May 10, 2011
by Sheila Kuehl

Since the Governor had insisted on a budget solution in February in order to get a tax extension on the June ballot, I had thought, by now, I might be writing essays about California's new budget for 2011-12.  However, since there were no Republican votes to put the tax extension on the ballot, the budget, which passed both houses earlier in the year, now waits in limbo. 

In the meantime, I regularly receive questions and requests on a whole host of issues at my website address and decided to write a series of non-budget-related essays while we wait.

This essay is about the dismantling of California's once-premier system of higher education caused by a constant downward spiral in funding.  It also reports the cynical acts of legislators (all, interestingly, from one party) whose education was made possible by the low levels of tuition in those same public colleges and universities but who now persist in denying those same opportunities to new generations of students.

---

About Dogs
The expression "dog in a manger" most probably had its genesis in one of Aesop's fables.  In the story, the straw-eating farm animals are trying to get to their dinner in the manger (a French word meaning "to eat" that came to mean the part of the barn where straw was fed to the animals).  A dog is fiercely barring their way, however, snarling and barking in order to keep them all at bay, even though the hay is of no value to the dog.  The phrase has come to signify mean-spirited acts that deny those in need while providing no benefit to the one who denies them.

"Biting the hand that feeds you" brings up the mental image of another dog, one who is ungrateful to something or somebody who has given it sustenance and repays that generosity or care with a bite instead of a thanks.  This story also has within it the probable conclusion that the dog will starve to death.

In California, we are seeing both of these kinds of dogs deliberately squeezing the life out of our once-great system of public colleges and universities.  (If you are skipping the information about the higher ed systems in California, set out below, please, at least, read the last few paragraphs about the members of the Legislature who went to public colleges here and now won't allow you to vote to keep them open).

The Unkindest Cuts of All
Over the past several years, the three systems of higher education in California have seen their budgets slashed by more than 35%.  In 2008, the cuts totaled more than a billion dollars.  In 2009, UC and CSU lost an additional 20% of their funding, while the community colleges, who were called "lucky" lost "only" an additional 520 million dollars, or 8% of their budget.  In 2010, an additional one billion dollar cut to UC meant reducing enrollment by 6% and raising fees to such a high level, it was the first time in the history of the University that students paid more, in the aggregate than the state.

The budget now approaching the Governor's desk contains more than $500 million additional cuts to the UC system, $500 million slashed from the CSU system and $400 million lost to the community colleges.  Most importantly, those cuts would be just the beginning to these three systems if California voters are not allowed to vote to retain the small increments of personal income tax and sales tax that were added to balance to 2009-2010 budget, and which will expire on June 30 of this year.  Without tax extensions or increased revenues, the cuts would deal a death blow to our master plan of education, from which it might never recover. The Community College system, for instance, would be forced to cut an additional 400,000 students, more than the combined totals enrolled in all the UC and CSU campuses, combined.

The tragedy of these cuts is not to the schools, themselves, but to an entire generation of Californians who will not be able to benefit from higher education, the businesses who will lose an educated cadre of workers and the state's economy, which depends on education as its chief driver.

A bit of my history
Most people don't know that my parents were always a part of what has come to be called the working poor.  My mother, orphaned at 11, worked in a garment factory from that age until she married my father.  My Dad was a one-man window decorating business, building props and trimming display windows in small L.A. shoe stores, dress shops and drapery shops.  Neither of them went beyond the eighth grade.

We rented a place near L.A.'s Coliseum and I attended schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (Normandie Avenue Elementary, Audubon Junior High and Dorsey High School).  Most importantly for this essay, when the time came for me to see if I could go to college, I got to go to UCLA, where, from 1957 to 1962, I paid about $58 a semester.  And that affordable education has made all the difference in my life.

A bit of the present
This year, students at UCLA will pay (and thousands will not be able to pay) $11,600 just for tuition and, if the tax extensions never get to the ballot, it will likely be as much as $20,000.  With housing, books and other costs just to live, it could reach $40,000.  Hundreds of thousands of parents will see their children's dreams of a university education go down the drain.  Classes will be cut even further.  Employees, who have been furloughed and lost 10% of their wages overnight, will lose their jobs.  The student population, already cut by almost 10% will diminish by another 6%.

More important--the dreams that are lost will include what we've always called the California dream.  California businesses and California families, both, benefit from a young person's ability to get an affordable education and to use that learning to secure a decent job.  Minimum wage jobs are not what drives the California economy.  Most job gain in the recent past in California has been in the entrepreneurial sector, people beginning their own businesses, and the data shows that most of these are college graduates.  The tech revolution in California could never have happened without the large numbers of graduates who could actually go to college here in the fifty or so years following World War II.  The death of California's higher education system is the death of the California dream.

The dogs in the manger who bit the hands
More than two-thirds of the members of the California Assembly and Senate combined attended a community college, Cal State or UC, and a number of them went to more than one public California institution.  They took advantage of the Master Plan for Education in California---a plan designed to make sure that every qualified California student could live out their dream of an affordable college education---and now a few of these members from the minority party are making sure that our kids will not have the same possibilities.

29 of the 42 Republicans in the California Legislature went to a public California college or university, affordably and relatively cheaply.  This doesn't even take into account those with children in these systems.  The Republican leaders in the Senate and Assembly went to L.A. Valley College and Fresno State.   The Vice Chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Higher Education went to UC Irvine.  The list goes on and on.  It seems to be a simple case of, "I got mine but you won't get the same!"

Yeah, But What Can We Do? Answer: nothing, if the extensions don't get on the ballot.  One answer, if a petition goes out to the shopping malls and grocery stores to put the extensions on the ballot for November, sign it.  If it's on the ballot, vote for it.

In addition, some are proposing a new approach to raising taxes in the future, one that would preserve the intention of Prop 13 (which made it 2/3 to raise a tax, but only a majority of the Legislature to cut one) while taking away the ability of a minority party to kill public education.  The proposal will probably come to be known as "Majority/Majority", and would involve a two-step process for raising taxes.  First, both houses of the Legislature would have to vote to raise the tax and put it on the ballot.  Second, a majority of the voters would have to adopt it.

It could be a very good alternative to allowing a handful of representatives to act like a pack of dogs out to kill the California dream.