UC President Janet Napolitano made it clear this April that the UC system was turning its attention toward more private sources of revenue and partnerships with private industry to offset the lack of state funds. The University experienced state cuts in education in 2008-09 and 2011-12. The University acted upon its plans to expand investment into the private sector, implementing new investment programs over the summer. The expansion of investment programs in the UC system reflects a larger national trend called privatization, in which university administrators use cuts in state funding to push for major reconstruction of how public universities operate.
This June, Napolitano lifted a 25-year restriction that banned the UC from investing in companies that commercialize products derived from its research. This would allow the UC to take equity and directly invest in companies that rely on campus research facilities and incubators. Napolitano thereafter announced that a newly formed UC Innovation Council – an 18-member body of venture capitalists and business executives, among others – would be able to advise the UC in private investment. In September, the UC decided to create a $250 million investment fund called UC Ventures to finance startups targeting the UC’s research.
Investment policy changes are also taking place at UCLA. In the same month, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block announced that a nonprofit company, Westwood Technology Transfer, would help guide UCLA in its investment and entrepreneurial decisions. WTT would partner with UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research, which manages patents and markets products created from UCLA research, to choose which projects or companies the university should fund.
The privatized model stands in contrast to what a public university ought to be – an institution uninfluenced by business interests that produces knowledge and provides affordable education to the next generation of critical thinkers.
The difference between the privatized university and the public university is a matter of priority. A public university prioritizes affordable student education and academic research while a privatized university – and the managers leading this reconstruction – is more interested in the university as a reputable enterprise. In a privatized model, the university outsources investment decision-making, among other operations to private companies, and shifts operational costs from university management and the state to students and their families.
In the privatized model, administrators manage the university like a business that advertises to the consumers – students – to generate a cut of profit for the salaries of a growing number of senior administrators. According to the UC 2014-15 budget report, UC student tuition goes toward UC core funds, which in small part pay for senior management salaries, among other things.
As a result of privatization, the cost of university operations is transferred onto students rather than, as it has historically been, on the state and federal government. UCLA tuition and fees nearly tripled for incoming in-state undergraduate students from $5,112 to $14,392 between 2000-01 and 2013-14 and well over doubled for in-state master’s students from $6,220 to $15,288.38 during the same period, adjusted for 2014 inflation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s inflation calculator.
In response to the tuition increase, UCLA students took out more student loans. The average loan debt upon graduation increased from $16,475 to $20,229 per student from the 2001-02 to the 2012-13 graduating class. To make matters worse, UC management is beginning to talk of tuition and fee increases. Toward the end of last month, Napolitano teleconferenced UC student newspapers, echoing that the UC Regents will “have to look at the tuition again.”
Furthermore, tuition hikes and outsourcing operations were made undemocratically by the UC Regents. Students have no practical institutional mechanism with which to determine our school system’s economic decisions. Thus, there is little choice for us other than to organize and express our grievances to UCLA administration outside of institutional mechanisms like USAC, which has no voting power in the UC Regents.
Organizing students to protest and rally against privatization may seem like a daunting task, but student activists have time on their side. The tuition hikes will not come this year, but probably in the near future. Also, the Westwood Technology Transfer and Office of Intellectual Property partnership is in a one-year transition period while board members gain an understanding of how university operations work. In the meantime, I will also organize with my fellow students. I urge all readers to do the same.
Lu is a second-year political science student and the research coordinator for Student Collective Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE) at UCLA, a student group committed to creating a democratic and free campus.
Email Lu at tlu@media.ucla.edu.
Dear Daily Bruin,
I am somewhat unhappy with the quality of data and reporting. Please make an attempt to have a wider range of reporting than 70% of the campus student population. Also, please make a strong attempt to use accurate numbers and critically think about the issues from a fact based analysis. Couch your arguments in authority. Also, why are professional schools ignored? Where are the discussions of the tuition and fees of MBA students, Medical Students, Dental Students, Law school students…? We are still a part of UCLA.
All of the information below is publicly available through the Registrar’s Archives and the websites of the school’s themselves.
We’re university students at one of the most prestigious schools in the nation, and as such I feel we should be challenging misconceptions and seeking to elevate the truth to the highest standard it can be, and it is high time we act like it.
.
I appreciate the focus on Undergraduates, don’t get me wrong…but don’t forget the ~13,500 or so Graduate students (we make up approximately 30% of students on campus, btw). There were an estimated 28,674 Undergraduates as of the 2013-2014 profile, and ~13,516 graduate students. This makes ~42,190 officially recognized students (I do not believe this calculates Extension students, from what I read of the profile).
I am using AIM’s 2013-2014 “Undergraduate Profile” http://www.aim.ucla.edu/profiles.aspx. I do wish they would change the name, considering it contains information on Undergraduates and Graduate students, and I have followed up by sending a request to find out which committee or office I need to contact to submit such a request.
I for one know that Law Students pay an enormous amount of money just to be students (not accounting for cost-of-living here). Using the Registrar’s archival data on tuition and fees, I generated this data. I’m sure every department has its own story of tuition increases, particularly for the departments where graduate students are paying tuition as opposed to becoming employees of the University (e.g. at least some PhD students do not pay tuition but instead work for the University).
I wanted to reflect upon the exponential nature of prices for public higher education at the UCLA School of Law, which mirror many law schools in the nation. Thus I did some research. Current tuition and fees for UCLA Law Students in 2014-2015 are set at $45,225.99 for residents, and for non-residents they are $51,719.99. According to the Registrar’s archive, as recently as four years ago, in 2009-2010, the tuition and fees were $35,906.50/year for residents and $46,546/year for non-residents. In 2006-2007, a mere 7 years ago, the tuition and fees were $25,462.5 and $36,386.5, respectively. In 2003-2004, a decade ago, the tuition and fees were $17,011 and $29,256.5, respectively. If we go back a mere 14 years to academic year 2000-2001, the tuition and fees were $11,109 and $21,353.5. There has been around a 400% increase in 14 years (since the Millennium) for resident tuition and fees, and around a 250% increase for nonresidents.
Now. Not everyone is going to pay this amount. In fact a majority of students in the Law School have some tuition remission, with anywhere from full tuition remission (1/314, generally from University based award program combined with school-based tuition remission, though Costs Of Living are still a thing) to minimal defrayment, like 5,000$ for the entire 3 years. I am unsure if there are any law students who are actually paying full up-front cost, but that is an information request to ask the Law School. I use the base as a marker to show what some students are paying if they get no remission. Law schools around the nation use this model to attract the “highest quality” students based on LSAT and GPA. It is a very straightforward model and well-written about in publications on the law school admission process.
Best,
Matthew P. FitzGerald
J.D. Candidate UCLA Law Class of 2017
B.A. International Studies, Conc: Global Health & Italian Studies, University of Washington-Seattle June 2012