Submission: UC should develop budget without utilizing tuition hikes

By Michael Hirshman

UCLA’s Graduate Students Association passed a unanimous resolution last week calling on the University of California “to develop a budget that does not rely on a major tuition and fee hike.” As the largest graduate student body in the UC, I hope our strong opposition sends a message that students should not have to bear this burden alone.

In November, the UC Office of the President proposed the 27.6 percent tuition increase over five years. To shift responsibility for the increase, the University said fee increases could be lowered or eliminated if “the state provides additional funds above UC’s base budget adjustment.”

Administrators claim they need more funding to “close UC’s budget gap.” To those questioning the University’s costs, the University claims it has no alternative to raising additional revenues to maintain “quality.”

The weakness of this argument was exposed at the November regents’ meeting when Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom pressed Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom about savings generated to date. Bostrom had earlier trumpeted $664 million in efficiencies that he said had been achieved at the UC over the last four years. But when pressed, Brostrom conceded the savings he spoke of came out of a $26 billion revenue base. In other words, $664 million in savings amounts to a mere 2.6 percent of total revenue.

No wonder state leaders have questioned whether the UC has done what it can to address its own financial sustainability. At last week’s regents’ meeting, former Assembly Speaker John Perez called for a rollback of the tuition hikes. As Perez wrote in an earlier op-ed, “Before hiking tuition, university leaders should look first to see where costs might be cut in ways consistent with the goals outlined in the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education. Sadly, that isn’t happening.”

Going forward, the state should formalize an independent task force to monitor expenditures of UC administration and UCOP. While the Select Advisory Committee on the Cost Structure of the University – approved at last week’s UC Board of Regents meeting – is a start, the state should empower the committee and include independent academics and experts along with the governor and UC president.

UC administrators are not alone in seeking more and more money to provide a university education. As GSA’s resolution notes, cost increases in U.S. higher education significantly outpace inflation and have caused a “growing national crisis.” Tuition nationwide has tripled over the last four decades. Before asking students to pay more, our society must ask why education now is far more costly to provide than in the past.

Nationally, bloated salaries of top university officials and coaches have been well publicized. However, this reflects a deeper budgetary malaise, which extends to a growing cadre of administrators, senior-level faculty and infrastructure spending.

According to U.S. Department of Education data, the number of administrators increased 50 percent faster than instructors at colleges and universities in the years between 2001 and 2011. As higher education costs soar, should we continue to increase spending outside direct instruction?

Inside the classroom, faculty devote less time to scheduled teaching than in the past. According to national data from UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute in 2014, 45 percent of faculty devoted nine or more hours a week – approximately a quarter of their time – to scheduled teaching. That is down from 56.5 percent in 2001 and 63.4 percent in 1991. 7.2 percent of faculty report having no scheduled teaching. On a national level, is it fair to ask students to pay more when faculty teach less?

Another reflection of the disconnect is the national building boom on college campuses. According to The New York Times, overall university debt levels more than doubled between 2000 and 2011.

As a society, we must ask whether expenditures on higher education should continue to increase far beyond inflation. If the answer is no, then we need to find a way to make our cost structure sustainable.

When the tuition increases were first proposed, I wrote an op-ed with former undergraduate student government President Devin Murphy that ran in these pages. We pointed out that because of its size and stature, the UC has long been a bellwether of higher education policy.

If our institution cannot find a way to keep its cost increases to inflation or less, it bodes ill for the future of higher education. This would be a sorry development for future generations of undergraduate and graduate students alike.

Hirshman is president of the UCLA Graduate Students Association.

[Source]: Daily Bruin