The UCLA Tuition "Riot"

This email is making the rounds of the blogosphere, creating the impression that there's a major riot here at UCLA protesting tuition hikes:

In the first place, reliable counts say that there's only about 200 students at the protest--out of an enrollment of almost 40,000. 0.5% is not exactly the March on Washington.

In the second place, what realistic alternatives would the protesters prefer?

The University is going through a rough patch, but the problem has been building for a long time. The California university system was founded on a premise of full state funding. Unlike private universities and many of the so-called public Ivies (e.g., Michigan and Virginia), the UC system had very low fees and made little effort to raise private endowment funds.

 

The state has maintained a formal commitment to the idea that anybody who qualifies should be able to go to either a CSU or UC school. Yet, it has been decades since the state was willing to fund that mandate. Accordingly, the UC system for years should have been following the lead of the other public Ivies and emphasizing tuition and endowment campaigns. Yet, the system long persisted in the fantasy that someday the state would man up and resume its obligations on funding.

 

It is now finally clear to anyone with eyes to see that the state will be a relatively modest source of funding in the future. So the system is finally undergoing a period of adapting to that reality.

 

I believe that the UC system is going to have to get smaller. We can’t fund everything. We need to right-size, however, rather than downsizing. Cuts should be made strategically, so that the strongest programs on each campus remain strong. If you want to think about it this way, we have to cull the herd and the weakest members have to go.

 

We also have to face the reality that tuition and endowments are going to be the major sources of funding going forward. Unfortunately, in the present economy, development and fund-raising are tough. So we must look to tuition to fund our programs.

 

As far as UCLA law school goes, it's true that our tuition has risen. But 92% of our J.D. students are receiving some type of financial aid. And, according to data from Above the Law, UCLA tuition currently is lower than both Berkeley and Irvine. The forecast through 2013 has UCLA tuition remaining below that of Berkeley and Davis, while being basically tied with Irvine.

 

Outgoing Dean Michael Schill has done a fabulous job of managing our resources so as to allow us to strengthen programs, retain high quality faculty being recruited by richer schools, and expand financial aid, while keeping our tuition competitive with our peer schools.

 

Students aren’t the only ones who are suffering, moreover. The faculty is taking pay cuts of up to 10% (disguised as a so-called furlough). At the same time, our out of pocket costs for benefits--especially health insurance--have risen dramatically.

 

So we're all in the boat together. At the moment, we're encountering some rough seas. But I think we'll come out of it stronger, less reliant on state funding, with a bigger endowment, and competitive tuitions.

 

Indeed, I'm so confident in the long-term health of the UCLA law school that I turned down an opportunity to visit elsewhere next year and, as part of the agreement, committed not to consider other opportunities for the next 5 years. At my age (approaching 51), that probably means I'll be a UCLA lifer. And I'm fine with that.

Comments

[TonyR]

A couple of observations about the "riot" from a CA community college/UC undergrad alum and a UCLA Law alum.

1. Many commenters on other sites noted the rioters seemed to represent the usual "social justice", will-protest-any-meeting-of-the-establishment crowd with a sizeable UC union turnout. True. However, as an alum that doesn't really fit into this group I would have protested if I were still in L.A. These tuition increases are devastating. Odd too the protesting synergy between the union members and the students. Technically these two groups have directly conflicting interests.

2. Every tuition increase by the Regents is always prefaced with the announcement that they are increasing financial aid. Relying on financial aid is always a disaster waiting to happen for a student. Who gets what when is not merit-based in any fashion nor is financial aid distributed in any manner that could be considered fair. Grants, loan products, financial aid rules, and tuition change from year to year and never in your favor. The process lacks any transparency and you are simply given a number to pay.

3. Professor Bainbridge, we can't afford you. I took your class (query!), enjoyed it very much, and I learned quite a bit. You are an excellent professor and I'm glad your staying, but it was a decision that we can't afford. We are a public law school that cannot compete with private law schools (or UVA) in professor recruitment. Keeping the tuition low will attract quality students far better that retaining/recruiting noted faculty and will go further towards our mission of being a financially accessible public law school. The U.S. News rankings are determined by student quality far more than professor quality.

4. Generational fairness. Also noted by many on other sites was that UC students need to "get a job" and "stop complaining." I was subsidized by the people of CA for seven years of college education. I typically abhor subsidies of any sort and I feel that there is an argument to be made that taxpayers should not have to pay for others to go to college. I hope that over time I will pay back the subsidy in the form of CA taxes. There is a fairness issue here however. A typical financial aid recipient will leave a UC with 50-100k in loans (for undergrad) with these new tuition hikes. That student's parents left school with maybe a couple of thousand. We subsidize education to invest in the next generation. Many CA taxpayers have essentially said (L.A. Times/cnn comment threads) we don't want to fully subsize a higher education system any longer even though we benefited tremendously from that system. That's patently unfair. Throw in the fact that a college graduate will be paying off 10-20 trillion of your generation's debt and will never see social security because you bankrupted it and you have a bitter college graduate.

5. I agree with you that CA public universities need to downsize. We don't need 10 UCs, 30 CalStates, and 180 community colleges. UCLA doesn't need to run four hospitals. Everyone doesn't need to go to college nor do they belong in college.

[Brian Johnstone]

I do not agree with this protest, not because of what they stood for, but because I believe that they are blaming the wrong people. While I agree that there are many problems with the Regents to begin with, such as: Regents getting a pay increase, and subsequently complaining of a lack of money, they are not the base of the problem.

The root of the problem lies with the Governor. He is the one who massively cut funding. I hope that the Regents are doing their best with what they can, and while they seem to have many faults, and problems, you can't do much without money to begin with. The funding cuts have been going on for years.

By Spring Quarter, the student fees will have risen 200% in the last 6 years alone, which coincidentally is when our Governor was inaugurated. Education is an investment in infrastructure, and investment in our children, and those who will replace and replenish our society. Education is the key to the future, it ensures that the US, and California, the 7th largest economy in the world, will stay that way, and not lose its edge, not fall, and not collapse.

[Cornellian]

Although I appreciate your willingness to stick with "Team UCLA" (and, more generally, Team SoCal) I wonder about the basis for your confidence. California state government seems more dysfunctional every year and doomed to keep spending more and more in order to get less and less.

Maybe the only long term solution is for UCLA (or at least the law school) to start gradually inching away from the UC system and towards being a stand-alone private (or at least less-public) institution. I think UCLA law school has a strong enough reputation for that to be a viable plan, even if it would take a lot of up-front work building up an endowment and a fund raising network.

[roger Byrne]

You should run for office...you have clear understanding of economics where things have chnaged the social contract must change. This special knowledge is somethng that is sorely needed in Washington.

[Gregory Koster]

Dear Professor Bainbridge: This is way off topic, and it also asks a favor, so delete it if you see fit.

There are news reports that make it close to a certainty that the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Center has engaged in a sizable bit of fraud in claiming global warming is a certainty. If it ever comes out that Al Gore knew about this fraud, would he be in trouble under Sarbanes-Oxley or any other securities law? I mention this because Good Al has made quite a bit of dough in the "green" industry. I realize that this is mostly speculation at this point, but it does seem a likely topic for discussion, and soon. Perhaps you could post on this some time.

Many thanks.

Sincerely yours,
Gregory koster

[John Eden]

"Cuts should be made strategically, so that the strongest programs on each campus remain strong. If you want to think about it this way, we have to cull the herd and the weakest members have to go."

Ha! Try to get rid of programs like African American and other ethic studies and see what happens. Remember this is the uber PC country that will promote a self declared murderous Soldier of Allah to Major in our US Army.

[B. Durbin]

"The root of the problem lies with the Governor. He is the one who massively cut funding."

The root of the problem lies with the Legislature, which has dramatically increased spending to unsupportable levels in the last decade (and more.)

California's BROKE. Terrible credit rating, running on fumes, wish and a prayer broke. And those of us who have seen it coming for years have been tearing out our hair in frustration as spending kept going up, and up, and up...

I hate that funding is getting slashed across the state. But the money's just not there.

[Brett Rogers]

Higher education is overripe for disruptive innovation. The alternative, when it appears, will be scoffed at by the academic community, but its sheer cost-effectiveness and efficiency will bring it to the mainstream more quickly than anyone could have foreseen. At that point, universities will actually have to come to grips with financial reality because the competition will be kicking their tails.

[PJ]

I work in the CSU system, and I agree that consolidation and trimming are necessary. However, that is not going to happen because of entrenched political and PC issues. Ethnic studies, for instance, will never be cut, yet they have few majors. They will simply reduce the number of undergrads admitted--simpler, and easier to push them around.

[Kevin R.C. O'Brien]

There is a difference between the quality of the returns for the social contract in 1949 and the social contract (of society with the university-attendees) in 2009. The original group was almost entirely young people who had never had a college graduate in their families. They were heavily leavened with war veterans (the GI Bill's beneficiaries) and focused firmly on learning that was broad, deep and practical. UCLA in 1949 staffed the SoCal defense industries with engineers and managers, the much-larger military branches with promising junior officers, and government at all levels with committed public servants. It was an unalloyed good.

It's a fair bet that none of the 2009 protesters are students in the engineering fields or hard sciences, and I'd bet my bankroll that none of them are in ROTC. Instead they, like many public-university students, are ambling idly through undemanding, intellectually shallow and narrow backwaters, and will find themselves qualified to serve as baristas, as entry-level government clerks (like any high school graduate), or work for inconsequential nonprofits. The low wages of such jobs are products, not of a conspiracy (as one might conclude if one wasted his UCLA opportunity like they did), but of the low value the economy places on such employment, and the meagre benefit it brings society.

For a large number of undergraduate and even many graduate students, college is simply four (or six or twelve!) more years of neoteny, a chance to stave off the frightening dawn of adulthood. So they react to the government's inability to endlessly deploy the same dollar in multiple places, the same way any thwarted child does. Demonstration = tantrum.

Kids, the government can stave off your date with the counter in Starbucks, or they can grease the palms of employee unions, but they can't do both. And the unions pay them off.

[fit2post]

Where's Nancy Pelosi, crying for 'competition and choice'?

Perhaps what's needed is a government option.

Oh. Nevermind.

[jill manfreddi]

Wait until they find out that they will be forced to purchase health insurance. I wonder what their response will be?

[Carl Pham]

"In the second place, what realistic alternatives would the protesters prefer?"

Give me a break. I've been on UC faculty, and the administrative waste in the system is staggering. On a typical campus there are 10,000 employees, less than 1,000 of which actually teach or do research. There are whole departments in the Administration building, teams of $70,000 a year men, who never have occasion to meet faculty, parents, donors or students. There are $200,000 a year diversity administrators at UCOP in Oakland who do nothing at all, so far as I can tell.

The problems of UC are not unlike the problems of California in general: huge fleets of drones on the public dole, unfireable people who do not do the actual work of government or university, but collect all the benefits.

Until UC starts firing people, lots of them, like thousands, then I don't think students should take seriously any protest by the Regents that raising tuition was a "last resort."

And until the State of California starts firing people, like tens of thousands of them, the taxpayers of California shouldn't take seriously the complaints of the legislature that raising taxes is a last resort.

Both students and taxpayers have been bullied with threats to essential services if the blackmail (tuition or taxes) isn't raised, for decades. It's all lies. There is so much fat in both the State and UC budget, that you could whack both in half without touching a hair of the essential mission of either, if you chose.

But no one is going to choose to do so, until the alternative is their own jobs.

[Bruce]

I wonder how many of the students will actually understand the lesson being taught here? The UC system is raising tuition 32%, but they'll use 1/3 of the money to help "disadvantaged" students. A little bit of "share the wealth" here? "Your government (in the form of the UC regents) knows better how to spend your money than you do." It's interesting to see a philosophy bite someone in the ass.