Less to bank on at state universities - Los Angeles Times

The usual argument over how to vote for in 09 spins around the disaster of Bush's Iraq policy. I see that, but worry abut the longer term. Iraq looks a lot like a condensation of British colonial errors. An arrogant, religious Western nation fails to achieve its righteous ends.

White man's burden, however,was only one of the features if fin de siecle. In Britain, class had become all important. The arrogant lords and bourgeois squires of the imperial power look a lot like America's envoys. While Britain was congratulating itself on its inherent superiority, the US middle class was building the largest engine of economic power the world had ever seen.



We are on our way to replicating the mistakes of Great Britain before WWI. Even worse, out Universities are becoming a haven of an upper class. This is most evident in what is happening to our schools. The dream of the last 100 years is slip-sliding away.


Less to bank on at state universities - Los Angeles Times

"In 1970, the state spent 6.9% of its budget on the University of California. Today it spends 3.2%. In 1965, the state covered 94.4% of a UC student's education. Last year it paid 58.5%. This year, California will spend an estimated $3.3 billion to operate UC. It will spend three times as much -- $9.9 billion -- to run the state's prisons."


"Educators fear a 2004 funding deal has schools sliding toward mediocrity

By Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 7, 2007

SANTA BARBARA -- Library assistant Linda Snook isn't usually someone to stand up in front of hundreds of people and discuss her personal finances. But when the UC Board of Regents met here this summer, she pleaded for help.

Snook told the regents that she makes $26,000 a year working full time at UC Santa Barbara and pays more than half of that in rent. Her supervisors have recommended her for raises, she said, but there is never enough money in the budget. She'd like to enroll in graduate school at UCSB, but, on her pay, that's a distant dream."

"Reed predicts that within five years the state will be spending more on prisons than on UC, CSU and the community colleges combined.

"That will be a real tragedy in this state," he said. "It will send out the signal that California has world-class prisons and second-class universities. If we had better-prepared citizens, a better-prepared workforce, we would have less need for prisons.

Dynes and Reed quietly began negotiating with the popular Republican governor.

At stake was California's tradition of maintaining low student fees, which have helped keep the universities accessible to the poor and promoted ethnic diversity. CSU has the lowest fees of any public university in the nation, Reed says, and 54% of its students are nonwhite.

Supporters of more privatization argue that the universities' main beneficiaries are the individual students, who greatly increase their earning power by obtaining a degree. But public education advocates argue that the universities provide a major social benefit in preparing California's workforce and developing technology that helps power the economy."