Campus Correspondence : The Student Reality Isn’t How to Buy a Car, but How to Stay in School

A good public university system looks better and better as the costs of a college education escalate. Last month, however, the regents of the University of California thinned the line separating private and public education by approving a student-fee increase of nearly 40%.

Soon after the regents’ announcement, student newspapers at seven of the UC campuses published a joint editorial opposing the increase.

The UC papers are as diverse as the campuses at which they are based; they disagree on many issues. But it should be no surprise that the fee issue could unify them, especially when the regents seemed to have lost touch with student realities.

In defending the fee increase, Regent Glenn Campbell said, “In the UC system, we’re down to a situation where students only work when they want a new car or maybe a used car.” Fortunately, not all regents think like Campbell, but his opinion does echo a myth about UC students.

Many students do work, not to buy a car, but to pay for school or living expenses. Not since 1980 has the UC Irvine campus done a study on how many of its students work. Without such information, the regents can hardly judge how easy student life is. From personal experience, I know that many students would not be able to attend college if they didn’t have jobs.

Maybe once upon a time, when professors wanted to schedule appointments outside the classroom, students only had to worry about time conflicts with other academic events. The last time a professor wanted to schedule appointments in one of my classes, what had to be considered were student work schedules: When not at school, many students are earning money to pay for school.

“We really didn’t increase fees to students who need financial aid,” said Regent William T. Bagley. Put another way: Poorer students will receive more financial aid and richer students can afford the increase. The problem is that this view does not recognize the difference between family and individual incomes. Just because students’ families make good money does not mean that it’s available for education.

Parents often need high incomes just to maintain their lifestyles, including car and house payments. Nor do students necessarily have a strong influence on how their parents spend their money. Even if they did, few students would ask their parents to sacrifice their homes to pay college expenses.

Currently, the median family income of University of California students is $54,000. Some regents used this statistic as evidence that parents could afford to pay more. Such reasoning assumes that parents pay their children’s expenses, no matter what their other obligations. It also fails to see the other side of the coin: Poorer families cannot afford to send their children to college.

Some regents were concerned about how the fee hike would affect students, and the vote to increase fees may have been difficult for them. After all, faced with a $300-million reduction in state funds under Governor Pete Wilson’s proposed budget, they may have felt that their choices were limited.

Many regents, moreover, did not even know about the fee proposal until five days before they had to make their decision. Considering that the regents have time-consuming professional lives outside the University of California, they might not have devoted much attention to the issue.

The fee-increase decision is not final. Perhaps, looking at student and voter response, the regents will reconsider their decision. Perhaps the state will grant more money to the University of California. But as things stand now, the future of public higher education in the state looks turbulent. If fees go up again next year, the difference between private and public education really will begin to disintegrate.