Protesters Target UC Regents

Let me get this straight. Students and staff skip a day of classes and work to protest the cost of their classes and furloughs.
Wouldn't it make more sense to do this during the weekend and not lose one of those costly classes?
Or would that have encroached on their 'free' time as opposed to time paid for by mom and dad or the taxpayers?
Just wondering.

It's the spirit of protest, man. Interrupt business as usual. And the demonstrations were all over the state, as UC campuses. I support them. California is making bad decisions about spending priorities. What is more important than education?

People worry about gangs and unemployment, domestic violence. If every child had a good education, that's one step ahead of joining a gang, or falling into poverty. Education = self-esteem = good life choices = healthy relationships. Magic, baby.

I teach at UCSB. I held my classes today, but I allowed students to join the walk-out without being marked absent. The regents have just said they'll be voting on a 30% fee increase in November, and I think students have every right to protest that, although I don't think the university has the resources to avoid it.

It was a chaotic day today, not because of the walkout, but because budget cuts mean we don't have enough people to teach the students and class meetings were jammed with students trying desperately to enroll. I've never seen it this bad. I'm afraid that when it comes to overcrowding, the UC is going to start looking like our infamous prison system.

Readers should keep in mind that the state has been reducing its percentage of the UC budget since 1990, and it now stands at a historic low--below 20% of the total:

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu...

The returns that taxpayers continue to receive on their minimal investment are incalculable. Almost every medical and technological innovation of the post-war period has the UC's signature on it somewhere. The state has educated untold thousands of Californians at a fraction of the cost of private education, including not a few of the Republican lawmakers in Sacramento who are now intent on denying the same deal to today's kids. Without our system of public higher education, California and the world would be a poorer, sicker place.

So there's plenty at stake and plenty to be upset about. What we're are watching is an accelerating privatization of higher education in our state. The culprits are not in the UC President's office, as some protesters seem to think, but in Sacramento, where a minority party has a stranglehold on the state budget process. The long-term victims of privatization will not be the faculty or the staff--we might eventually be better off without Sacramento on our backs--but the people of California, who will find a UC education increasingly unaffordable for their children, and who will also see their children having to compete with more and more out-of-state students who can afford to pay the full cost of their education. The UC will become a system for economic elites, as Michigan already has.

Think about your kids, your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren. How much money do they have in their college funds? (My kid's got less than enough for a single year at the school I teach at.) Do you really want a UC that's just for rich people? That's not what I signed up for, and it's not what I found when I arrived at UCSB twenty years ago, but unless the situation in Sacramento changes soon, that's what we're all going to get.

what do you expect when you elect a bodybuilder for your head of state?

"il_miglione"= Yours is a reasoned compromise, hold classes yet allow those wishing to protest to do so!

YET = There might have been others who fomented dissent in the name of "academic freedom" - then were no where to be found when their presence counted.

DANTE had the latter - not you - in mind when writing in "The Inferno" on reserving the hottest places in the under-world for those maintaining neutrality in a time of crisis.

OVER DECADES: It is not just the UC System and its appointed Regents who have corrupted higher education in CA. For where the UC walks, there also follow the many campuses of the CSU and the community college systems - as if in lock-step! Hip joined!

The surgery needed in these times is no longer 'elective'!

It is mandatory, in order to save the very lives of those patients [plural] now on the operating tables [also plural]!

During the interim, the University of the People in Pasadena becomes a viable and attractive alternative for some higher education in the once 'Golden State'!

Much can be said to support those disciplines that have contributed to "almost every medical and technological innovation of the post-war period."

The same cannot be said of those disciplines steeped in their pseudo-philosophies of Naturalism and Post-Modernism which have led to much of the decline in the West. We are reaping what we have sown.

UCSB has the freedom to downsize or eliminate a number of programs that do not significantly contribute to the well-being of our State. Just how many sociologists or anthropologists do we need anyway?

A better solution, however, would be to privatize higher education altogether by giving scholarships and/or loans directly to deserving students. This would give them greater freedom to choose from among a wider range of options including Cal Tech and Stanford.

...a 32% increase in UC student fees???!!! I'm in shock!!

Here's a solution the students can rally behind to help restore funding to the UC's: Pedro Nava's legislation to create an oil severance tax on oil pumped in CA.
It'll bring in about $1.5 billion/year to CA's general fund, and help offset the increase in UC fees. I'm really not big on increasing taxes, but I'm beginning to feel like a sucker. Here's why: The oil companies have gotten off skot free in CA by not paying their fair share. CA is the only state in the nation without an oil severance tax. (Sarah Palin, a Republican, raised Alaska's tax to 25%, or about $5 billion/year!) Why do we allow our state parks to be shut down, teachers to lose their jobs, and students who are the future of our great state to take a hit when the oil companies should be paying their fair share to prevent these things from happening in the first place???!!!

Privatization. What happened when prisons were privatized? Profits, profits, profits with no ethics and no "we the people" oversight.

Similarly with health insurance, profits, profits, and more profits, with no compunction in turning down people who paid their premiums and needed treatment. In other countries, it is illegal to make a profit on people's health.

There are certain things that should never be privatized - and those are things that concern the living "commons" of society - including education.

About 25 years ago I could take up to 20 units for about $200-300 at UCSB. Now students have to pay 10-20 times that.

Mismanagement and wasteful spending on pet projects and Phd research are not good for students. It's self-serving for the elite, and the poor students have to get huge loans to pay their bills. I'm amazed young people still think a college degree is worth the money. SBCC offers college classes that are usually better than their UCSB counterparts, for a very small fraction of the cost of taking the same classes at UCSB.

:: "Our answer to the final question is yes. College is definitely still worth the investment.

"In fact, there are no signs that the value of a college education has peaked or is on a downward trend. Also, the rapid annual percentage rise in the cost of tuition has had little effect on the value of a college education, largely because tuition is a relatively small part of the true total economic cost of attending college. Most of the true economic cost of college is the wages students forego while they attend-and those have not risen by very much at all." ["Does College Still Pay?" by Lisa Barrow &Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2005]
http://www.transad.pop.upenn.edu/down...

Georgy, educate thyself.

These students are not entitled to an education, they have to earn it by working hard and getting goods grades before they get to college.
They have to work a job and save money to be able to afford college.
This party now, whine later attitude has got to stop.

A lesson in life is in order.
Life is tough out there for everyone, get a helmet, it doesn't ever get any easier. I know that probably sounds horrible- but seriously look outside of the little "me" bubble, people are struggling everywhere.

Binky,

You are correct of course. Education is still a valuable and smart investment for one's future and pocketbook.

I'm just not sure the UC system is the way to go anymore, like it was 20-30 years ago. I think the price for a UC class taught by a graduate student of the Phd professor who is a better researcher than actual teacher often doesn't compare to the same course offered by a SBCC teacher who is more focused on student learning and being a good teacher.

The cost for 18 units at SBCC is about 10-20 times cheaper than at UCSB. Just because UCSB is a public institution, don't think it isn't a business. It's big bucks for many people in the State and here in Santa Barbara.

Actual learning can be done with or without college.

Einstein was primarily a self-taught physicist. The Beatles didn't read music, and yet are considered the best composers of their generation. Don't think people can't learn if they're not in an expensive school. But yes, college is still the most relied on path for learning in our society. But in my opinion, keeping tuition costs down should take precedence over research, new construction, and administrative salaries, which many of us don't think is the priority coming from the UC regents.

RIGHT NOW = I'M NOT CERTAIN HOW MANY "SB Indy" readers shall remember decades ago in Montecito [along Eucalyptus Hill Drive], then in some old WW-II Marine barracks near East entrance to UCSB [entering the Goleta campus from the Highway 101 side] = BUT I REALLY MISS the leavening presence in Southern Santa Babara County of "The Fund for the Republic" and Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins' "The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions" THEN its commitments to "the [Socratic] dialogue" in the day! NOT TO FORGET, either = Donald McDonald's keen editorial pen for "The Center Magazine"! Any one else remember?

HERE'S A MOMENT AND REASON TO PAUSE - even a portent of "possible futures" - from "The Beehive State"! People from CA are relocating here - after finding neither AZ nor NV or even (surprisingly) een CO to their liking. Yet in any attempts to drag Utah's new Governor and its Republican-too-long-controlled state legislature - "KICKING & SCREAMING INTO THE 21st Century" -- a citizen initiative shall soon seek petition signatures to form an independent ethics(!) commission, entended to oversee then report mis-deeds by elected legislators when in & out of session! PERHAPS NOT A SURPRISE = But the greatest opponents to the fully 85%(!) OF GENERAL POPULATION WHICH ADVOCATES THIS MODEST STEP INTO MODERNITY are those in elected PUBLIC OFFICE = THE ELECTED OFFICE HOLDERS, THEM-SELVES! IMO = THEY DO SO, AT THEIR OWN RISKS! It is a most timely 'case study' worthy of both sociologists & cultural anthropologists alike! BUT = perhaps 'too deep' for poli sci majors! ;-)

You've covered a lot of ground, gogosian2001, but in answer to remembering the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, I do.

But it seemed that group floated somewhere above Santa Barbara life, was not a significant contributor to our town -- their sights and goals were were beyond our sleepy burg.

Good luck with Utah, by the way, our first theocratic state.

Whine, snivel, oh dear, students might actually have to pay and professors may have to actually...gasp...work. There's a recession you ninnies; that means less money for taxes, and therefore for government-supported institutions. Does anyone, faculty or student, at the University of Casual Sex & Beer understand economics?

JohnLocke's desire to honk his Objectivist interpretations must get in the way of his reading abilities, otherwise he could see in the article to what the protests pertain. Tearing apart the UC system by reducing education does seem regressive and ill-considered, and campus admin does seem particularly bloated.

None-the-less, Kratatoa, $800k is a gross exaggeration of UC admin salaries excesses; take a look at this list and you can see coaches and science professors dominate.
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/1669...

Here's a list of agencies within State government most likely to provide compensation in excess of $100 (as a percentage).
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/1666...

And you find most state worker compensation figures, by name, agency, or area, here:
http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/

kratatoa, the links I provide show total reported compensation, the actual amounts paid to them during 2008, according to the State Controller's Office and the UC system.Administrator's compensation is included.

Regents are not paid by the UC system:

... from the University of California bylaws:

"BYLAW 8. Special Provisions Relating to Regents
8.1 Compensation of Regents.
No Regent shall receive salary or other compensation for services as a Regent nor shall any Regent other than the President of the University be eligible for appointment to any position in connection with the University for which a salary or other compensation is paid, provided, however, that the student Regent shall not be deemed ineligible for part-time compensated University employment. A Regent may be reimbursed for actual expenses incurred by reason of attendance at any meeting of the Board or a Committee thereof or in the performance of other official business of the Corporation. Members of the Board of Regents serving as representatives of The Regents of the University of California to the California Postsecondary Education Commission may receive stipends as provided by law for attending meetings of the Commission or of its committees or subcommittees."

As cited in the post above, he is paid not as a Regent, but as President of the UC.

This may help show the structure of the Regents and the actors involved.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu...

Hello, Binky. You never did answer my post regarding your actions should your child be kidnapped and held ransom. Would you then condone torture to find your child?

And re the pay raises, I have the same problem with that as with the City Council voting for union employee raises when the city is in financial chaos - shouldn't have done it - vote the Council out, pressure the state to appoint new regents at lower salary.

You're saying Regents are overpaid; I'm pointing out they get no payment. If I may guess, I think you are confusing Regents with Administration.

I can't reconcile the disparity of what Yudof says he makes and the SacBee reports, except maybe this has something to do with it (from the Notes on how the data was acquired):

"...Gross pay includes overtime, bonuses, housing allowances, sick leave payout, vacation payout and multiple other forms of cash compensation. Some workers promoted toward the end of the year will see their old job titles listed here. None of the data presented has been changed from what was released to the Bee by the State Controller's Office, the University of California President's Office and the California Legislature."

I think we have some agreement that Administration throughout the system seems to be top-heavy; I'm all for administrative reductions before cutting teaching.