In the summer after my first year, with another tuition increase in sight, I made plans to withdraw from UCLA.
Though it was painful to think of leaving, my parents were already working multiple jobs and still struggling to pay my tuition. We eventually came to the hard decision that my parents would work more and I would take out loans. It hasn’t been easy but I know that I’m lucky compared to friends who have had to withdraw due to the crippling financial burden of our education.
Having to go through this situation is one of the biggest reasons behind my advocacy for Proposition 13 reform, to which I was introduced during the same summer at the University of California Student Association Congress. At this conference, I found a passion for accessibility and affordability issues, and was introduced to the Fund the UC campaign. I was inspired to continue this work by joining the external vice president’s office of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, where I have taken one of our basic principles to heart.
Simply put, we believe that education is a fundamental right that everyone should be able to access and afford.
The California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 created a groundbreaking outline for the UC system based on the concepts of accessibility, affordability and quality education, wherein our tuition would be free. However, we have strayed far from that vision.
Over the past decade, the state has cut more and more funding from the University that once made California exceptional. Since 2001, our tuition has tripled. Now, for the first time in California’s history, students are contributing more to their public education than the state.
Why? The state of California has a structural revenue problem. For many years, California has been unable to take in the revenue necessary to fund our critical needs. As a result, funding for higher education, K-12 education and other social services has drastically decreased.
This revenue problem started in 1978 with the passage of Proposition 13, which was intended to help homeowners by freezing property taxes at 1975 levels, only reassessing home values upon change of ownership. However, commercial property owners have been benefiting the most. Because commercial properties rarely change hands, corporations like Disney and Chevron are allowed to skate by on property tax payments significantly lower than what they should be.
This deprives California of at least $6 billion dollars a year, putting the state in a position where it has little choice but to cut from flagship programs like the UC.
We cannot re-fund education without tackling California’s structural revenue problem. Which is why, in the summer of 2011 at UCSA Congress, students initiated a campaign to advocate for a new revenue structure for the state.
Fund the UC, a statewide campaign that was passed with a majority vote by 500 student delegates from all across the UC system, ultimately aims to close the commercial property tax loophole in Proposition 13 through a ballot initiative in 2016.
Those who argue that UC students have no business advocating for Proposition 13 reform because local property taxes don’t directly go to the UC budget need to realize that an additional $6 billion dollars a year for California will free up money in the General Fund for higher education. Due to Proposition 98, a certain portion of California’s General Fund has to go to K-12 education and community colleges. Since the budget has shrunk since Prop 13’s passage, everyone is losing out. The only way to achieve a tuition rollback is to get more money into the General Fund. Reforming Prop. 13 is the best way to do that.
To claim that we should focus exclusively on asking Governor Brown for an additional $120.9 million for the UC also misses the point of our entire campaign. The legislature doesn’t have enough money to funnel to the UC; that’s precisely why we’re advocating for a new revenue structure.
Some people may believe that we should be content with the new increases to UC funding that Proposition 30 provides. These people fail to understand that the revenue from Prop. 30 is both temporary and volatile. It will be completely depleted in just a few years, at which point tuition will rise even more drastically.
In championing Proposition 13 reform, the USAC external vice president’s office is taking a proactive, solution-oriented approach to the UC funding crisis. We are advocating for long-term change for both students and the state of California, because no student should ever be faced with having to discontinue their education.
I fight to Fund the UC for all of my friends who have been left behind.
Chu is a fourth-year gender studies student, the state and university affairs director for the EVP office and a campus organizing director for UCSA.
To be sure, on the subject of business benefitting from Prop. 13, the concern does not lie with the fact that “commercial properties rarely change hands.” Commercial properties change hands all the time. Rather, the concern lies with how such properties change hands: Through use of special-purpose entities (“SPEs”). By setting up SPEs—shell companies formed for the sole purpose of holding title to certain property—business can transfer commercial properties by sale of ownership of the SPE, instead of the property itself, circumventing Prop. 13 entirely.