State should treat UC as the public school it is

Public institution. It’s a phrase state lawmakers have
thrown about so much lately that perhaps they’ve forgotten
what it means.

Specifically, legislators argue that the University of
California, as a public institution, needs to be more accountable
and transparent to the public. This is all in the context of recent
revelations that the UC has given generous compensation and
severance packages to some of its top administrators and
professors, unbeknownst to the state.

The suits in Sacramento are certainly right in insisting the UC
be accountable to the public. But while they are making noise about
the UC being a public institution, perhaps they should also ask
themselves what they have done in the past four years to ensure
that the UC remains a public institution.

Frankly, we haven’t seen much of anything. Student fees
have climbed by 79 percent since the 2002-2003 school year, and all
of that was done at the bidding of the state legislature (all the
UC Board of Regents did was rubber-stamp the fees).

At the same time, the university has seen state budget support
decline by 15 percent, in large part because during
California’s state budget crisis, lawmakers decided the UC
just didn’t rank high enough on its list of funding
priorities. At UCLA, state support has declined from 20.7 percent
to 15 percent since 1997, even as the university’s operating
budget increased by $1.3 billion.

This in turn has pushed UC campuses to rely more on private
donors for funds, a trend epitomized by UCLA’s announcement
this February that it had raised over $3 billion in private
donations since 1995. UCLA is not alone in its efforts; UC Berkeley
is currently pushing a $2 billion fundraising drive ending in
2012.

These two features ““ increased student fees and more
reliance on private donations ““ suddenly make the UC
suspiciously resemble a private school system more than a public
one.

And furthermore, some UC leaders seem to be thinking more about
the future of the university based on a private, not a public,
model. For example, last year Chancellor Albert Carnesale made a
splash when he said UCLA might have to double its student fees and
increase its financial aid in order to stay afloat in an era of
declining state support.

None of this is to say that the UC is becoming a private school,
and that therefore the state has no right to oversee it. But
it’s a subject of discussion that has not yet been broached
in the same way the UC’s compensation scandal has.

If state lawmakers want to have a conversation about the
university’s accountability, by all means, let’s have
that conversation.

But let’s also have a conversation about what being a
“public institution” means and how the state prevents a
public institution from morphing into a private one with no
external oversight.

Let’s have a conversation about the deteriorating building
blocks on which the UC was founded: a quality, affordable education
for all Californians, subsidized by California tax dollars. Pubic
accountability and public support are irrevocably linked.

To slam the UC for a lack of accountability while simultaneously
undermining financial support for the university is more than a
little hypocritical.

For months now, legislators have been telling California that
the university is a state institution and that state residents have
a right to know what’s going on.

They’re right: This is your institution, California.
Invest in it.