California's university system: What went wrong? (in-depth San Jose Mercury News report)

[alp227]

Fifty years ago this month, California promised a low-cost, high-quality university education for every qualified high school graduate in the state. But that promise — inflated by growing populations and academic aspirations — expanded beyond the state's willingness to pay for it.

What went wrong? How did the university system that was long the envy of the world suddenly become the focus of angry street protests, overcrowded classrooms, soaring tuition and a monumental debate over whether the state can ever make good again on its groundbreaking mission?

While the recession turned a slow-brewing problem into an instant crisis, an analysis of California's higher education mess reveals that many factors drove the inevitable and ugly collision between the university system's ambitious and uncoordinated growth and the state's declining ability and desire to pay for it. Among the most critical:

- Plummeting state support: Since 1990, state spending per student has dropped by half in inflation-adjusted dollars. While the state paid about 90 percent of a student's education 40 years ago, it now pays 69 percent for California State University students and 62 percent for those in the University of California system.

- No guaranteed funding: Unlike K-12 education, universities are not guaranteed a steady stream of funding. In the past 40 years, higher education's piece of the state's spending pie has been sliced in half —
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even while enrollment has jumped 2 ½ times.

- Continued expansion: In the past eight years, despite declining state support, UC added a new campus, seven new schools and at least 45 new programs. Cal State added a campus, many new science centers and even a Ph.D. program — adding a research emphasis that was not part of its original mission.

- Little coordination: While university systems in several other states must seek approval for spending and expansion plans, there is no oversight body in California with the formal authority to play such a role. UC and Cal State are often self-advocates with competing interests — instead of partners that share and coordinate the state's higher education needs, according to the state's Legislative Analyst's Office.

Read much more: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14907126
California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education: http://www.ucop.edu/acadinit/mastplan/mp.htm

Further points in this article:
- Students in California are less prepared for college now, but the state has been defunding higher education since 1967, and the burden falls on families to pay the increasing fees. (Oh, and can you say: PRISONS?)
- Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot initiative that lowered property taxes, forced the state to divert some higher ed funding to K-12 education and local governments.
- Universities continued expansions, including nonacademic programs/sports/student housing, despite less funding.

[aquart]

1. Prop 13 killed the state. Greedy, selfish, geniuses they were.

[tonysam]

3. Peter Schrag's "Paradise Lost" told the whole sorry story in detail.

Proposition 13 was the WORST thing that ever happened to California.

[stray cat]

2. Californians realized it would cost them money?

[mike_c]

5. ironically, it doesn't....

In fact, every dollar spent on higher ed in California returns more than $4 in the state economy. It's an investment that PAYS the state, rather than one that costs. But like most politicians, state legislators don't connect the returns on past investments to the costs of current ones, think only in short terms until the next election, and curry favor with voters by going after the low hanging fruit.

[Hannah Bell]

9. so do prisons, theft, disease, & decay.

[mike_c]

4. the comments addressed to the original article are outrageous....

Many are racist, selfish, and uninformed. What a shame.

I'm a prof at a CSU campus. I've watched this crisis unfold. My department has gone from one with a national reputation to one with little future. We used to turn out some of the best biology undergrads in the PNW, now we're just treading water, trying to be just a little better than mediocre. In fairness, we try to do much more, but not only do we not get support from the state any longer, they actively impede us. The master plan is dead. :cry:

[LuckyLib]

6. As an undergrad in the late 60's, I paid $81.50 for a full course load per academic quarter

at UC. By the time I graduated, it had risen to $108.50 per quarter. For one of the best state universities in the country. California bowed to the rich and powerful land grabbers and wealth seekers, hot to rake in the money that flowed from California's growth. They forgot what investment in education meant. The rest of the country has followed suit, screwing higher education in one state after another. Foolish and short-sighted.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Those who blame Prop 13 are ill informed, the successors were the ones that did the real damage

Its a hair split to some, but it was the Gann Initiative that top lined total government expenditures that placed the real caps. Note that it passed by 75% of the vote.

[Hannah Bell]

8. k/r