By Menaka Fernando
BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
mfernando@media.ucla.edu
Sen. John Kerry announced a plan last week to support aspects of
higher education that would increase graduation rates among
underrepresented minority students and women and get U.S. colleges
up to speed with other countries in producing graduates in the math
and science fields.
Termed Kerry’s plan for investing in the “next
economy,” the Massachusetts senator and presumptive
Democratic presidential candidate pledged $10 billion to states
whose colleges limit fee increases to the rise of inflation
rates.
The plan was announced during a June 29 speech in Chicago and
detailed efforts Kerry would make to improve the quality and
accessibility to a college education in math and the sciences.
Kerry also said he would create a $100 million fund as an incentive
for colleges to graduate more underprivileged students.
The plan cites the United States’ diminishing ability to
compete with the math and science education level of many parts of
the world as a reason that necessitates the plan.
“Less than one-third of American students are
“˜proficient’ in math and science. “¦ American
colleges graduate 60,000 engineers a year, one-tenth as many as are
being graduated in China and India,” the plan states, citing
the National Assessment of Education Progress, the Department of
Education, the Education Trust and The Washington Post as sources
for the data.
The plan also cites statistics from the Department of Education
that state 18 percent of blacks and 11 percent Chicanos in their
late twenties have a bachelor’s degree, while 29 percent of
all Americans in the same age group have the four-year
undergraduate degree.
The $10 billion fund to combat fee increases would come from
Kerry’s $25 billion state tax relief and education fund while
the $100 million reward for graduating underprivileged students
would be financed by Kerry’s plan to overhaul the federal
student loan program.
The provisions of the plan are four-fold: improving the
technologically apt workforce, graduating one million more students
over the next five years, making higher education more affordable,
and improving education opportunities for those already in the
workforce.
And the means by which the plan could affect the University of
California are two-fold, says George Blumenthal, vice chairman of
the UC Academic Senate.
The UC would benefit from Kerry’s pledge to grant
additional funding to colleges that graduate more low and
moderate-income students, Blumenthal said, pointing to the
UC’s high records of graduating these students compared to
other states.
But Blumenthal said the UC probably would not immediately
benefit from Kerry’s promise to increase funding to
universities whose fees keep up with inflation as a result of the
state’s budget crisis and the compact made between the
governor and UC officials in May.
Under the compact, the UC agreed to raise resident undergraduate
fees by 14 percent and graduate fees by 20 percent, effective this
summer. Fees for undergraduates would further increase by 8 percent
in the subsequent two years and by 10 percent for graduates.
Blumenthal points out that these numbers are considerably
greater than the average rate of inflation: about 2-3 percent.
Still, Blumenthal maintains that overall, the plan would greatly
benefit the nation’s higher education institutions.
“John Kerry is very foresightful” on education
issues, Blumenthal said. “The investment he proposed to make
is very sound for the population and the country.”
But aides of President Bush have said efforts to combat rising
college fees are already underway, according to the Los Angeles
Times. The Times also quoted a Bush spokesman saying that
Kerry’s “cynical attacks are at odds with the fact that
more Americans have college degrees than ever before.”
Bush also has his own plan to expand opportunities in higher
education in the math and science fields.
The proposal would establish “a public-private partnership
to provide $100 million in grants to low-income students who study
math or science. Under this plan, approximately 20,000 low-income
students would receive up to $5,000 each to study math or
science,” according to Bush’s re-election campaign Web
site.
UCLA Professor Ronald Miech, also the vice chair of the
mathematics department, said the nationwide problem of having fewer
female graduates in math and sciences did not apply to his
department, where at least 50 percent of the students majoring in
math are female.
With minorities, Miech said it is a slightly different story. He
believes the representation of Chicano students are roughly equal
to the population in Los Angeles.
But with black students, Miech said there is only a
“sprinkling” of representation, which is reflective of
the low number of black students enrolled in the university.
For the full plan, go to
www.JohnKerry.com/pdf/pr_2004_0629.pdf