Posted on 04/11/2012 5:56:54 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Tuition increases are threatening to place a University of California education out of the reach of working-class and middle-class students.
The roll of Californians who rose from modest circumstances to enrich our lives and our society after receiving a taxpayer-supported education at the University of California — or Cal State or the community college system — is too long to enumerate here. They're scientists who made world-altering discoveries, literary artists, composers and musicians, political leaders of city, state and country.
So here's a radical proposal: As tuition increases threaten to place a UC education out of the reach of working-class and middle-class students, let's reinvigorate the notion of a free UC education.
The bounty California reaped by providing an essentially free education to its most promising high school graduates largely has been forgotten, which only makes it easier for political leaders to keep cutting state budget support.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Perhaps those employed at UC would like to become ‘public servants’ and work for minimum wage to accomplish the idea of free education. That’s the only way to pay for this.
I see the dream of skittles-pooping unicorns is still alive and well in Cahl-ee-fohr-nayh.
So what makes this moron think that recipients of a “free” UC education would actually remain in corrupt, bankrupt California after their graduation?
And don't forget the free foot-massages and facials for all Californians too. If we are going to collapse into bankruptcy and societal chaos, we may as well look and feel fabulous!
Now that California is officially Communist, let’s hope they don’t infect America.....
The beaurocrats and professors re going to work pro bono?
If this is a good idea, then the teachers’ union will of course work gratis to pay for it.
It would be interesting to compare what the system spent per student back in the golden days of free or low-cost tuition he references versus today, with inflation factored out. I suspect its a factor of 50 or more.
Which brings up the very interesting question of why costs have increased to this extent.
One of the comments at the site references the massive increases in administrative costs and says he would be willing to consider additional taxes if all costs other than those directly associated with teaching and research were cut sufficiently.
My question is why should research costs be lumped in with teaching costs? Doesn’t this make students subsidize research? Why should they do this? Research should pay its own way.
How can it be free when someone is paid to do it..
“Perhaps those employed at UC would like to become ‘public servants’ and work for minimum wage to accomplish the idea of free education. That’s the only way to pay for this.”
You’re absolutely correct. I would propose that all those faculty members who vote for democrats and socialists (but I repeat myself) take a 50% salary cut to help pay for this.
Your kidding? Have you watched the news lately???..
There this guy in the whitehouse
In the good old days, only a few people went to college, by comparison to today.
Much easier for the state to support free tuition for a few rather than many.
1900: 2,906 total students, total operating budget of $422,000 or $8,705,288.04 in 2000 era money. That’s $2995.63 per student.
2000 (I think): 170,000 students, $11 billion budget. $64, 705.88 per student.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/general_history/overview/tour1.html
I sincerely doubt the students of 2000 got >20 times the value for the money spent as compared to those of 1900.
When my husband and I were students at UC Berkeley, the law in effect at the time said that there would be no tuition charged for any California public school. The University got around it by charging student “fees” — use fees for various buildings. These were samall and affordable, however ($55 per semester in the late 1950s). State colleges in CA did the same, although those were even smaller ($35 per sememster), and Community College was totaly free — just like high school. IOW all these schools were taxpayer supported, and the universities were open to any high school graduate with a B average.
In those years, I might add, UC Berkeley was the highest rated school in the USA on some lists, rivaled only by Harvard. Since Harvard did not admit women during those years, UC Berkeley was the highest rated university that a woman could attend. Tuition at private schools like Northwestern, by contrast, was $1300 a QUARTER vs $55 a semester. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where the best educational bargain was offered, and students flocked to CA for “free” education — particularly from NY. Since you had to live in CA for a year before you qualified, Berkeley was treated to thousands of young people living on the streets with nothing to do.
There was no such thing as a student loan during those years, either. Once LBJ started the student loan program, tuition and fees at all universities started to spiral out of control. LBJ also introduced a program that forgave all “tuition” expenses for any student who agreed to teach for 2 years after graduation. Students who took advantage of that deal went on to “run” the education machine nationwide. They are just now retiring, and a lot of them were/are very left-leaning.
After Prop 13 passed in CA, limiting property tax collections, the calibre of education started to decline and all kinds of private schemes for raising money sprouted.
The sad thing is that in the 1950s and 1960s, an ambitious student could work his/her way through college without taking burdensome loans, or having his/her parents mortgage their houses. That goal is totally out of reach today.
Of course the university did not offer stupid, unhireable degrees either.
Or perhaps the writer would work without pay so the LA Slimes was free.
If your family makes $80,000 or less, tuition and fees are free:
“Free” - *snort*
Exactly what I thought sitting here in Alabama having abandoned CA 15 years ago and taking my low cost CSU education (alum CSULB 1983) with me. What CA lost was confiscatory taxation of an engineering salary at the peak of earnings. Opps. But I generalize from the specific.
The idea of free or low cost UC education is not a bad model for long term fiscal health if the model is correctly structured. But CA, the country in general, lacks the discipline to make it work.
1) College is not for every one.
2) Primary public education is poorly executed for the purpose of preparing students for college.
3) K-college grad administrators and teachers unions are corrupt. Blank-check free education will only make this worse.
4) UC/UCS educators need to stop researching and go back to teaching.
5) Frilly courses of education which do not provide a tax payer ROI, like women’s and ethnic studies, must not be free. Only students seeking proven high economic return degrees, like business and engineering, should be fully free or this free model will fail.
6) Providing free education in an environment of confiscatory taxatoin is sure to fail. Educated people are the least likely to be held to a location and most likely to go where opportunity is most promising. It should be plain that CA is not the land of milk and honey.
The NappyOne
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