State legislature was right to reject unit caps
As a current UC student, I am relieved that the Legislature has rejected the governor’s plan to impose unit caps. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal protects the state’s coffers but at the expense of students. Rather than help students graduate in four years, Brown decided that the state should abandon students after five or six years.
When the governor proposed this plan, he claimed it acted as an “incentive” for students to graduate sooner. However, some campuses already have a policy on maximum units and time to graduate. The College of Letters and Science applies a unit ceiling of 130 semester units — even fewer units than the governor’s proposed caps. Additionally, UC Berkeley students lose financial-aid eligibility after five years — “incentive” enough to graduate beforehand.
Brown’s plan would exclusively affect in-state students; out-of-state students already pay higher tuition. Why would they graduate sooner due to a policy that doesn’t affect them? Clearly, this justification must be a facade covering Brown’s true intentions.
Brown’s proposal would cap the state’s per-student contributions and push costs onto students. Despite the promise of increased funding for public education through Proposition 30 — which students helped pass — the proposal sets an upper limit on how much the state will pay for education. Rather than addressing the reasons students take more than four years to graduate, this plan imposes an additional obstacle to obtaining a degree.
If Brown truly wishes to improve student outcomes, he should start by simplifying the transfer of community college credits to the UC and CSU systems. Today, campuses must individually forge agreements on transferrable courses. The governor’s office could mediate these agreements to streamline campus-to-campus and system-to-system transfers to allow students to skip redundant classes. This would not only speed students to a degree but also leave seats open for other students.
While Brown made many proposals for higher education in this year’s budget, I am glad to see that this one will not be enacted. A $20,000 hurdle at the end of students’ education won’t make them graduate faster, Governor.
— Grady Yu,
Berkeley student
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