With the University of California regents scheduled to start debate Wednesday on proposed tuition hikes that could total 25 percent over five years, hundreds of UC Davis students protested Tuesday in what has become a familiar ritual on public campuses around the state in recent years.My first reason for a lack of sympathy is simple--I'd bet most of them are fans of big government and think Obamacare is going to "control" health care costs and improve the lives of all Americans. I could be wrong, but if you've ever been to Davis, aka Berkeley-lite, you know I'm probably not. And their education is provided courtesy of big government.
The demonstration marked the third anniversary of the notorious UC Davis pepper spraying incident, which occurred on Nov. 18, 2011, during a protest on the campus quad by students upset about the increasing expense of a UC education.
“Three years later, it’s kind of demoralizing. Here we are again,” said Armando Figueroa, president of Associated Students, University of California, Davis.
My second reason was discussed on this blog earlier this year. (By the way, here's the outcome of that event.)
7 comments:
This is why UC students are protesting: ridiculous cost increases over the past 20 or so years. Note the graph, in particular, which is actually correctly scaled… http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article4016573.html These tuition increases, to date, will make my children's education cost more than ten times the amount which it cost me … and inflation does not account for that. If you don't want publicly subsidized universities (and that's a hypothetical; I'm not inferring that you don't) that's okay. But if you see the value in them, which I do, you need to publicly subsidize them. And clearly, we have shifted the cost from a broad taxpayer base to a narrow student base. Which essentially makes them private schools. As always, it would be helpful to the situation were we not to admit students incapable of meeting basic math and English requirements ...
I'm ok with publicly funded universities. I'm not ok with wasting taxpayer money at publicly funded universities. I'm not ok with administrative bloat (and yes, that includes the entire "diversity" office), I'm not ok with *my* paying for silly programs (and we've already hashed out what I think is silly), and I'm not OK with turning state universities into Taj Mahals so they can compete for students with Stanford--a university that *probably* doesn't have many students in remedial math/English.
My thesis in this piece, though, is that our little leftists are getting a good lesson in "big government" if they're only smart enough to learn it.
You echo my point. I don't think you can know what is and isn't a good major … but I do know you can assess someone not ready to get in.
I may not know where the line is, but I know what's far *beyond* the line:
Aggrieved Victims Studies
Renaissance Uzbeki Film Studies
In fact, if it ends in "studies" it's probably beyond the line :-)
Here's an idea. Periodically we determine by some poll the 20 stupidest majors offered by public universities, then we put them on the next ballot. Any that doesn't get over 50% support from the voting public does *not* get supported by the taxpayer until the next polling period. THAT could be fun!
Am I reading this site correctly:
http://budget.universityofcalifornia.edu/frequently-asked-questions.html#9
(question 9)
Where it says that 50% of UC students do not pay tuition+fees ("about half of all UC undergraduates have their tuition and student services fees fully covered")?
-Mark Roulo
Mark, I believe you did. And … that looks like it might be accurate. Which really ticks me off, because that's almost exactly the same percentage of students who can't pass high school level math and English tests. I don't really have a problem with the expenditure, because I believe that higher education has a positive societal benefit -- but not for the unqualified. I would much rather see them spread that money around … you could probably get tuition down to around 5k for everyone, which should be affordable. My tuition at UCD was under 1500, and not THAT long ago.
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