Rising Fees, Increasing Costs: The Death of California Education?

It has been all over the news for the past few weeks.

Due to steadily decreasing tax revenue and a still increasing deficit in the state budget, the University of California’s Board of Regents has drastically increases student fees, up to over $10,000 for undergraduates in the UC system.

Students have reacted by staging mass protests, sit-ins, and building takeovers at most of the university’s campuses, the biggest uprisings being at the two flagship branches, Berkeley and UCLA.

The California State University system, the nation’s largest with over 200,000 students, has fared even worse as classes have been cut and faculty and staff members have been forced to take furlough days (and that’s if they have been lucky enough to not get laid off), maiming the students’ ability to make sufficient progress towards getting their degree.

Combine that with the ongoing cuts of services and programs and increasing class sizes at the K-12 level, and you have a state whose education system is in grave condition, if not on its deathbed.

As a product of this system, one who earned his high school diploma, his associates and bachelor’s degrees, and has done post-graduate level work in the state, this predicament doesn’t sadden me.

It makes me angry.

Angry that the taxpayers, particularly the affluent sector who can certainly afford it, do not seem to care about educating the children of this state – at least in public school. It is the taxpayers that have continuously refused to pass any measures that may raise their taxes a bit, but may also help schools and keep them from having to lay off teachers and staff, cutting physical education and various enrichment programs such as music and art, and from increasing class sizes; fifty people in a math class, as is the case with many California high schools, is not conducive to learning.

Angry that because of these cuts and fee increases, the quality of the schools is steadily worsening, as the state’s ranking, once among the top in the U.S., is now among the bottom.

Angry that many good people, educators and support staff, are losing their jobs and their livelihoods and are likely facing high debt, bankruptcy, and foreclosures.

And most of all, angry about the ones who are suffering the most due to all of this – the students, preschoolers as well as graduate students.

California has decimated its schools, college and universities so much these last few years with these budget cuts, that it seems to me that very soon, there will be nothing more to cut.

The next step would be to shut down the schools altogether, the way things are going.

Unless attitudes start to change and the people of this country’s most populous state start feeling the students’ pain enough to ante up, it would not be surprising if within the next few years certain K-12 schools, school districts and colleges are permanently closed due to the lack of money.

I can imagine places such as Cal State Dominguez Hills, a small commuter school near Los Angeles that has cut a large number of its classes, shutting down. As well as many of California’s two-year community colleges.

And that would undoubtedly hurt everyone; students won’t be able to fulfill career ambitions, employers would see their hiring pool drop dramatically due to lack of qualified candidates, and the economy would suffer even more than it already has as fewer people will have buying power.

At this rate, that is where California’s education system is heading; right now it is critically ill and well on its way to a slow and painful death, and only by taxpayers consenting to dig into their pockets will this situation have any chance to be remedied.

Are the inhabitants of this Golden State willing to do whatever it takes to save its public school and university systems?

That remains to be seen, but for everyone’s sake, especially the sake of its children, young persons, and those trying to achieve a better life through education, I certainly hope so.