Think Humanely

Today in Long Beach, CA, faculty and students of the California State University system held a mock eulogy for higher education. $564 million has been cut from the CSU budget just this year, the largest cut yet in a growing trend of defunding. In January 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger “proposed cutting $240 million or 9 percent from the California State University system for the 2004-05 fiscal year. The proposed cut, together with the 2003-04 General Fund budget cut of $531 million, brings the total two-year General Fund cut to the CSU to $771 million, or a 28.8 percent reduction in student support.”

The eulogy begins, “We are gathered here today to mourn the dreams deferred of 50,000 qualified students denied access to the CSU. We assemble here today to contemplate the possible death of the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education and what this demise will mean for all Californians.”

The Plan for Higher Education was adopted in 1960 and largely responsible for helping to turn the state of California into the crown jewel of American education. One of the Plan’s greatest achievements was creating an entire network of universities available to the poor, giving them the greatest opportunity they would ever have of improving their lives. The higher education system in California can no longer claim that title or that achievement, due primarily to the politicians in Sacramento who obviously hold education in utter contempt. The money that they have gleefully taken away from the CSUs is and will continue to be devastating, creating problems that in all likelihood can never be fixed.

In a message to all CSU campuses, Chancellor Reed wrote

We have also been forced to suspend and shut down state-funded design and construction projects on all of our campuses in response to the state’s freezing of $600 million in general-obligation and lease revenue bonds used to finance these projects. Unfortunately, hundreds of projects will be affected including libraries, performing arts centers, classrooms, administration buildings, seismic upgrades, laboratories and more.

Tens of thousands of students are and will continue to be denied entrance into college. Those who were fortunate enough to be accepted before these most recent cuts are now finding it difficult to graduate in anything that resembles a timely manner. Their classes have been canceled. Their teachers fired or required to take furlough days, meaning that students are paying for classes that they aren’t receiving. Not only is their intellectual development compromised, but so is their ability to succeed economically and professionally. Class-mobility has been irrevocably hindered. As those who attend the CSU are generally economically disadvantaged, they are now less likely than ever to use their education to move into the middle-class and beyond.

“It is death,” the eulogy continues, “through a lack of vision and through a leadership which fails to seek the shared common good for all Californians.”

What can we infer about California based on the way it has handled its economic crisis?

You can tell a lot about a government based on what they do with their money. America, for instance, spends 19% of the federal budget every year on defense. The expenditure of the Department of Defense was $439.3 billion in 2007, $29 billion more than in 2006, and $137 billion more than in 2001. This, by the way, does not include the costs of our current wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, and on “Terror.” It should not surprise anyone, then, that the US, for all the good that it can and does do, is a militaristic country that has been involved in a minimum of 148 wars
in its relatively short history, not counting our many assaults and wars during our systematic attempt to exterminate Native Americans. It also shouldn’t surprise anyone that this same government, time and time and time again, has been willing to compromise civil liberties in the name of defense.

So what do the funding priorities of Governor Schwarzenegger and the state’s legislature tell us about them? Once one of the world’s most powerful economies, California has now been mismanaged to the point of a $20+ billion deficit. One of the longest contributing factors to this disaster has been Proposition 13, which Kevin O’Leary of Time actually calls “the root of California’s misery.” Prop. 13 returned property taxes to 1975 rates and placed a cap on both the tax and how much it could increase. Phil Ting of California Tax Reform told Mercury News, “I don’t know how we can talk about reforming the California budget without reforming Prop. 13,” and estimated that the state would immediately have an additional $7.5 billion if it did.

Another significant obstacle to fixing the budget involves a rather corrupt Corrections system. I previously wrote about some of these issues here and want to reiterate some of the points that I made. The prison system is an economic black hole, estimated to cost California $9,858,435,000 in 2009-10, or 7.3% of the state’s budget. This is due in part to a zealous quest to imprison as many people as possible, which is one reason why California has the largest prison population of any state. And yes, that does include Texas. The horrid three strikes law is one of the prime culprits. From my earlier post:

“1 in 4 prisoners are currently jailed for overly-long periods of time as a result of California’s infamous three strikes law. This cynical and callous law will cost the state almost $20 billion just to house those currently serving sentences, a price tag that will continue to rise as more and more prisoners are sentenced under it’s mandatory prison sentences.”

Also, the lobbying arm of the Corrections industry has dumped enough money into Sacramento to make ridiculous overtime figures possible for its staff:

“Custody staff costs,” the audit found, “include the $431 million Corrections paid in overtime for inmate custody operation during fiscal year 2007-08. Overtime is so prevalent that of the almost 28,000 correctional officers paid [overtime], more then 8,400 earned pay in excess of the top pay rate for a correctional lieutenant – the level two ranks above a correctional officer.”

So what does the great state of California do to solve its largely self-inflicted economic wounds? Does it reform Prop. 13 and gain at least $7.5 billion in just one year? No. Does it halt prison construction? No – in fact, the legislature proposed $12 billion to build more prisons. Does California do something about the $431 million in overtime? No. Does it reform the three strikes law, saving itself a minimum of $20 billion? No. Someone, after all, has to fill up all those new prisons.

So what does the state do? Rape higher education.

Politicians decided to go after colleges and universities. The cuts made to the CSU system have been catastrophic and the repercussions will no doubt be felt for years, possibly even decades if the situation isn’t rectified. In fact, when given the choice, the state has consistently chosen to protect the corrections industry while defunding and undermining higher education.

The ACLU found in 2007 that “for the first time, and unique among large states, California will soon spend more on its prisons then on its public universities. It has been projected that over the next five years, the state’s budget for locking up people will rise by 9 percent annually compared with its spending on higher education, which will rise by only 5 percent.” This figure, however, was before politicians took a chainsaw to CSU funding, which is now operating, or trying to, under a $564 million shortfall. And this is what’s happened as a result:

The state Legislature’s spending cuts for the CSU system triggered the California State University Board of Trustees to increase student fees twice this year for a total of 32 percent […] Kevin Wehr is a sociology professor at Sac State and a CFA chapter president. “There is another 10 percent student fee increase slated for later this fall or early in the spring,” he said, “with student fee increases totaling 182 percent over the last seven years. This means that when faculty are furloughed two days per month, students are paying 32 percent more to get 10 percent less (class sections).”
Further, the CSU plans to reduce student enrollment by 40,000 over the next two years.

To recap: students now have to pay 32% more in tuition for less education. The ability of current high school students to seek a college degree has been significantly compromised, stunting not only personal growth but also class mobility. Faculty members are being fired and their hours and salary reduced.

More:

It is noteworthy that the CSU deficit of $564 million is roughly the annual cost to state taxpayers of locking up 11,300 people in California’s 33 prisons, which hold 167,000 prisoners now. That figure represents double the prison system’s design capacity, which a federal, three-judge panel ruled is unconstitutionally overcrowded on August 4. Their ruling calls for a reduction of California prisoners by 40,000 over the next two years, the identical number of CSU students who, due to spending cuts, will be locked out of enrolling for classes during the same time period.

California prisons have been garnering tax dollars at a vastly higher rate than higher education in the past quarter century. From 1984-1985 to 2009-2010, state spending on postsecondary schools has increased 159 percent versus an increase of 685 percent for incarceration in the same 25-year period, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

A 159% increase versus that of a 658% increase for the prison system. I think Schwarzenegger’s and the legislature’s priorities are quite clear. H.G. Wells claimed that “history is a race between education and catastrophe.” Sadly, the race appears to be over. Catastrophe has clearly won out.