= Premium Content

  • Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Previous

Next

Facing Revenue Shortfall, California to Cut Higher Education Again

December 13, 2011, 4:57 pm

California’s public colleges and universities will have to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars of midyear budget cuts because state revenue has fallen short of expectations, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced on Tuesday. The University of California and California State University systems will each be allocated new cuts of $100-million, as college leaders have long expected. Community colleges, which will take a $102-million hit, will raise fees next year from $36 to $46 per unit.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

  • Print
  • Comment
  • Guest

    This is horrible. I hope California Democrats are happy with their illustrious pick for governor.

    There is honestly nowhere we can cut, at least speaking for the Cal State system. Already I have 137 students next semester (AGAIN) with no TA help, and I’ve been told I can’t add a single student beyond the cap or else our department will be fined seven million dollars. In my English 306 class (Report Writing), I have a waiting list over 30 people and it isn’t even January yet. Countless people can’t graduate on time simply because there are no classes. They’ve already raised tuition and tempted another student revolt. They’ve frozen our salaries, blocked the library from ordering more books, and discontinued heat and air conditioning on certain days. 

    Why can’t Stanford and USC simply make good on all their liberal humanitarian pretenses and share some of their overflowing endowments with us? Or is that impolite to bring up on the Chronicle message board?

  • chguk

    The answer to your wider question (“Why are we so screwed?”) is ultimately down to a baffling reluctance on the part of non-elite Americans to band together and demand a fair stake in our massive economy.

    I was talking to some graduate students last week about a similar issue – I told them they should go on strike. They looked at me as if I was from Mars – the idea just didn’t register with them at all.

    You’ll get nothing unless you fight for it.

  • ellis

    Didn’t these cuts start with the former Republican governor?

  • badger74

    The cuts started with decades of massive over-spending in good times, over-expansion of colleges by the state, and creation of a welfare state in California. The UC schools would regularly come to the Midwest publics to steal their best faculty with much higher pay and lighter teaching loads. In reality they could not afford that and now they are having to get by with less as many publics have for decades. I am rather enjoying the reality check.

  • sross

    Wow, blame the current Democratic governor for a complex web of ills that California has been dealing with for over a decade?  And I thought faculty were better critical thinkers than many of our freshmen? 

  • akprof

    Actually the cuts are the result of the crazy voter initiative process that exists in CA – where an initiative limited property tax increases to absurdly low levels – like almost none – despite increasing costs for everything that the state must provide.

  • tenner

    The CSU system has over 400000 students. By their own accounting just over 1/2 graduate in 6 years. Early identification of those who will be successful would go along way to solving the money problem. It appears, at least in the CSU system, millions of dollars are being spent on students who never complete their degree. If you don’t want to, aren’t qualified for or don’t need a college degree it’s OK to do something else.

  • perpetual_student

    You think “reducing the size of government until it can be drowned in a bathtub” was a _Democratic_ policy? Now I have heard everything. Yes, this is heartbreaking. Yes, there is plenty of money–it’s just not in the public sector, thanks largely to the policies championed by Republicans Grover Norquist and Howard Jarvis. Why won’t the rich guys over at Stanford and USC just share without being required to by tax law? I don’t know, yet I did sense that relying on noblesse oblige–as several Republican presidents assured us we could–would not work out.

  • archman

    Blaming public universities for not being highly selective is rather simple. In most cases, this is dictated by societal expectations and  political leadership at the state and federal level, and has little/nothing to do with university leadership. You will find that a large percentage of faculty favour having stronger selection criteria for university applicants. You will also find that few public universities are permitted much latitude in this.

  • perpetual_student

    It’s also OK to take the courses you need, when you need them, and to have an accessible, excellent, publicly-owned university.

  • davi2665

    These responses are fascinating.  So there is plenty of money, just not in the public sector.  In other words, let’s all just go out and confiscate private resources (whether from Stanford and USC, or from private citizens, so that the universities and their students/professors get more.  The ultimate Marxist viewpoint, supported fully by the president’s all out class warfare endeavor to get re-elected.  Also fascinating is the knee jerk response that California’s only option is simply to raise taxes, despite the already ridiculously high taxes in the state.  It would appear that some of those commenting would like to increase property taxes, and then change their use from local school systems to THEIR public universities.  Gimme.  Gimme.  Gimme.  I’m entitled.  Perhaps it is time for leaders in California to significantly reduce or eliminate the endless expenditures and give aways that have led their state into bankruptcy.  California is not undertaxed, it is wallowing in out of control spending.  Until that is corrected, the state-supported universities will continue to absorb more cuts.

    What part of bankruptcy and “we are out of money” is it that so many academics don’t seem to understand?  The states, unlike the fed, cannot just print more money and try to inflate their way out of bankruptcy.  But this is a self-correcting problem.  Ultimately REAL bankruptcy will occur, in which there is no money left in the public coffers to pay public pensions, university budgets, and other programs.  Game over.  But until that time, I am sure that we will continue to hear the worn out Marxist rhetoric proposing confiscating the wealth of everyone but the “entitled” ones.

  • rhancuff

    Honestly, read up a little before you post worn out anti-Marxist rhetoric about a situation that has very little to do with Marxism. Public universities in many states –not just California — are seeing their budgets cut as a proportion of operating expenses (yes, in some cases it’s not a “cut” in total money, but it’s a cut proportionally). Your assumption that so many academics don’t seem to understand “we are out of money” fails to take into account that most academics have the ability to understand that historically we aren’t “out of money” … it’s that in the last thirty plus years we’ve abandoned as a society the progressive taxation system that provided a strong middle class and supported our growth as a world power.

  • hightempo

    The problem is simple…The worldwide competive labor wage is $25/day (Foxconn) w/o benefits working 12 hours/day, 6 days/week and living 20 workers per dorm room w/o blogging,twitter, dvds, smartphones, TV, computers.  So all possible jobs are and will be exported to the East while the USA/EU/UK buy short term domestic peace with trillion dollar deficits.  As interest expense increase money for pensions, education, medicaid, food stamps will decline.   The CA deficit/funding problem  is a drop in the ocean compared to whats coming.   Tell your kids that they must work for a living like the rest of the world and not go the college (ex doctors and engineers).  

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.