On Wednesday, the UC Board of Regents rightfully endorsed Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s initiative that would raise taxes on the wealthiest Californians to provide funds for public safety and education. If voters approve Prop. 30 in November, the UC system will receive $125 million, thereby halting the need for a likely 20.3 percent undergraduate tuition increase.
That did not mean there were no tuition increases at the meeting. And so it comes with some level of dejection that we begrudgingly endorse the regents’ decision to increase fees on 50 of 57 professional degree programs.
When it comes to UC tuition, the frame of discussion has shifted — no longer is the question if there will be increases but how much and when and to whom. In this case, the debate is which UC students the fee hikes will be shoved upon. Admittedly, as a student newspaper comprised mostly of undergraduates, we are not without bias. But increasing tuition for UC professional programs is a better alternative than continuing to raise fees on undergraduates.
For starters, undergraduate tuition has ballooned by around 71 percent since 2008. That’s a $5,066 increase. Over that same period of time, tuition at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has grown by 43 percent while fees at the UCSF School of Nursing have risen 53 percent.
Certainly tuition increases are not ideal. But prioritizing undergraduate education does the greatest good for the most. The professional fee hike affects only about 14,000 of the 234,000 students in the UC system.
Once scarce and sparse, an undergraduate degree has become more standard, the minimum educational achievement level for many jobs. The regents’ decision will thus cease to cut off access to countless people for something that is becoming more of a necessity in the job market. Professional programs will become less affordable as a result of the hike, but those students still need that undergraduate degree to get into said programs. If it must come down to a choice, we favor making undergraduate education more affordable than graduate education.
It makes sense to pay a little bit more to come out of school with a masters rather than a bachelor’s degree. With a degree from a professional program, one has the opportunity to pay back the cost faster, making the degree more valuable for its more immediate return. Perhaps fee hikes on these graduate students will increase their motivation for finding a job, opting for work experience after undergraduate completion rather than simply going to graduate school for lack of another option.
Still, this tuition surge, like any fee increase, is not without its own set of concerns and problems. A justification is that students are going to professional programs to get jobs, but it is not as if the job market is booming in today’s economy. Professional programs in the UC system are already expensive. Take nursing school for instance. With a 35 percent tuition hike — the largest increase of the 50 — for the four UC nursing programs, costs will spiral to more than $20,000 a year.
The 35 percent jump for nursing school may be the biggest increase, but that’s not to say the others are small. The 10 and 12 percent hikes for the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and UC Berkeley School of Optometry, respectively, are still sizable. The 23 percent tuition increase for UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business full-time MBA program will bring its cost to more than $54,000 per year.
As Student Regent Jonathan Stein pointed out at the meeting, the fee hike would probably give graduates less of an incentive to go into public service and government jobs, instead likely deciding on higher-wage work to pay back debt. And that’s a shame, since public service jobs are what we need right now. The brilliant minds of UC graduates should not be going to big corporations but rather be put to work to fix these problems. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.
That’s nothing to say of the accessibility of UC professional degree programs. Elite students might opt for better-priced schools, denying the UC system the brains of some of the brightest students.
Then again, there don’t seem to be a whole lot of other options. The UC system must strike a balance between increases and cuts. We don’t want the UC’s prestige — or more importantly its level of education — to suffer. We must continue to attract the best professors, but they come at a price. Not to mention the notoriety graduate schools often bring to their undergraduate institutions. There is a point at which the degree becomes less valuable due to significant cuts. We don’t want to come close to reaching that juncture.
It is a lose-lose scenario, a vicious cycle of hikes and cuts. So, yes, we are glad this latest round of tuition increases are focused on professional graduate students instead of undergraduates. Fee hikes help stop the UC’s bleeding. Band-aids are an important tool, necessary even, but they don’t heal injuries or stop infections. We’re still looking for the UC’s cure. Until then, tuition cost will continue to swell.
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More wealth redistribution from the comparatively useful (professional students) to the comparatively less useful (undergrads). (Obviously, that’s a generalization, but a generally true one.)
Honestly all of this editorial sounds like a lame excuse to not state the obvious: the DailyCal is written by undergraduate students, who probably won’t go to Berkeley for grad school, so they can’t care less about grad/professional tuition.
“Admittedly, as a student newspaper comprised mostly of undergraduates, we are not without bias.”
They did address it.
Then they went right on with poor logic to argue for lower fees for undergraduates and higher fees for graduate students.
They start talking percentages instead of dollars, which hides the fact that while undergraduates had fee increases of $5K, the graduate students in Haas had a $10K fee increase. The writers were being devious and under handed in their attempt to get graduate student fees increased so the Daily Cal writers don’t have higher fees. Now the Daily Cal wants Californians to pay higher taxes and graduate students to pay higher fees so the Daily Cal writers can keep their fees lower. Such a pathetic self serving article. I would much rather give my $4 a year to the graduate students instead of the Daily Cal now.
They think the reputation of Cal is built on the undergrad programs. FAIL
“The brilliant minds of UC graduates should not be going to big corporations…”
A statement like this is quite shocking to see in print. A corporation is just a business with limited liabilities for owners. What’s wrong with smart people going to work for businesses? Don’t DC editors own iPhones or have Facebook pages?
It reflects the incomplete education of the undergraduate Daily Cal writers. They don’t understand that the economy is driven by the private sector and not the public sector. An intelligent writer would recognize that having a brilliant mind working for a corporation could create many more jobs than someone working in the public sector. I have met several alumni from Haas who have started up companies and hired hundreds of workers.
The issue is not really public vs. private. Despite the fact that a few people will get really rich in the private sector (which means that any measure of “average salary after graduation” if really skewed), there are many middle-management jobs that have comparable wages across the board. Assuming it costs roughly $150,000 to get a Haas MBA in the first place ($108,000 + the cost of your undergraduate education), what are the chances that the student will be losing money on the long term, if you look at the kind of jobs they could have got without the MBA? There’s a certain amount of risk that is assumed completely by the student up-front, compounded with the fact that student loans are just about the only kind of debt that follows you all your life (even after bankruptcy).
The individual would be successful in either sector, but the sector that generates most employment is the private sector. So it is silly for the Daily Cal to write that the brilliant minds should not go to big corporations. I would have loved to have brilliant Berkeley minds running the divisions at the large banking and investment firms when decisions were being made about risky investment practices.
When you consider the much lower tuition for undergraduates, I wouldn’t think that undergrads would have greater chances of losing money in the long term when compared to graduates of the professional schools. I don’t know anything about graduate school financing. Can graduate students in professional programs get low cost loans to cover their fees or other financial aid as easily as undergrads? It would be really rough to throw higher tuition at graduate students if they have to come up with the cash themselves.
Good Obama sheeple writing for DC
I don’t think they could define a corporation if you asked them.
As an optometry student, I am disappointed by the blanket statement made by the editors. Their opinion clearly shows that they have no understanding of the pains that a graduate student goes through in order to fund their education. 7 years ago, there was no such thing as a professional fee and today, that fee is $12,000 per year. Try coming up with an extra $50,000 for your education.
I know the editorial staff will never touch this point, but if you are going to start talking about value, then wouldn’t it be worth more to society to fund the education of an MBA or lawyer who could help in the public sector than to fund the undergraduate education of students in a number of our UC degrees that will never bring back such a return to the public or the economy?
Or at least, the editorial staff should change their position and support making more UC graduate programs private like UCLA’s business school.
Another excuse for the “wealthy” to move out of state. Just how much in taxes do you think the state is going to collect when these people are no longer residents of California?
The vast majority of people have lives and families, they aren’t just money-making machines, and they don’t move across the country based on a 1% increase in marginal tax rate.
They will move when they lose their jobs because your idiotic tax policies chased out the deep pockets who provide start-up funding.You need to spend some time in places like Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Austin, TX where hundreds of thousands of ex-Californians have relocated because their jobs left the state.