Lessons from the UC student protests
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
UC Santa Cruz students are still occupying a building after rate hikes were announced across the University of California system last week.
A systemwide, 32 percent fee increase approved Wednesday amid the state’s budget crisis sparked protests at several UC campuses, including both Santa Cruz and Berkeley, where groups of students seized control of several administration buildings.
These 32% rate hikes, we are told, are unavoidable. The students have their doubts. So do I.
The ugly truth is that universities have become mini-versions of Neoliberal corporate America. The people at the very top- the presidents and provosts and countless vice presidents- make a quarter million or even a half million dollars a year. A good chunk of all teaching is done by “Adjunct” professors, meaning that getting their PhD has landed them a job where they teach 4 classes a semester (more than full-time faculty) at a couple of thousand dollars a class with no benefits. And the staff- always underpaid- remains so.
It’s unclear exactly how all of this happened. I personally blame Ronald Reagan, as I do for most things. Not only did Reagan start the trend of cutting education from the federal budget, but he also oversaw the deregulation of banking that led to commercial banks taking over student loans. The result of all this is a country where the average college student takes out tens of thousands of dollars in debt and often doesn’t even manage to get a degree. Worse, being able to take out such huge amounts of money has set universities loose to charge higher and higher prices, without regard to what people can actually afford.
In this debt-for-diploma system, the point is no longer education, but the bottom line. At my own alma mater, the president of the college isn’t an academic, but an MBA. College has become a product sold to students and their families as the “perfect educational experience.” The perfection of this experience involves a physical plant where not a flower is out of place, dorm rooms nicer than my house, and cafeterias, I mean “dining halls,” with much nicer food than most Americans have access to.
When I suggest that the best way to solve the financial crisis of higher ed is to “throw the bums out,” get rid of the people making ridiculously high salaries and replace them with smart people willing to work for a mere $100,000 or even, gasp, less, people look at me like I’ve just suggested having meatloaf for Thanksgiving.
“No one would do it for less than half a million a year,” I’m told. Hmm. I bet they would. Especially in this economy.
“No one would come here if it weren’t perfect,” I’m told. Hmm. I’m guessing that students would far rather get a good education than have lobster night at the dining halls.
Or at least the sort of students any college should want to attract- the ones who know that it’s not about “perfect” but about knowledge- which can happen in crumbling buildings with no air-conditioning and weeds all around. And knowledge which can happen without the help of vice presidents without end earning 5 times what the professors teaching them earn. In fact, I’d be willing to say that few students care about the administrators they encounter in their four years at college and if the cost of the administrators was offered to them as a choice, a sort of educational menu, most students would choose lower costs over “perfect.”
The problem is that like Wall Street, the people in charge see nothing wrong with profiting from debt. And like Wall Street, people think they deserve these salaries even though they’re completely out of line with what students can actually afford. And like Wall Street, many university administrations act surprised at the anger from below.
The students at Santa Cruz are expected to be arrested today. The students at Berkeley already were. But maybe it will take whole families, parents and siblings and grandparents, sitting in and demanding an education that is affordable rather than perfect that will finally turn things around. Because unlike Wall Street, most college administrators did not start out motivated by personal profit. They started out as educators. And I still believe that inside the university ruling class beats the heart of a teacher.
Hopefully these former teachers will begin to see that universities are not about the bottom line or the “perfect” education traded on the futures of our students. Hopefully a university president will stand up soon and demand an end to debt for diploma starting with his or her own salary. After that, the university can sell itself as a different sort of product. Not the “perfect” educational experience, but an educational experience that is about knowledge, not profit.
Santa Cruz students still occupy building in protest. UC-Berkeley quiet – San Jose Mercury News.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
I think you’re absolutely right: Colleges in general are being run more and more like corporations. Your range of presidents’ salaries is actually too kind: The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published its annual review of college presidents’ salaries and more than five dozen earn more than $500,000. Thirteen presidents earned more than $1 million a year. And while faculty are lucky to get cost-of-living increases (many colleges had pay freezes this year), Bloomberg reports that the compensation for college presidents “rose 6.5 percent to a median of $358,746 in fiscal 2008. That growth outstripped the 4.8 percent rise in the consumer price index.” In other words, the gap between faculty and top administrator salaries continued to grow, at least through the end of last year.
Thanks for the even more depressing information about “executive” pay compensation in academe. Although I know about the pay freezes. We’ve had a pay freeze where I teach going into our 4th year- which- given that cost of living only goes up- means we’re all making quite a bit less than we were. Fortunately, our higher ups took pay freezes and even pay cuts to share the pain. But I have a feeling that my college might be pretty unusual in its handling of the economic crisis.
In response to another comment. See in context »why dont the morons raise the tuition 100%,then everyone can just go home and swarchzenneger will finally understand that he has ruined education in ca. from the bottom all the way to the top
while i can’t comment on the university of california specifically since i’ve never been there, i don’t know of any school that justifies its high tuition based on fancy residences and lobster dinners.
yes, administration pay is unjustifiably high and the increased bureaucracy does absolutely nothing to facilitate student learning or professor research.
i don’t see any other way around this other than for the government and donors to have an active say in how the money they give is to be used.
for instance, it should be a requirement that the committee/board in charge of approving the budget be comprised of representatives that fund the school: one from government, one from students, etc. each of their votes should be proportional to the percentage of the funds they contribute to the school.
That last paragraph cracks me up. Knowledge against Profit? Is the author aware what country she lives in? Is the author seriously hoping for certain elites to forsake their own economic interests in the name of knowledge and equality? Not that it hasn’t happened before, but my money is on the compensation of college presidents coming more in line with that of top executives in other sectors, where a CEO making merely 5 times that of the average employee is unthinkable.
Power to the People
Who owns the universities…the greedy government thugs or the people?
Obama wants to reform health care….well about about reforming education which consumes everthing like wildfires?
Drive the fascist fee raisers out of the university and take away their pensions.
Well, you are certainly right about the “The perfection of this experience involves a physical plant where not a flower is out of place”. The UC (and CSUS) campuses are like posh resorts with vast grounds, and cadillac sports, recreation, and residence facilities. You’ll have to excuse my lack of sympathy for the majority of these students, who are overfed middle-class kiddies living The Life on these gold-plated campuses. Maybe the faculty is overpaid, but these students might look at scaling back some of their non-academic perks.
The faculty- on average- are not overpaid- some are- the “superstars”- but mostly it’s the higher ups on the food chain who make salaries that can only be called scandalous.
A lot of faculty is underpaid- especially the adjuncts and even junior faculty.
But you’re right- schools have been in a sort of “arms race” about the physical plant- “If X college has a climbing wall and we don’t, then we will lose students.” Um, not if you’re cheaper with the same educational product you won’t. But since the people in charge believe the point is to raise the most money to build the biggest toys/missiles/sports facilities, that’s what’s happened.
And a lot (not all, but certainly a lot) of the UC campuses do look like resorts. Alas, it’s similar in most universities around the country.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m totally on board with one point: blame Reagan. Or, rather, blame the Reagan Era. Everything screwed-up in America right now can be traced to the events of 1980-1988. In that period the country transitioned into something it shouldn’t have become.
so reagan is raising tuition at the UC?
No, why not give us the actual names of the tuition raisers?
In response to another comment. See in context »