I am a traitor. Raised amid the white columns and red brick of the University of Virginia, I jumped ship (or continent) and came west to the University of California, Berkeley for my undergraduate education. I forsook the comforting, dusty depths of UVA’s ancient Alderman Library, the smooth marble floors of the academic halls where I used to roller-skate clandestinely with my brother on rainy afternoons, and the deans’ gardens where high school kids would to chill on Friday evenings, before being chased away by a campus guard.
Although I occasionally miss being a townie, I would never give up my Berkeley life. That said, there are a few facets of Californianism that drive me up the wall.
Aside from their tendency to queue up a good 20 minutes before the bus or BART train is due to arrive, and their love of drifting along five miles below the speed limit in the left lane, I find Californians to be — at times — slightly unhinged; while demanding full services from their state government and excellence from their public universities, Californians refuse to pay for such luxuries.
To me, this constitutes a special breed of entitlement. It is not the sort spotted around UVA, where over-tanned trust-fund babies abound. Rather, entitled Californians — Berkeley students in particular — demand four (or six) years of top-quality education for a relatively slim fee, and then graduate without a backwards glance.
The numbers speak for themselves: In 2010, just 12 percent of Berkeley’s alumni gave back to the campus. Over the course of their lifetimes, only 40 percent have donated, according to Jose Rodriguez, campus endowment campaign spokesperson. At UVA — which tied with UCLA for the second best public school in the nation, just behind Berkeley at number one — 20 percent of alums gave back last year, while the lifetime giving rate is 60 percent, according to Emma Edmunds, public affairs officer for UVA.
This culture of contributing to the next generation’s success is missing at Berkeley. Too many of my friends have responded to questions about the university’s fiscal future with the apathetic one-liner: “I’ll have graduated by the time Berkeley goes under.”
I’m not advocating mandated fee hikes or a vertiginous spike in taxes. And sure, I understand that the campaign to boost UVA’s endowment also contributes to bloated sports funding and an unhealthy fixation on the football team. And I am well aware that not everyone can donate. But I also have no doubt that at the nation’s top public university, a plethora of successful graduates go on to lucrative careers. They would do well to remember those who come after.
Nina Brown’s column appears in The Daily Californian every Thursday. Follow her on Twitter @NinaBrown296.
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How come it costs 50% more (after adjusting for inflation)
for University of California Board of Regents Chair Lansing and President Yudof
to provide the same service?
Total expenditures in the UC system in 1999-2000 were $3.2
billion to educate a student population of 154,000. Converted into 2011 dollars
using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI calculator gets us to $4.3B in 2011
dollars, which comes out to $27,850 per student.
In 2011, the total UC system budget was $6.3 billion
dollars: an increase of almost 50% after adjusting for inflation. Enrollment
also rose – to 158,000 students, a 3% increase, yielding a cost per student of
$39,750.
Costs went up 50% in
10 years. And yet the news out of UC
President Yudof is that the UC system is “bracing” for ‘another round
of budget cuts’!
Email opinions to UC Board of Regents [email protected]
Everyone ASSUMES that college is a “wise investment”, and parrots this party line, lest they be attacked en masse by those who have substantial economic and emotional investments in defending the status quo. However, is college really a “wise investment for everyone”?
In my case, getting a 4-year engineering degree @ Cal before getting out into the workforce WAS the right decision. However, is it the right decision for someone who lacks a sufficient combination of intellectual horsepower and dedication/motivation to make it through to graduation? Is it the right decision for someone who was woefully unprepared in HS (or lacked a strong performance in a CC for transfer students)? Is it the right decision for someone whose future income prospects are so meager that they will barely make enough to pay their own bills, much less pay back college loans, because they are majoring in some fluff course of study has offers little or nothing in the way of marketable skills in the real world? How about those who simply aren’t interested, and merely attending as a way of stalling adulthood and real world responsibilities?
We keep hearing this mantra that college should be free, and that everyone has a “right” to attend college. Have we ever considered that maybe the reason our colleges face their current problems (rising tuition, bloated bureaucracies, dumbed-down major/degree progams) is precisely BECAUSE we haven’t been willing to question those sacred assumptions? What type of “investment” counts on students, parents, or taxpayers assuming a debt load that can not be paid back?