Posted on 01/16/2006 5:44:14 PM PST by calcowgirl
Revelations of secrecy and possible self-dealing in the compensation of some of the University of California's top administrators expose a problem deeper than the need for more transparent "communication" of the rationale behind them.
The more significant issue is the rationale itself: the goal of privatizing higher education in California, which was made explicit in the recent "compact" between University of California President Robert Dynes, California State University Chancellor Charles Reed and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The compact substantially cut base public funding for higher education, required both UC and Cal State to impose large and rapid tuition increases as a permanent source of operating revenues, and committed our universities (in the compact's own words) to "continue to seek additional private resources and maximize other fund sources available to the University to support basic programs."
Many of UC's recent statements defending high salaries and generous perks for top executives presuppose that their primary job is to offset a proportional decline in state funding with increased reliance on user fees, private donations and "partnerships" with for-profit corporations. These statements implicitly compare the leaders of public higher education not with other public officials but with private sector entrepreneurs who expect to be rewarded for their deal-making skills. UC's emerging rationale for treating high administrators like corporate CEOs assumes that at their level the decision to privatize has already happened.
Fortunately, this is a choice that Californians have not yet made and can still resist.
With no public debate, the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which has provided the people of California with high-quality low-cost universities financed through taxes, is being subverted by decisions (large and small) that assume the trend toward privatization to be inevitable.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
---
I guess he has tenure.
"[GASP!] Subject us to MARKET forces?! After all of the work we've done to destroy the public schools? [SHRIEK!]"
Go eat cake.
Neither the press, nor the Legislature, nor Wilson's gang addresses the most basic of questions. What purpose does the UC system serve in California's public education scheme? Originally, a collection of publicly supported colleges to educate the brightest and the best California residents.
It has evolved into a social and geopolitical tool serving a wealth of unqualified domestic students and qualified international students. Evolved into a research and fabrication tool for private industry, principally defense and pharmacology.
To substantially increase taxes on California residents, either directly as students or indirectly as taxpayers forced to support its social experimentation through grants and low interest loans, is unforgivable without an answer to the basic question. Has it lost its way?
You might think from the labelling of "large and rapid tuition hikes" and talk of privatization that private-school tuition charges were coming. Nothing of the sort. The plan is for tuition hikes to be no larger that the rate of income growth, and be capped at less than a third of the cost of a typical private school education.
What has the professors' panties in a bunch is the plan to try to fund the university through community and local-business funding. Such organizations are motivated by their desire for an educated, productive work force. This means that the programs which will receive the best funding are no longer those with the largest excess of unemployable graduate degrees created by a generation of hippies avoiding the Viet Nam War draft (i.e., women's studies). Instead, funding will be geared towards Computer Science, Engineering, Business, Education, and the Natural Sciences.
This pattern has emerged at several community colleges, and explains why the overall quality of undergraduate education at such community colleges is often many times better than the quality of education at "national universities."
Great. As a further reform, I suggest abolishing tenure.
As dangus points out in his post referring to women studies, I'd say its lost its way. I posted the article not because I agree with the author, but because I find that these "creative" methods of financing things are too often just a tool to rob the taxpayer. If taxes are to pay for public education, it should be funding the type of education that is needed for *California* students to excel and produce students who will contribute to the economy. If California's businesses find that the education is not satisfying their needs, there is something wrong with the priorities of the University--and they should adjust their curriculums appropriately (I can't imagine what useful purpose a degree in women's studies achieves). To collect taxes from those businesses and thereby not meet the needs of California, then to ask them again for more funds to meet needs that will benefit the state economically, is convoluted, imo. Also, I believe these private relationships open the door for more corruption and avoid the transparency that should exist when expending public funds.
What a bunch of nonsense. The University system was "privatized" by the dems long ago. If a person does not agree with the dogma, out they go. If that isn't Privatization at work, I do not know what to call it!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.