What's happen to the UC System (UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSD, etc.) is not just to students.

[Amy6627]

We have unpaid furloughs like CA State employees, but we only get 9% of our budget from the State of CA. And the budget cut was 3%. The cuts and fee hikes do not add up to what has/is happening. They are changing the UC system into a private system where their goal is to bring in out-of-state and foreign students so they can charge even more! Our UC President, Yudoff, gets $828K per year, plus $14,000 a month housing allowance, plus $800 a month car allowance. There are over 2 billion dollars in unrestricted endowments that they can spend anyway they want.

UC's mission is to provide affordable higher education to CA residents. Before Ronnie Ray-Gun it was free.


FROM Monday's DEMOCRACY NOW!:

* Why Are We Destroying Public Education? University of California Students and Staff Prepare for System-Wide Strike to Protest Cuts *

The governing body of the University of California system, the Board of Regents, is preparing to vote on a major tuition hike for both undergraduate and graduate students. Undergraduate tuition would rise an average 32 percent, while some graduate schools would begin charging thousands of dollars for programs that are currently tuition-free. The Regents are meeting Thursday at UCLA, where students from across the state are converging for what organizers have dubbed a "Crisis Fest," including mass protests, civil disobedience and teach-ins.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/17/why_are_we_destroying_public_education

[Wanet]

1. Thank you Amy!

I'll save this to view later. It's sad to watch the destruction of the finest public university system in the world. (I am an office employee at UC Davis.) -- Wanet

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. It's a race to the bottom for the middle class.

Welcome to the 3rd world thanks to globalization.

[Cleita]

3. I used to work at UCLA on and off during my lifetime, the last time

was in the early eighties. The corruption was starting then with administrators that were trying to privatize many of the functions that were done by the university by farming them to outside companies and there were oh so many scandals because the wrong people were getting into positions of authority. Of course before then Proposition 13 had turned it from a public university into one that you had to be able to afford to pay for to attend. Before then tuition was pretty much free for California residents. I guess Arnold has applied the finishing touch by cutting to the bone what little state funding they were getting. I also knew some of the professors and other teachers from there and they blamed a lot of what was going wrong with the UC system on the Hearst family. One of them was on the Board of Regents and wielded a lot of power and being Republicans you can be sure there were conservative decisions made that benefitted only a few.

[Amy6627]

4. I started working at UCLA in 1984 so I know what you are talking about.

I've been working at UCSD for the last 5 years. I have been working with the union to get representation for Administrative Professionals and it is not going well. Most people down here are so anti-union. We have a lot of union members from all the UC's at UCLA. I really wanted to go, but I have a 9 year old son, so I couldn't take off.

[izquierdista]

5. Speaking of bones

Maybe they can dig Ronnie's up and sell them to raise money for the UC. They could probably get the RW kooks to pay a lot of money for a genuine piece of Gipper scapula.

[mike_c]

6. nine percent? wow!-- the situation is somewhat different in the CSU....

I'm not sure what percentage of our operating costs come from the state but I'm certain it's way higher than that-- I'm thinking closer to 70-80%.

[StatGirl]

7. Keep in mind that UC has (at least) three separate branches

There's not just the teaching part, but the research biz, and the hospitals.

The latter two are huge enterprises, and they have completely different funding sources which aren't necessarily affected by the state budget crisis. This is why employees on grant money aren't supposed to be subject to the furloughs.

Unfortunately, grant money and hospital revenue can't be used to fund the educational mission.

The articles I've seen lately about stimulus money going to UC are misleading. Sure, that money will pay for research, and hopefully it will be good research. But the only students who will see any of it are those who might be hired by the project to do some of the work.

Incidentally, UC is shooting itself in the foot when it suppresses the wages of research workers. Overhead money is based on a percent of the grant money (added to the top), and when workers make more, UC gets more. You'd think they'd figure out it's in their best interest to promote market-level salaries for their staff workers, but it hasn't happened yet.