Kunal Patel: Gov. Brown’s lack of funding undermines value of UC system

Last week, the University of California Board of Regents approved a tuition hike plan that would ensure stable and predictable tuition increases of up to 5 percent over the next five years.

As expected, there was a vocal showing of students who did not approve of the tuition hikes, disrupting the meeting and shouting chants as the regents voted.

However, one of the most vocal opponents of the regents’ tuition hike plan was Gov. Jerry Brown, an ex officio UC regent.

But Brown is in no position to criticize the tuition hikes. In fact, he is largely responsible for them, driving the UC to push increasing costs onto students after years of depriving the state’s premier public university system of the funding that it needs.

And Brown’s criticism of the tuition hikes is indicative of a larger problem: As governor, Brown has repeatedly shown that he does not understand value of the UC in California. The UC is the model program for a public research university system in the country, stemming from the 1960s California Master Plan for Higher Education. Brown should be working to preserve the UC’s status as the best public university system in the world, instead of finding ways to radically diminish the worth of the university so that the state doesn’t have to fund it.

Many of the governor’s comments at last Thursday’s regents meeting reflect his misunderstanding of the UC’s value to the state and his insistence on shirking responsibility for California public higher education and its current funding woes. At the meeting, Brown said that “money doesn’t buy everything in this world,” and that the UC “is not Wall Street,” implying that the regents are treating the UC like a business and not like a public education system.

However, Brown conveniently ignores the fact that almost all the regents that he has appointed are either high-level executives of corporations or investment bankers. Some of the regents that Brown has nominated include Richard Sherman, CEO of The David Geffen Company; Richard Blum, chairman of Blum Capital Partners; and Norman Pattiz, CEO of Courtside Entertainment Group.

Brown has no grounds to criticize the regents for treating the UC like a business when he has only appointed a single regent with a background in education last Monday. Any attempt by Brown to place responsibility for the UC’s funding problems squarely on the shoulders of the regents fails to acknowledge his own decision-making role in the UC.

Brown has played a large part in increasing costs for students at the UC by refusing to fund it at pre-recession levels. It’s disingenuous for him to ride in on a white horse touting principles of public education when he seems to fundamentally misunderstand the most basic tenet of public education: public funding.

The governor’s actions and statements have forced the regents’ hands. When the state does not allocate enough funding for the UC, there are only two options the regents can choose from: either reduce the quality of education and the number of students admitted to the University through budget cuts, or raise tuition to maintain the quality of education.

While Brown has allocated slightly more funding to the UC, it has not been enough. He has only given 4 percent base increases for three years, which does not make up for the 62 percent decrease in state support per UC student from 2008 to 2012.

Furthermore, some of Brown’s suggestions about cost cutting at the University portray a lack of concern for maintaining the quality of education and research the UC is known for. For starters, Brown has suggested changing undergraduate education at the UC to a two-year program that provides upper-division courses to students to lower costs on the state, said UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein. Brown suggested that students would complete their upper division coursework at the UC and their lower division work at other California colleges, Klein added.

But the UC is not supposed to be a two-year university system. Advocating for it to resemble a two-year system shows that Brown does not understand the mission or value of the UC as California’s premier four-year public institution.

Brown can easily alleviate student concerns about sustainability of the UC system by providing $100 million in funding every year to the UC to prevent tuition hikes under the regents’ plan. While this is a lot of funding, the state should show a financial commitment towards public higher education.

It is the state’s responsibility to provide funding for one of the world’s top public university systems. But Brown’s actions and statements clearly show that he does not want the state to shoulder the burden of higher public education in California.