Last week, on Feb. 10, some UCLA students distributed crisp new postcards with letters typed out to our local assembly members.
The two letters, addressed to Reps. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Charles Calderon (D-Montebello), are trying to convince them to pass the College Affordability Act, which in turn aims to maintain modest public university costs for all students. It would do this through higher taxes and strict price caps on student fees.
They began, “(University of California) students and their families have unfairly been bearing the burden of balancing the state budget. By being forced to face a 85 percent fee increase ever since 2001, UC students need you now more than ever to be a leader in protecting higher education in the state budget.”
All they needed was your signature and a short walk to drop it off, and you too could be a campus activist!
The letters also go on to blame Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for all of our college funding woes. Only the College Affordability Act can save the day.
And the letters sounded pretty good too. I especially like the loaded language: “Unfairly … burden(ed)” (sniffle), “forced” (gasp!), and “leader” (as the entire UC student body looks up with wide eyes at politicians ““ perhaps with a pathetically quivering lip). The gender-neutral “Assemblymember” was pretty quaint too. That healthy dose of political correctness isn’t even in my Microsoft Word spell check.
So kudos to the anonymous writer of this letter and its diction. Because their postcard does what it was designed to ““ makes the College Affordability Act seem like the simple and obvious solution.
Telling Bruins and their families that they want the government to “provide long-term protection from skyrocketing fees” and “reverse harmful cuts to higher education by raising revenue” sounds as supportive as it is vague.
But there are a few things University of California Student Association didn’t tell you while shoving this flier in your face.
For one, an identical initiative was proposed to the California State Assembly in late 2007. It failed.
A second attempt at passing this bill would have the same shortcomings as the first.
For one, it would tax earners of a certain income an additional 1 percent ““ these same citizens are already the sole demographic that funds a mental health services program. Essentially, you have a chunk of the population taking on an added fiscal responsibility for a minority of the state. Talk about an unfair burden.
Perhaps this is why the original bill was opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Taxpayers’ Association and the Log Cabin Republicans.
Even the California State University system thinks this is a bad idea. According to the Assembly Bill Analysis, “CSU agrees with the intent of the author to increase the State’s investment in Higher Education. … However, this proposal does not ensure accessibility or affordability.” They cite the obvious fact that student fees are already only a fraction of the total cost to attend college, because the state of California financially supports all of its public universities. The state is already picking up the tab for all of us on a lot of fronts.
So while the state may be doing students a favor in the short run, this would be a disservice to schools themselves as shrinking revenue would lead to program and acceptance cuts. The “long-term protection” stated above just means that the UC and the CSU are locked into a limited budget ““ regardless of unforeseeable changes in costs.
The CSU commentary goes on to state, “This proposal would limit the flexibility of the CSU and UC, along with the State, to manage its commitment to a quality education since it does not have any real guarantee funding from the State.”
This is pretty dangerous given the fact that requiring a cap on student fees (a key source of revenue for the public universities) and supplementing only with fluctuating income tax means that the UC and the CSU would have a very limited and unpredictable budget.
The postcard fliers use clever language and a smiling face to demonstrate the ease of change. Juxtapose that with our rising fees and our desire for any solution, and it is easy to see why the College Affordability Act seems attractive.
But in fact there are many problems with simply passing a bill to try to solve budget issues.
It is not as simple as signing a postcard. It is not as simple as our representatives pushing the “yes” button. It is just not as simple as the lobbyist group UCSA would have you believe.
Perhaps changes are needed, but voting for a faulty bill just for the sake of taking action is not a smart idea.
Besides, college costs money, and nowhere in the Constitution is “education” listed as a right. As costs rise on everything from necessities to luxuries, higher education will be more difficult for the state to provide and for students to achieve.
This simple fact of economics is the reason our assembly members should toss out these adorable little postcards and again vote “no” on the College Affordability Act.
E-mail Kelly Bowers at kbowers@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.