Apodaca: Affordable world-class education shouldn’t only be in California’s past
If you caught the recent news that a smaller share of California residents were accepted as UC undergraduates this year, while the number of foreign and out-of-state admissions continued to rise, you likely were dismayed, even angry.
The UC system was built to provide superior public higher education for the kids in this state, yet for many years we’ve seen a continual slide toward reneging on that promise. At the same time, tuition has risen precipitously, putting a UC diploma out of the reach of many young people while swallowing others in student loan debt.
But if we’re rounding up the usual suspects to assign blame for this apparent betrayal — politicians, administrators, unions, etc. — let’s not forget to look in the mirror. For all Californians of voting age are complicit in the complicated problems that continue to bedevil the funding of higher education in our state. Complain as we might about our kids not getting a fair shake these days, it’s important to recognize that we’ve all had a hand in making it so.
The report earlier this month really shouldn’t have come as a surprise, since it merely showed a continuation of a trend that’s been with us for some time. The number of applications to the UC system was again a record high this year. About 60% of California applicants were offered a spot, down from 63% last year and 79% in 1999.
Meanwhile, the number of admissions of nonresidents — who pay far higher tuition than in-state students — continued to rise.
But the increase in acceptances of students from other states and countries isn’t really the issue. The problem is that the UC schools can’t afford to teach our own kids.
The response UC Irvine spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon gave to the Los Angeles Times was particularly telling on the point that regardless of the level of nonresidents, state funding won’t accommodate more California students. “Even if we took no more out-of-state and international students, we would not be able to take more Californians,” she said.
This is the case despite the fact that over the past 20 years UC tuition has more than tripled. Under the state budget agreement, in-state tuition, which currently stands at $12,200 annually, will not increase for two more years, while out-of-state students will see a 5% increase to $36,900 next year.
But while the in-state tuition freeze is a temporary plug for students, the UCs continue to struggle financially. According to a report last fall by the Public Policy Institute of California, this isn’t because spending is out of control. Despite public perception, institutional expenditures, including faculty salary and benefits, haven’t increased significantly, it found.
The reason tuition has skyrocketed and out-of-state acceptances have risen is that state subsidies to the UCs — and the Cal State universities, for that matter — have declined dramatically. Funding has inched back up recently, but still remains well below pre-recession levels, while tuition now accounts for just slightly less than half of public higher education revenue, far exceeding historic levels.
UC President Janet Napolitano is currently under pressure from Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to significantly increase the enrollment of California freshman and transfer students for fall 2016. But even if she manages to pull that particular rabbit out of her hat, it wouldn’t really address the long-term funding issues.
Solving this predicament should be given the highest priority. California’s vaunted system of public higher education was a key factor in the state’s post-World War II prosperity. Its cutting-edge research and top-notch yet affordable education supported an upwardly mobile middle class and fueled booms in a variety of industries.
But that began to change about 40 years ago through a series of developments. Proposition 13 greatly restricted the state’s capacity to raise revenue through property taxes, and higher education bore a big brunt of the decrease, particularly during economic downturns. A prison building boom that started a decade later also resulted in less funds available for higher education. Then, of course, the Great Recession landed, and with state coffers so vulnerable to economic fluctuations, our public university systems — which enjoy no constitutional protections against cuts — again took a bruising hit.
This has transpired despite calls for our young people to set their educational goals high to meet future workforce needs. Yet for too many students today, the only means of reaching those goals involves going into debt.
Why is this our fault? Because we vote — or worse, choose not to vote — and have supported initiatives and leaders that created or perpetuated the higher education funding morass. A rather depressing report in April from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Assn. referred to a “new normal” of no expectations for a recovery in state support for higher education: “The new normal expects students and their families to continue to make increasingly greater financial sacrifices in order to complete a postsecondary education.”
But I refuse to believe there’s no hope of altering that picture. Though we all don’t see eye to eye on the decisions that got us here, every one of us must now engage in an effort to fix the system going forward. The future of our beautiful state depends on keeping a promise made long ago to give our children an affordable world-class education.
PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.
