A long New Yorker article on a subject you care about always feels like a gift. So I read Tad Friend’s recent piece on the U.C. financial crisis with much interest. But while it’s interesting to see the situation from the ground level of organizing, teaching, and protesting, Friend leaves some of the most interesting 30,000-foot questions unanswered.
U.C. president Mark Yudof, the object of the protesters’ ire, has been in the job for less than two years. The collapse of governance in California began decades ago, when tax revolts led to a spectacularly foolish decision: making public dollars very hard to raise and very easy to spend. Voters can mandate spending via popular referendum, but it takes two-thirds of both houses of the state legislature to raise taxes. Robust economic growth masked the essential stupidity of this for a long time, but gradually the accumulation of mandated spending and periodic revenue shocks, along with other regrettable public policy choices like mass incarceration, took their toll. Higher education was hit particularly hard. As the article notes, California’s per-student contribution to the U.C. budget has declined from $16,430 in 1990 to $7,570 today. The most recent budget slashed U.C. funding by $637 million.
There’s just no way to massage numbers like that. The chancellor’s house that protesters have periodically surrounded, stoned, and tried to set on fire does not, I am guessing, come equipped with a money tree and/or a time machine that would allow the occupant to travel back to the 1970s and encourage Howard Jarvis to do something more constructive with his life than ruin the Golden State. Which is why:
Richard Blum, an influential regent who is married to Senator Dianne Feinstein, called criticism of Yudof ”beyond ridiculous.” Blum added, “If you tell me some union janitor doesn’t understand it, O.K., but I don’t understand why the Berkeley faculty doesn’t understand that the problem is Sacramento.” More philosophically, the longtime regent Odessa Johnson observed, “If Jesus Christ came down and raised tuition, they’d stone his house too.”
Yet the various irate professors and students hardly address this point. Did Friend not ask them? Or did they not have anything to say? I’m genuinely curious. Because without a good explanation I’m tempted to conclude that students and faculty–who, don’t get me wrong, have every reason to be angry and politically active–are so psyched to be the next Mario Savio that they’re aiming at the wrong target. Stuff like this doesn’t help:
[Global Poverty Professor Ananya] Roy framed the crisis in a new way. In her piping voice, she defined the “experience of generalized vulnerability and marginality that so many Americans and Californians now face” with a phrase she repeated, elegiacally: “We have all become students of color now.” Heads dipped and swayed around the room.
Look, I’m as liberal as the next guy, but “We have all become students of color now” sounds suspiciously like every upper-middle class white college student’s secret fantasy–to keep all the benefits of being white, upper-middle class, and college-educated while simultaneously claiming the moral high ground of racial oppression.
Meanwhile, the good folks at U.C. seem awfully eager to throw their less-privileged peers within the California higher education system under the bus. Yudof declined to endorse a proposal to raise $1.3 billion in new revenue for higher education because UC would only get get 25 percent. (UC enrolls less than ten percent of all California college students.) Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau has proposed new federal funding that would only help the most prestigious U.C. campuses, while 22 department chairs at U.C. San Diego proposed closing or defunding U.C. campuses like Merced and Riverside so that more money could be freed up for people who do things like run departments at U.C. San Diego.
Opportunity and resources in higher education vary consistently and directly with economic class. Everyone in California higher education is getting jobbed right now, but nobody has it better than the faculty and students in the upper echelons of the University of California. I’d be more inclined to take seriously those allegedly marching in solidarity with the vulnerable, marginal and dispossessed if they were spending less time appropriating those labels for themselves and more time putting the interests of their less fortunate peers ahead of their own.
Better Benefits: Reforming Teacher Pensions for a Changing Work Force
The Course of Innovation: Using Technology to Transform Higher Education 
09/03/10 | Kris Amundson gives Virginia policymakers a true/false quiz on the condition of K-12 public education in the state.
09/02/10 | Elena Silva compares two proposals for the next generation of computer-based assessments funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
09/01/10 | Forrest Hinton explains why consumer choice and market forces are currently weak influences on higher education quality. 
09/01/10 | Chad Aldeman's and Kevin Carey's thoughts on value-added teacher evaluations are featured in The Atlantic
What is true is that UCB Chancellor has hired $3,000,000 consultants to do the work of his job! $3 Million Extravagant, Arrogant Spending by UC President Yudof for UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau to Hire Consultants – When Work Can Be Done Internally & Impartially
These days, every dollar in higher education counts. Contact Chairwoman Budget Sub-committee on Education Finance Assemblywoman Carter 916.319.2062 and tell her to stop the $3,000,000 spending by Chancellor Birgeneau for consultants.
Do the work internally at no additional costs with UCB Academic Senate Leadership (C. Kutz/F. Doyle), the world – class professional UCB faculty/ staff, & the UCB Chancellor’s bloated staff (G. Breslauer, N. Brostrom, F. Yeary, P. Hoffman, C. Holmes etc) & President Yudof.
President Yudof’s UCB Chancellor should do the high paid work he is paid for instead of hiring expensive East Coast consults to do the work of his job. ‘World class’ smart executives like Chancellor Birgeneau need to do the hard work analysis, and make the tough-minded difficult, decisions to identify inefficiencies.
Where do the $3,000,000 consultants get their recommendations?
From interviewing the UCB senior management that hired them and approves their monthly consultant fees and expense reports. Remember the nationally known auditing firm who said the right things and submitted recommendations that senior management wanted to hear and fooled the public, state, federal agencies?
$3 million impartial consultants never bite the hands (Chancellor Birgeneau/ Chancellor Yeary) that feed them!
Mr. Birgeneau’s accountabilities include “inspiring innovation, leading change.” This involves “defining outcomes, energizing others at all levels and ensuring continuing commitment.” Instead of deploying his leadership and setting a good example by doing the work of his Chancellor’s job, Mr. Birgeneau outsourced his work to the $3,000,000 consultants. Doesn’t he engage UC and UC Berkeley people at all levels to examine inefficiencies and recommend $150 million of trims? Hasn’t he talked to Cornell and the University of North Carolina – which also hired the consultants — about best practices and recommendations that will eliminate inefficiencies?
No wonder the faculty, staff, students, Senate & Assembly are angry and suspicious.
In today’s recession economy three million dollars is a irresponsible price to pay when a knowledgeable ‘world-class’ UCB Chancellor and his bloated staff do not do the work of their jobs.
Take action: use the phone. Together, we will make a difference: save $3 million for students!
[...] Carey observes the financial havoc within California’s university system and takes shots at the University [...]
I didn’t include the “in current dollars” disclaimer because I would never present such a comparison in anything other than inflation-adjusted dollars. I just assumed readers would understand that. To say that “in reality” the state gave about $13,000 per student in 1990 is like saying that “in reality” Americans lived in a low-price utopia in 1890. It’s irresponsible.
Hold the university accountable for what, exactly? Do you think the tuition increases and funding cuts are coincidental?
First let’s get some facts right – it is untrue to simply state that, “California’s per-student contribution to the U.C. budget has declined from $16,430 in 1990 to $7,570 today.” In reality, the state gave about $13,000 per student in 1990 and $14,300 in 2009. The UC system constantly uses some unstated inflation-adjustment calculation to circulate the figure that Carey presents. However, Carey does not even add the UC’s usual “in current dollars” disclaimer.
While it is true that “The most recent budget slashed U.C. funding by $637 million,” this represents less than 3% of the UC budget of over $21 billion, and this comes after a record year of revenue. The reason why the faculty, students, and unions don’t simply focus all of their attention on Sacramento is that we realize that we have to both fight for more state funding and hold the university accountable.
Carey labels the UC students as white and upper-class, but UC has the most diverse student body of any major research university. What the students, faculty, and unions are trying to protect is access, affordability and quality for all eligible Californians. This is not an elitist group hiding behind minority labels.