California Colleges
* Your editorial “Turning Point for Higher Ed?” (Oct. 9) calls for radical change in our state universities and colleges in response to a public concern about rising tuition and falling enrollment. The public--and The Times--should recall that less than a decade ago California’s public universities were seen as a model throughout the nation and the world. The Master Plan for higher education, with its promise of all qualified students to an appropriate level, was viewed as a visionary document.
Why, then, the call for radical change? The timing of this call is suspect. Should we be fundamentally changing admired and successful public universities just when the students entering California public higher education are beginning to be truly reflective of the racial diversity of the state? (The student groups on several CSU campuses are among the most ethnically diverse in the nation.)
CSU faculty and staff have responded to the challenge of lower state appropriations with heroic efforts. Faculty have allowed (perhaps misguidedly, if one is concerned about educational quality) more and more students to enroll in their classes; statewide the student/faculty ratio in the State University has risen by over 20% in the past five years. Faculty and staff have received no across-the-board pay raise in the past three years. The universities struggle with outmoded equipment, and deteriorated buildings. But radical change is not the only solution; a return to the reasonable share of the state budget that higher education received a decade ago would soon restore its health.
Two articles (Oct. 10) illuminate the dilemma. California’s taxpayers have been misled into thinking they pay high taxes; the facts are otherwise. And the closing words of Peter King’s column apply to higher education, too: “Listen to the teachers. They have not failed (California); it is the other way around.”
HAROLD GOLDWHITE, Chair
Academic Senate of CSU
Long Beach
* More fee increases for California students (Oct. 8)? Where will it end? When we have to pay as much as Harvard students? Times are rough and an annual fee increase may be justified, but not to the extent proposed. Thank goodness I graduate in June--I couldn’t afford UCI much longer. For the past six years I have lived below the poverty line and have mortgaged my future to pay my college expenses. The public would be outraged if another group (the poor or single mothers) were financially raped the way that students have been for the last four years. So I ask, where is the outrage?
If the state refused to adequately fund higher education, then perhaps we need to reduce the size of the system. We can’t continue a Band-Aid approach of arbitrarily raising student fees. Can’t anyone see the clouds of backlash forming on the horizon?
BEN JARVIS
Irvine
