Today, the Board of Regents for the University of California voted to raise fees for undergraduates by 32 percent.
We’ve been following the blog posts of the student regent writing from inside the meeting and who in turn linked to video of student protesters outside the meeting. We wrote about a student who yesterday took a bus from Berkeley to be part of today’s protests at the Regent’s meeting at UCLA.
It is an impossible situation: The state’s budget crisis has led to severe budget cuts and tuition increases for students at California’s most admired public universities and colleges. As the news reverberates throughout the state, we are wondering, along with everyone else, how public education in California will change:
Will the raised fees give private universities with generous financial aid packages more of an advantage in recruiting the best students?
Will California students be even more tempted to go out of state to look for better deals?
Should Californians who want to pay taxes to support higher education be able to—in exchange for something else?
That last one needs some context. A recent survey in which Californians gave high marks for the state’s higher education showed that a majority do not support raising taxes.
Tucked inside the recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California about higher education is this nugget: “Across regions, only San Francisco Bay Area residents (50% yes, 45% no) would consider paying higher taxes. Elsewhere in the state, about six in 10 are opposed.”
What if the Bay Area could create a special district to support higher education and other institutions it prefers? (Other PPIC surveys show Bay Area residents in support of raising taxes to support K-12 education).
There are already districts to pay for regional goods, such as the East Bay Regional Parks, which is supported by property-tax assessments and the sale of bonds.
Should the Bay Area’s universities and community colleges create a special district and appeal directly to Bay Area voters for help through tax increases or bonds these difficult times?