3 ms·

Education is actually a very substantial part of the California budget. According to http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies

by Osiris 16y ago

Education is actually a very substantial part of the California budget. According to http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html it's 31% of the budget, with the next largest expenditure being Health and Human Services. There are few major issues with the California budget. 1) Much of the revenue is required by law to be allocated in a certain way. This leaves the government with very little wiggle room to make changes to the budget. 2) State workers have powerful unions that have burdened the government with an amazing out of debt and future obligations in terms of pension of benefits. No matter what the budget shortfall, the government must meet these obligations. 3) When revenues increased during the DOT COM boom, government was more than happy to spend the increased revenue on new services rather than either decreasing taxes or saving the money in a "rainy day" fund. 4) California is a mess of red-tape and bureaucracy. I'm actually surprised how many startups do business in California and the Bay Area with the all the labor laws and extra benefits that businesses have to pay for that other states don't, like CA SDI that pays for paid leave, while other states don't have it. Also, state land use laws and regulations were directly responsible for the increase in housing prices by making it so difficult to build new developments (among other factors, of course). Californians have burdened themselves with a massive amount of debt and regulations that have severely hampered the ability of businesses to grow and contribute to state job growth. A article posted a few weeks back showed that there's a huge exodus of people from California to other states. I personally left California (East Bay) because I couldn't afford to buy a home and settle down with my family, not to mention the 9.75% sales tax on purchases from Newegg.com!

_delirium 16y ago
Since he's coming from the perspective of someone noticing a decline in the UC system, he might be partly noticing a shift within the education spending, rather than overall spending declining (and over-generalizing that perspective). Here's some funding data for the UC system, which has a downward trend in per-student terms since around 1990, except for a brief upward blip during the dot-com boom, and is now lower than it's ever been (as far back as I can find data, anyway): Year State funding (2010 $) Enrollment Per-student funding (2010 $) 1965 $1.37 billion 59,000 $23,000 1970 $1.84b 73,000 $25,000 1975 $2.31b 84,000 $28,000 1980 $2.75b 94,000 $29,000 1985 $3.23b 108,740 $30,000 1990 $3.47b 125,044 $28,000 1995 $2.68b 123,948 $22,000 2000 $3.94b 141,028 $28,000 2005 $3.09b 158,933 $19,000 2010 $3.02b 181,520 $17,000 That probably understates the decline somewhat, because the cost of living in California has grown faster than inflation, so funding should probably be adjusted against a wage index of some sort. Going by pure inflation-calculator adjustments like I used in the above table assumes that you can pay staff in 2010 the same salary as they would get 1965, adjusted only for inflation. That would mean getting professors for around $55,000, sysadmins for around $45,000, etc., which you aren't going to have much luck with. Benefits outside this direct funding were much more generous in my parents' generation also--- my dad went to a private university in California with his tuition mostly paid by the state, courtesy of the Calgrants program, which used to pay for any California student with grades above a certain level and with financial need to attend any California university, public or private. So to some extent it is sort of annoying that a generation that benefited from those kinds of programs, getting their degree without incurring student-loan debt, now thinks that they need to be cut.
- bokonist 16y ago
  It's interesting that the enrollment has grown much faster than population growth (and I'd suspect, much faster than the population of the age 18-22 population, since there was a bulge in that age group in 1970). So what really may be happening is that the spending is spread thinner, as the "everybody should go to college" meme has spread.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    True, although the spending is down from 1985-1990 levels even without the per-student calculation. It doesn't seem to be for explicitly partisan reasons either, since the UC system was well-funded under Deukmejian (a Republican) and then had its funding cut under Wilson (also a Republican). Interestingly, most of the faster-than-population enrollment surge is in the past 5 years. If enrollments had grown from 1970 to 2000 in line with the results of the 1970 census versus the 2000 census, they would've been 124,000 in 2000, which is not that much lower than the actual 141,000 (that's only a 15% growth in enrollment rates over 30 years).
  - ataggart 16y ago
    This could additionally be influenced by any number of schemes which increase both the size and number of college loans, e.g., government-guaranteed loans resulting in higher willingness to lend than might otherwise occur. Such subsidies (be they real or perceived) would tend to result in higher tuition rates for private schools, and lower subsidy amounts for state schools.
- mattmcknight 16y ago
  You just have state funding in there, you have left out tuition, grants and other sources of revenue. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/index/12.1 http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/index/1...
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Well yeah, but that was my point: that state funding of the UC system is in decline. Among other things, that leads to students paying higher tuition and graduating with much higher debt than their parents did.

by Osiris 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago

Since he's coming from the perspective of someone noticing a decline in the UC system, he might be partly noticing a shift within the education spending, rather than overall spending declining (and over-generalizing that perspective). Here's some funding data for the UC system, which has a downward trend in per-student terms since around 1990, except for a brief upward blip during the dot-com boom, and is now lower than it's ever been (as far back as I can find data, anyway): Year State funding (2010 $) Enrollment Per-student funding (2010 $) 1965 $1.37 billion 59,000 $23,000 1970 $1.84b 73,000 $25,000 1975 $2.31b 84,000 $28,000 1980 $2.75b 94,000 $29,000 1985 $3.23b 108,740 $30,000 1990 $3.47b 125,044 $28,000 1995 $2.68b 123,948 $22,000 2000 $3.94b 141,028 $28,000 2005 $3.09b 158,933 $19,000 2010 $3.02b 181,520 $17,000 That probably understates the decline somewhat, because the cost of living in California has grown faster than inflation, so funding should probably be adjusted against a wage index of some sort. Going by pure inflation-calculator adjustments like I used in the above table assumes that you can pay staff in 2010 the same salary as they would get 1965, adjusted only for inflation. That would mean getting professors for around $55,000, sysadmins for around $45,000, etc., which you aren't going to have much luck with. Benefits outside this direct funding were much more generous in my parents' generation also--- my dad went to a private university in California with his tuition mostly paid by the state, courtesy of the Calgrants program, which used to pay for any California student with grades above a certain level and with financial need to attend any California university, public or private. So to some extent it is sort of annoying that a generation that benefited from those kinds of programs, getting their degree without incurring student-loan debt, now thinks that they need to be cut.

bokonist 16y ago
It's interesting that the enrollment has grown much faster than population growth (and I'd suspect, much faster than the population of the age 18-22 population, since there was a bulge in that age group in 1970). So what really may be happening is that the spending is spread thinner, as the "everybody should go to college" meme has spread.
- _delirium 16y ago
  True, although the spending is down from 1985-1990 levels even without the per-student calculation. It doesn't seem to be for explicitly partisan reasons either, since the UC system was well-funded under Deukmejian (a Republican) and then had its funding cut under Wilson (also a Republican). Interestingly, most of the faster-than-population enrollment surge is in the past 5 years. If enrollments had grown from 1970 to 2000 in line with the results of the 1970 census versus the 2000 census, they would've been 124,000 in 2000, which is not that much lower than the actual 141,000 (that's only a 15% growth in enrollment rates over 30 years).
- ataggart 16y ago
  This could additionally be influenced by any number of schemes which increase both the size and number of college loans, e.g., government-guaranteed loans resulting in higher willingness to lend than might otherwise occur. Such subsidies (be they real or perceived) would tend to result in higher tuition rates for private schools, and lower subsidy amounts for state schools.
mattmcknight 16y ago
You just have state funding in there, you have left out tuition, grants and other sources of revenue. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/index/12.1 http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/index/1...
- _delirium 16y ago
  Well yeah, but that was my point: that state funding of the UC system is in decline. Among other things, that leads to students paying higher tuition and graduating with much higher debt than their parents did.