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- Jun 28, 2004
The California educational higher education system was started on a very laudable premise. The mission behind the JC/CSU/UC system was that the inability to pay would not stop smart people from getting access to higher education and the WW2 generation, accustomed to achieving big things with small budgets, spent the 1950's and 1960's, mass producing world class institutions of higher learning (the only down side may be architectural, as CSUN, UCSB, UCSC, UCI, San Jose State and San Diego State and any other post WW2 public university in CA, that have 20,000 or more students all look way too similar). The Two flagship Campuses, UCLA and Cal, were improved and expanded and were elevated to elite status.
From the 1940's to the 1970's, California students could take advantage of the most democratic and merocratic education system in history. If you dropped out of HS, you could one day work and take JC classes while doing so and get career training or transfer to a place where you could gt a BA or BS. The CSU system provided good and plentiful and cheap bachelors degrees and masters degrees. Bright students could go to a UC school and got an even better undergraduate education and could pursue their PhD. Most amazing of all is the fact that the two crown jewels of the system, UCLA and Cal, once did not charge for tuition, they only cared about your past academic performance.
The problem is that student populations grew and grew and now the idea is that everyone must go to college and our cash strapped State cannot afford "free" tuition or even extremely low cost tuition. In some ways it is fairly unfair to have have across the board low tuition. Only poor students should get low or no cost tuition charges and the legions of upper middle class and wealthy students should have to pay the full cost of their attendance.
The situation with Cal and UCLA is especially strange because most of the students are not poor and many are very well off and could pay for it out of their's or their own parents' pockets. I felt like I was stealing when I got my Masters at UCLA because I was privileged enough to get an advanced degree at a school that is comprable to most Ivy league schools and yet the tax payers in California are picking up the majority of the tab. My girlfriend, who just got her BA at Cal, felt the same way.
I feel like I would make up for this inequity with a nice alumnus donations but even a school like Cal or UCLA seem to just sequester that sort of money. Instead of using their boutiful alumni giving, instead of means testing and making rich students pay, the UC, CSU and JC leadership would rather keep that endowment money and their mega salaries and instead prefer to sit back and squeeze students and, to a greater extent, tax payers to keep feeding them more money.
It is ironic because so many professors and university administrators love to talk about social justice and yet they are comfortable pinching the working glass guy, who fills up is gas tank, buys a pack of smokes and plays a lotto ticket, all so they can pack their lectures halls with rich kids, who are not even paying more than half of the cost of their being a there.
From the 1940's to the 1970's, California students could take advantage of the most democratic and merocratic education system in history. If you dropped out of HS, you could one day work and take JC classes while doing so and get career training or transfer to a place where you could gt a BA or BS. The CSU system provided good and plentiful and cheap bachelors degrees and masters degrees. Bright students could go to a UC school and got an even better undergraduate education and could pursue their PhD. Most amazing of all is the fact that the two crown jewels of the system, UCLA and Cal, once did not charge for tuition, they only cared about your past academic performance.
The problem is that student populations grew and grew and now the idea is that everyone must go to college and our cash strapped State cannot afford "free" tuition or even extremely low cost tuition. In some ways it is fairly unfair to have have across the board low tuition. Only poor students should get low or no cost tuition charges and the legions of upper middle class and wealthy students should have to pay the full cost of their attendance.
The situation with Cal and UCLA is especially strange because most of the students are not poor and many are very well off and could pay for it out of their's or their own parents' pockets. I felt like I was stealing when I got my Masters at UCLA because I was privileged enough to get an advanced degree at a school that is comprable to most Ivy league schools and yet the tax payers in California are picking up the majority of the tab. My girlfriend, who just got her BA at Cal, felt the same way.
I feel like I would make up for this inequity with a nice alumnus donations but even a school like Cal or UCLA seem to just sequester that sort of money. Instead of using their boutiful alumni giving, instead of means testing and making rich students pay, the UC, CSU and JC leadership would rather keep that endowment money and their mega salaries and instead prefer to sit back and squeeze students and, to a greater extent, tax payers to keep feeding them more money.
It is ironic because so many professors and university administrators love to talk about social justice and yet they are comfortable pinching the working glass guy, who fills up is gas tank, buys a pack of smokes and plays a lotto ticket, all so they can pack their lectures halls with rich kids, who are not even paying more than half of the cost of their being a there.
