Governor’s
budget threatens students
Phil
Angelides
This
summer, a great debate is before us in Sacramento,
a debate with serious implications for you
as college students. Governor Schwarzenegger
has proposed more than $650 million in cuts
to California’s public colleges and
universities, tuition hikes of greater than
30 percent for undergraduate students and
50 percent for graduate students over the
next three years. He has proposed a 44 percent
hike in fees for community college students,
cuts to the Cal Grant program, and an $11.6
million reduction in UC research funding.
The
Schwarzenegger administration has also proposed
to ask the UC and CSU to find “non-state
resources” to fund most of its outreach
efforts, which help disadvantaged students
compete for college — after slashing
them by 50 percent earlier this year.
While
there are many questions to be answered
about how to solve the state’s truly
dire fiscal problems, I believe the choices
before us are larger than where to make
cuts or raise revenues. The real question
is whether the leaders of this state will
keep the commitment that our parents and
grandparents made to invest in the next
generation, or whether our elected leaders
will shirk that commitment, to the detriment
of your education and, I believe, to the
future of our state.
As
Treasurer, my first priority is to protect
our economy today, and to build our economy
for tomorrow. I believe the governor’s
budget proposals for our public colleges
and universities take our state in the wrong
direction – undermining our State’s
historic commitment to a first-class higher
educational system that provides opportunity
to all Californians and that will be our
ticket to economic progress in the decades
ahead. What is truly troubling is that the
governor has proposed slashing state support
for higher education and hiking fees on
students, while refusing to consider closing
one corporate tax loophole or restoring
the state’s income tax rates on the
wealthiest Californians to where they were
under Republican Governors Ronald Reagan
and Pete Wilson.
In
January, I had the chance to tour some of
our State’s great UC, CSU, and community
college campuses. While I have always believed
that education is an important investment
in our state’s economic strength,
I came away from this tour more convinced
than ever of the importance of these great
institutions not only for the benefit they
provide our economy, but also for the opportunity
and promise they offer the next generation
of Californians. In my opinion, we should
be debating how we can invest more, not
less, in our students and in these institutions,
and in the future of our state.
On
my college tour, I met many students who
told me that their dreams of attending our
state’s four-year universities simply
would not be possible without the assistance,
support, and guidance they received from
the very CSU and UC outreach programs the
Governor proposed in January to eliminate.
At San Diego City College, I met with four
students in the MESA program — the
Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement
outreach program.
None
of their parents had gone to college, and
all of the students in this program were
working at jobs just to make ends meet.
Because of the MESA program, Izzy Beth Rodriguez,
Barry Cordero, Michelle Scott and Jovanni
Sarria are poised to go on to our great
university system, to study biology, engineering
and biomedical science, and to make their
contribution to California’s future.
Also
in January, I visited McClymonds High School
in Oakland, a school where more students
drop out than graduate. There I met Antoine
Davis, a truly inspiring young man who has
defied the odds against him. Antoine not
only will graduate this spring, but will
do so as student body president, editor
of the school paper, and with a 3.7 grade
point average. Antoine says college outreach
programs helped him to prepare for and apply
to colleges. This fall, he will enroll in
his first-choice school, UC Berkeley.
We
must ensure that our world-renowned public
college and university system can continue
to provide the opportunity for students
like Izzy Beth, Barry, Michelle, Jovanni,
and Antoine – and tens of thousands
more just like them across our State –
to fulfill their dreams of attending college,
where they can acquire the knowledge and
skills they will need to excel in and contribute
to a burgeoning 21st Century economy.
I
plan to continue fighting to protect California’s
higher education system and to maintain
its legacy as an educational system that
is worthy of your future. I urge you to
make your voices heard too, so that, together,
we can steer this debate in the right direction.
E-mail or call the Governor and your legislators,
and let them know that this fight is about
more than dollars and cents — it is
about your education and about the future
of this great state.
Phil
Angelides is California's state treasurer.
|
