U.C. Tuition Increase.. Because of COURSE students should pay for our budget crisis!

In the midst of the great California budget crisis, at a time when all Californians young and old are feeling the squeeze, last Thursday the University of California regents voted to raise tuition by 32%. DANG! Starting in January, half the hike will kick in, raising tuition to $8,373. The rest of the increase will take effect next fall and will raise tuition to $10,302. To give you an idea of the obscenity of the hike, the average annual tuition increase nation-wide is 6.5%.

I am glad to say that the students are not just rolling over and taking the news lying down. Students at Cal took over an English building, which led to three arrests. Over 2,000 students protested at U.C.L.A., and at least 50 students and one professor were arrested following protests at U.C. Davis. And we certainly can’t leave out those crazy U.C. Santa Cruz kids (you know who you are!) who took over Kerr Hall and demanded, not only the repeal of the tuition increase, but the impeachment of Mark Yudof, President of the University System and the altogether elimination of the regents. We could all take a few good negotiation lessons from those crazy U.C.S.C. kids: First, aim high in negotiating so you can always compromise down, but second, you need to have something to negotiate with in order to get anything you want. Taking over a building will only get you arrested. Unless you can get everyone (and I mean everyone… like on the planet) to agree to stop going to school (i.e. stop paying tuition), you have very little bargaining power.

In case that wasn’t depressing enough for you, here are some interesting statistics: Even though California can’t find the money to fund its education system, we still find the money to maintain all those prisons, check out this chart: http://www.good.is/post/prison-and-college-californias-ridiculous-priorities/. In my article perusing of this topic it seems that California is either #1 or #5 in spending on our prison system (which I think we can all agree is… well… up there), while we are a dim #48 in spending on education. Yikes.

Ever wonder who these so-called “regents” are? Well, I’m glad you asked. Of the 26 board members, 18 are appointed by the Governor to serve 12 year terms, 1 is a student appointed by the Regents to serve a 1 year term (you know, in case they get too uppity), and 7 are ex officio members including the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and several other political cronies. (See their official website here: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/) While regents themselves do not earn a salary for their position, they are in charge of setting compensation for all UC executives, administrators, and faculty. Check out some of the (rather disgusting if I may say so) increases in executive and administrative salaries at UC’s this year: http://www.upte.org/about/press/2009-07-23.pdf.

The only regent to vote against the increase was the student regent. I’m shocked.