Submitted by: Megan Ward
On March 31, the Daily Bruin included a pamphlet “Busting the Budget Myth$: How UCLA Is Funded … And Why It Matters to All of Us.” The brochure promised to provide “straight answers in plain English to the most common questions about how the budget process works.”
As a student who has faced enormous increases in the cost of education during my tenure at UCLA, I read it cover to cover. Twice. Despite this, I still have some unanswered financial questions.
No. 1 on my list: Why have mandatory student fees increased from $7,143.23 my first year to $8,309.88 this year and a projected $900 increase for next year? The bulk of this increase was in the “Educational Fee” category, which increased from $5,406 for the 2006-2007 school year to $6,262 for the 2008-2009 school year. No. 2 on my list: Where is all this extra money going? The number of students enrolled in individual classes has increased, TAs and sections have been eliminated for many classes, and the Writing II/Seminar requirement has been suspended.
Curious about this fee mystery, I consulted the UCLA Registrar’s Office Archives online. Ten years ago, the “Educational Fee” was $2,896 and actually decreased to $2,716 for the 1999-2000 school year. I am not naive enough to think that fee increases are the work of evil state legislators or regents trying to squeeze every dollar possible out of students. I understand that the cost of operating UCLA rises over time, and I would expect student fees to increase to help cover that. An increase at the rate of the consumer price index would seem reasonable. What is not reasonable is to see the undergraduate student educational fee more than double in a span of 10 years.
The answers to these questions are partly in the brochure. The line graph in the pamphlet illustrating the decline of state funding from 37 percent of university revenues in 1978-1979 to only 16 percent in 2007-2008 helps explain the need to raise student fees to cover costs.
The question is then, why the steady decline in state support?
The most obvious answer to this question is the perceived political apathy of students and young people in general.
Even with youth voter turnout (18- to 29-year-olds) higher than normal in the 2008 election, it was still well below the general voter turnout. As long as young people don’t exercise their right to vote, state legislators have little incentive to listen to our concerns. When California is facing a budget crunch and cuts must be made, it is not surprising that costs are passed onto students.
If we don’t want the state to continue to cut education funding, we have to give elected officials a reason to listen to us.
As great as UCLA’s voter turnout was for the historic 2008 election, if we don’t all vote in every election, from the exciting presidential ones to the smaller local elections, elected officials have every reason not to listen to us. If we fail to vote, we are failing ourselves, each other and future generations of Bruins who will have to pay for our apathy.
Fellow Bruins, I urge you to mark your calendars now and plan to vote in the special statewide election on May 19.
If you aren’t registered to vote, please do it today and give elected officials a reason to care about students’ issues.
Ward is a third-year communication studies student and vice president of government relations for the Panhellenic Council.