an option. They shouldn’t “have to”.
Tracy,
I’ve had that same conversation with equally moronic people. If you truly view these kids as resorting to a “last resort” why wouldn’t you be thrilled at the greatness of the last resort the U.S. military is? What better institution is there to turn young men and women into assets to society?
A large part of the cost comes from overpaid administrations in the state systems. The small college where I taught had a huge administration. None of them had a salary leass than 120k. The president had a salary and perks totaling about 250k. Looking at other state administrators, who have a lot more pressure and responsibilty, they get about 80 – 90k. The education system needs a serious revamping. Start by getting rid of the regents.
@ G-MAN — amen brother. Bureaucracy is a cancer that sucks needed resources from teachers and students — not to mention they lunacy of their pet theories.
(I did not see Floyd’s reply prior to typing mine…)
Can I get an Amen?
Amen! Brother , G-Man!
A couple of points from a California professor:
1. I teach a few graduate seminars at a Cal. State Univ. — everyone got around a 10% pay cut and they laid off/fired a lot of staff and they use a lot of adjunct and not full-timers to teach classes (and while I love adjuncts I firmly believe universities and students benefit more from a mostly full-time dedicated faculty).
2. California state tuition is ridiculously low given the realities of the economy and government intervention. A 32% increase at UC — which is mostly extremes of rich and poor (the rich can pay; we pay for the poor anyway). At the Cal. State I teach at (not my full-time gig) — students were paying around $3K a Quarter. It cost the state $12K a Quarter to educate that student. Even with cost cuts it was an unsustainable model. So what have they done? They have RATIONED education in the face of declining resources and expanding demand. Imagine that.
3. I taught at a community college and I believe in the mission. I also believe in the mission of the liberal arts. Conservatives shoot themselves in the foot when they decry “intellectuals” and “elites” and then equate them with Ivy-Leaguers. There’s a lot of yeoman’s work being done in liberal arts universities around this country. Most of the problems decried by David Horowitz et al. are in state universities and in Ivy-League type colleges. A university education in the liberal arts is a a good thing. A society run by scientists, mathematicians, technocrats, etc. would not remain a free society for very long. Suck it. The world needs philosophy, theology, and English majors — “liberal” in liberal arts means “Freedom”. Yes — I love the sciences, etc. — vastly important of course, but hardly the only road to truth.
4. California and jails… to partially defend the state…. revolving door jails is an urban problem not a California problem. There is just no way to jail all misdemeanors in ANY city in this country. Impossible as a practical matter. In most cities in this country if someone is caught with a couple of joints… the cop breaks them up throws them in the gutter and either writes a citation, gives them to mommy or maybe takes them for a very brief jail stint (less than a day?)
5. Working to pay completely for college…. It really is tricky. If delaying the start of a career for 10 years is worth it then fine, but the days of working full-time and getting a degree in 4-years are over and have been for at least 10 years. There are ways to solve that — go back to a classic liberal arts curriculum in gen eds and remove the non-essential degrees to community colleges perhaps, but with costs as they stand now — no one can afford to earn college expenses and finish college in 4 years (given the expanded degree plans) except maybe a stripper or a hit man.
One of the benefits of a community college is that they treat the students like customers. This is a good thing.
Many community-college students are older than the average university student, usually because they want to supplement their existing education or because they can now afford to get a degree. They are not young and naive enough to be badgered into remaining. for reputation’s sake, at a place where they are receiving an inadequate education. If they don’t learn, they will refuse to pay. A community college system recognizes this and responds by being as versatile as possible — it’s much easier to be a part-time student, for example, at a community college, not to mention that you receive a more thorough grounding in the basics.
Universities, on the other hand, often subsist off research grants, to the extent that they can afford to ignore to some degree the needs of the individual student.
Students as customers…. but it’s not an unalloyed good and can be bad. “The customer is always right” is no way to run a university. Most students are buying a GPA and a degree — not paying to be put through their paces by a professor with high standards who will fail them. There’s a balance between top-down and the business model to be sure — I’m not sure what that is.
The other modification I would do (Lord help me) is get rid of about half our universities. A lot of the students have no interest in or capability to pursue “the life of the mind” and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. If our high schools (and by that I mean parents) were doing their jobs then two years at a CC to learn a trade or pick up practical training would be enough for most people to earn a living and maybe decide if they wanted to pursue a higher education.
Amen, Brother Floyd. At least 50% of the degrees offered are really trades, and should be taught in trade schools. This is one thing Europe still does much, much better than we.
YES!! That is what I believe. If my kids need a college degree to do what they are called to do, we will find a way to get it, and be glad to do it. I’m not against a degree and truly respect those who get them. However, it will not be a babysitting service until you figure it out, nor will we be paying $12000 to learn what could be learned better and faster for 4.
I don’t believe a college education is bad, but I do believe that a good liberal arts education shouldn’t START in college. For me, the first two years of college was basically the last two years of high school, except with more beer and sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I could have just spent a lot more time drinking without having a college loan to pay off.
Around here, the Community Colleges are in the same system, with the same waste as the universities.
Floyd,
Thanks for the data re: cost cuts. I was aware that universities are using adjuncts (one of the costs imposed by our current system of “research” colleges requiring light classroom loads, costs of tenure and the “work rules” required by accrediting bodies … which opens a whole new topic I will eschew at present.)
Your second comment addresses the point I was attempting to make about the long-term costs of keeping prices artificially low. Had the universities imposed tuition prices more in line with their actual costs they would not now be having to boost tuition so drastically (assuming they hadn’t simply pissed away the extra funds in higher operating costs for things like climbing walls or large screen plasma televisions in dorm common rooms … or free beer at student festivities.)
The difference between students as customers and students spending their own monies is that in the latter case students are concerned about value received. CC students are more typically buying knowledge than “GPS and a degree.” I share your view about too many students using college as an opportunity to delay maturing and assuming responsibility for their lives (aka: living off mommy & daddy without having to explain where you’ve been and what you’re doing coming in at that hour in that condition.) I also believe student course evaluations are over emphasized, as if a student’s opinion about what constitutes an appropriate course load is informed.
“I also believe student course evaluations are over emphasized, as if a student’s opinion about what constitutes an appropriate course load is informed.”
RES… that is music to my ears.