UC Berkeley students take over Wheeler Hall
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
If you walked through Barrows or Dwinelle (humanities buildings) they were empty. Conversely, if you took a stroll through Soda or Cory (CS and EE respectively) they were packed with students finishing final projects.
I once had a professor who stated that no matter what, Californians will always vote for less taxes and more services, which is exactly what is going on now. I don't understand how they can chant "End Budget Cuts, Don't Raise our Fees!" in the same sentence without the cognitive dissonance making itself blindingly obvious.
I took a stroll to see the actual protest today. It was a bunch of kids who wanted to feel like they were part of something; a large group of people who wanted to scream and cheer as if this was a football game. Students were trying to shout over each other to lead cheers to get their own little slice of revolution. In the end, they presented no solutions besides "Cut Executive Pay" and have contributed nothing to either cause they were fighting for.
Also, "presenting solutions" is really not the protesters' obligation in a situation like this. Forcing a crisis that elevates as far as possible and draws attention are reasonable ends in and of themselves. These kinds of action are how, historically, political debates shift focus. Solutions are not hard to come by. There is no shortage of them. The state needs escape from prop 13, from ballot initiative spending mandates, from its high incarceration rate, and so forth. Implementing those solutions requires action by voters, the legislature, the regents, and so forth.
You have to start somewhere and that's what your peers did today.
Incidentally, the violence score appears to be roughly: Protesters - shoving some crowd control barriers; Cops - clubbing with batons, indiscriminate use of pepper spray, and allegedly at least one rubber bullet fired.
Does California need reform? A resounding YES! But nobody here at Berkeley seemed to care until their tuitions were raised. Prop 13 is 31 years old (no palindrome intended) but it's only now that people think it was a bad idea. Hell, 6 years ago Arnold almost had his campaign derailed because Warren Buffet dared to question California's sacred initiative. Of course prop 13 is awful, the prison system is crowded, and California's finances are a mess, yet none of my peers deemed it prudent to protest in Sacramento.
I disagree. I wouldn't have heard about it if the students hadn't acted ridiculously. Since they did, their message has been spread far and wide and has gained national media attention.
That's effective advertising.
The real problem is how society reacts to things like this, not that the students hacked that hard-coded reaction for their own movement's gain.
Alternatively, one might increase the available tax deduction for interest on student loans, which is capped at $2,500 per annum. I fail to see what economic purpose is served by having students graduate with $40,000 or more of debt when their earning potential is lowest.
Seriously though, something is very wrong with the UC system. I was discussing this over lunch with Mrs Browl, who graduated UCLA in 2003. At that time annual tuition was $3,429. with these newest increases it's now just over $10,000. It kept shooting up about 15% or more each year even as the bull market was in full swing (and money was pouring into state coffers). Now the state is in a fiscal bind and somehow the UC system has managed to rack up $13 billion in future healthcare liabilities as well as massive pension obligations: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/21908
Edit: here's some #s on tuition fees to illustrate the point:
1999-2000 $3,429
2000-2001 $3,429
2001-2002 $3,429
2002-2003 $3,384
2003-2004 $4,984
2004-2005 $5,684
2005-2006 $6,141
2006-2007 $6,636
2007-2008 $7,126
2008-2009 $7,788
2009-2010 $8,958
2010-2011 $10,302
I can't help thinking about risk with regard to the financing of education. My mind takes an immediate short cut (as in, my point may not be well reasoned) to commentary I've read that describes how e.g. the move from "traditional" pensions to 401K plans and similar personal investment vehicles has shifted risk from companies to individuals.
In education, it seems (at least, on the surface, in financial figures quoted in the news) that students and their families are being asked to take on more and more risk with regard to students' education. Try viewing the system as having two parties: The student (and their social circle), who benefits from gaining a more competitive (and, depending upon your perspective, personally enriching) skillset; and society, which ostensibly gains a member capable of greater contributions.
With employees and employers, it might seem that the employer/company is better able to take on and to manage risk. Greater financial resources, and greater ability to contract or employ professional advice and to do so in an efficient manner, sharing the benefit of that advice across multiple employees. Instead, financial management has been pushed to the employees; employers' liability has been minimized.
(That's the argument that's been made. In light of developments in the last several years, I'm not sure it's a valid one.)
In education, it seems that society might better be able to carry the risk of initial career choices. But that risk has been pushed increasingly to students.
The idea of society taking on greater risk in managing tertiary education may fall down in that (U.S.) society does not directly tell students what careers to pursue. Thank goodness; I doubt that's what we want. Although it can influence by determining funding differentials including scholarships, government funding of research, etc.
But I'm not arguing for going such a route whole hog (entirely). I'm not really making much of an effective argument at all. Rather, I'm asking, what is the allocation of risk in the U.S. tertiary education system/market. Has it been changing (it seems so, to me), and if so, what are the mechanisms and reasoning behind this?
Lest this question seem merely "academic" (sorry), there is also plenty of public discussion about the effects of these high levels of personal debt resulting from education expenses. New doctors who don't go into primary care not just because specialization pays better but because, even if they are called to primary care and are willing to forgo specialization's larger pay, the need to pay off enormous loans prevents them from making that choice. New lawyers who feel compelled to go the corporate route for similar reasons.
There's also what's been happening to the job market for educators: Instructors spread across three part time jobs at different institutions. Benefits declining or not offered. Traditional, "tenured" positions (whether you like them or not) increasingly rare.
I don't have the answers, and I'm not involved with this enough to have much first hand experience. My perceptions, that form the basis of my question, may be wrong. I hope my question was worth raising, and that I didn't totally munge it in posing it here.
Busy with their high school and without the right to vote? This is the first time those people can say anything officially and be taken seriously. If they don't like what's happening, then I think they're doing pretty well - started to get involved as early as they could.
to turn you statement around, for a bunch of kids fresh out of high school getting their first dose of political reality, "you are going to be about $50k in debt when you graduate because your elders and betters have screwed up the economy so badly" is a pretty poor payoff for the last several years of academic effort.
If you want something fund it with your own effort, not by pointing a gun at someone and telling them it's good for them.
I have extensive first-hand experience of barely scraping by, and reject your analogy of 'pointing a gun at someone'. For things like education and healthcare (which liberals like myself believe to be worth public funding), some compare it to sticking up the weakest and poorest and taxing them farther into poverty, whereas the reality is that those services, which are almost essential for economic security and advancement, are stuck behind a big paywall and those who object to the existence of this wall have guns pointed at them. Yesterday, literally so, in the form of riot guns.
High school graduates have the lowest earning power and the highest rate of unemployment. I don't see the social good in saddling them with tens of thousand in debt so that when they graduate they are forced towards the most lucrative offer. That's how we ended up with a shortage of scientists and engineers and a surplus of quantitative analysts on Wall Street.
Compared to their parents, UC students today have to pay more, have to go deeper into debt, and to expect fewer services, and that's not their fault. Just be glad the UC system hasn't instituted the mandatory furloughs that the CSU system has, effectively shortening each semester by more than a week. College level education in this state is an utter mess. They have every right to be upset IMO, even if they are doing the silly protest and all that that college students always do.
I can certainly sympathize with the feeling that the university broke a promise to students and staff, and that this is worthy of anger. I think providing a free, or nearly free, top notch public education is a worthy goal. It does seem stupid that basic services and staff are being cut but new construction projects are going forward. But I am not yet convinced that these protests were the right way to bring attention to these issues, and I feel that the harm, inconvenience, and cost that they visited on others was somewhat self-defeating.
I wish I had a better solution to offer, but at the moment all I can think of is a meta-solution: there are a lot of smart people at Berkeley -- why not pose the problem to them, in great detail, and invite them to come up with creative ways to raise money or reduce spending? A lot of what the protesters object to, I think, is the feeling that decisions are being imposed on them. Why not instead let us (every individual department, say) make the decisions about what to cut ourselves, with the stipulation that if we don't reduce costs enough, fees will go up accordingly?
Looks just they just had another status update, so I'm not sure what happened with that.
The Cal State football coach gets an annual salary of $2.8 million, and the university is spending $430 million on improving their football stadium. I kind of sympathize with Berkeley students who wonder how there is so much money for this but janitors and security staff are losing their jobs. I suppose sports brings in the alumni $$$ or something, but frankly I fail to see why universities are involved with a sport famous for the number of players who suffer permanent brain damage.
Also, totally amazed that Berkeley is only $10k/semester. For some reason I assumed it was like twice that. I often forget that it's a public school, since it so often gets lumped in with private schools like Harvard/Stanford/MIT.
The solidarity with the janitors arises because UC staff are suffering about as badly as the students. There is a recent history here of mutual solidarity.
Meanwhile, national news is now carrying the story about the 32% fee increase and its consequences.