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Robert Birgeneau, the chancellor emeritus of Berkeley, spoke at a fundraising event I attended and said something I thought was poignant: "The University of Ca

Robert Birgeneau, the chancellor emeritus of Berkeley, spoke at a fundraising event I attended and said something I thought was poignant: "The University of California has gone from being a state-funded institution, to a state-sponsored institution, to a state-located institution." The level at which the State of California funds the university is practically nothing at this point. Alumni donations have filled some gaps but don't nearly cover everything. Tuition has increased to the point where even I, who graduated in 2006, consider it ridiculous. It is now over 8 times the maximum semester tuition I paid. I can't imagine considering Berkeley a "great value" anymore, as I did when I was there considering the (excellent) quality of education versus the price. It used to be a sense of pride; that a public university could be so great, to prove the experiment, to show that society could produce academic excellence without falling to the vices of money and the divisions that come with it. Now that experiment has failed, and only those who believe in it strongly—the Alumni and supporters—are upholding it, but that's not sustainable. We need to grow up. This fantasy of American individualism is killing us. We need to grow up and learn how to share—and this is the worst part: as we once did.

emehrkay 13y ago
> We need to grow up. This fantasy of American individualism is killing us. We need to grow up and learn how to share—and this is the worst part: as we once did. Reminds me of the very first chapter of The E Myth book (good little book if you haven't read it).
caseysoftware 13y ago
I think the vast majority of people are okay sharing when they can see things moving towards some sort of mutual benefit. For example, funding students in STEM, medicine, etc. But now we have programs like "[choose "minority" group] Studies" and we talk those students as seriously STEM.. or worse, we consider the STEM students as an afterthought. Also, if tuition is now 8x what you paid before, I would suggest that there's a problem with the program itself and not necessarily how we're funding it.
- hack_edu 13y ago
  Those "[choose "minority" group] Studies" programs were en vogue far more in the 80's and 90's, the subject of this piece, than they are now. They're also ridiculously cheap to provide, along with being the first to go when budget cuts get serious. And if you think that the vast majority of people would be willing to pay a little bit more for STEM kids to go to school... I don't even. Very few people out there care what you study in school, and considering some sort of social ROI for undergrad majors is about the last thing on most peoples' minds. Even if there is concrete proof that its better for the whole of us in the first place.
  - patmcguire 13y ago
    Why would they get rid of them if they're cheap to provide? I thought the general rule was that the humanities subsidized the sciences, why cut the profitable portion?
    - hack_edu 13y ago
      Because they're small programs that aren't missed by most. And the rule of thumb that humanities and social science programs subsidize sciences seems a bit misleading. There are an enormous amount of other funding sources within the American system (federal government, industry, military) that patronize science programs. There isn't a comparable system on the other pillar of the academy.
- glesica 13y ago
  Just because there are some majors that you object to ("get off my lawn") and deem worthless that a handful of students choose, you're willing to throw out the whole system, including making STEM degrees just as difficult to get as the rest of them. Nice. That's just brilliant. You're an asshole and probably a bigot.
  - caseysoftware 13y ago
    While that's my bias, I believe the stats back it up. For example, in all the hand wringing about "recent college grads not being able to get jobs" there's always the implied (and rarely stated) "except for STEM majors." Since society deems people outside STEM qualified to do basically nothing, we should take that as a warning sign that something is very wrong with the system. It's like if everyone who worked at a restaurant refused to eat there. You have to start wondering what's going on. (Also, I never said throw out the whole system, that is your straw man.)
ctdonath 13y ago
I earned half my undergrad tuition for Syracuse University (in no way an "inexpensive" school) working summer & part time, parents providing the other half from what they saved. No debts. No socialism. American individualism works. ETA: individualism does not preclude working hard to save resources for your offspring (no strings attached at that), or anyone else you choose to assist entirely at your own discretion. Individualism does not require one start life under a rock and never accept gifted assistance. There is a profound difference between helping those you brought into this world, vs compelling strangers to give up their earnings for people they never met.
- hack_edu 13y ago
  Lots of folks would be debt-free too if they were on the hook for just half of tuition. Most I know from good public universities worked full-time and still couldn't pull it off without five figure debt four years later.
- king_jester 13y ago
  Today without any tuition assistance, the tuition for a year of undergrad study at Syracuse is tens of thousands of dollars. If you are having to feed yourself and pay rent while paying this tuition, the vast majority of available part time or summer jobs will not pay enough to meet even half of your financial needs. Also: > parents providing the other half from what they saved and > American individualism works are contrary. You didn't do anything on your own to get the money your parents provided. This is not individualism, you relied on your existing social networks to meet your financial needs.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    Well, duh. Handouts from parents = rugged individualism. Crush those lazy welfare peons who haven't worked hard enough to have rich parents!
- glesica 13y ago
  Boy, if only I had worked harder, I could have had well-off parents too!
Spooky23 13y ago
California is an entirely different level of crazy. You guys are steadfastly determined to pay way more than you need to for services that usually kinda suck. Hell, there was a reality show that visited people doing jobs that made things in the US when they visited the San Francisco fire department's ladder factory. Yes, the SFFD manufactures it's own ladders. (http://www.sf-fire.org/index.aspx?page=1004 http://www.sf-fire.org/index.aspx?page=1004) I live in NY, which is similarly insane. The per-pupil costs to send a kid in my small-city school district (plus fund the gaggle of Charter schools) is over $26k/year per student. I could literally send my child to a catholic school for 50% of that, or an elite non-religious private school for about 75% of that sum.
fakeer 13y ago
On that scale(which is cost it seems; you say?) which American university is "great value" in USA then? Considering almost all charge those high fees.
Crake 13y ago
Since it has such a reputation for great STEM programs, I looked into Berkeley when I was trying to find colleges to transfer to after I got my associate's. The cost for an OOS student is something like $50,000/year now, without any hope of institutional grants or scholarships to lessen the cost (they make it pretty clear they're not available for OOS students). I don't have access to even half that amount per year in loans! Since California clearly didn't want me, I'm going to NY instead now, since they are very friendly to OOS students. (At my public college, tuition is basically free for me after the first year, and even the first year where I have to pay OOS tuition it's roughly the same cost as in state tuition in the crappy flyover state I'm in now.) California should really think about revising their financial aid and tuition policies if they want to be known for being anything other than someplace only the rich can afford. I guess the days of colleges being known and valued for the academic merits of their students are over.
Taylorious 13y ago
It makes sense that public universities would become more expensive (because of state funding being cut), but what explains private universities raising their tuition so much? http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76
- HarryHirsch 13y ago
  The stagnant NIH and NSF budget. High-end research is expensive, and the money to keep the place running has to come from somewhere. If it isn't from federal grants it has to come from tuition.
  - maaku 13y ago
    This. I was part of a program managing NASA grants, mostly to universities. The University overhead was atrocious, in a few cases approaching 40%. Of course that's just how the industry works, which means grant agencies get accustomed to it and start giving out higher grants to compensate, and the subsidy increases. Sequestration must have hit universities hard.
  - munin 13y ago
    what!? if universities can't have their research funded by grants, they just don't do the research. if a professors grant funding gets cut and he can't pay that grad student any more, they don't pay the grad student out of tuition funding, they just let them go.
    - HarryHirsch 13y ago
      This is what is happening right now in higher education, it is going through a structural change. MIT and Harvard will continue to be fine, at Purdue and Carnegie-Mellon they have to struggle a little harder, but they will be fine. Lesser places have no chance. I cannot see how they will deal with it. In my department 80 % of the undergraduates go up to medical school. Up to now, the deal was that you had to have some kind of research experience as an undergraduate to be accepted at a decent school, but this is going to change, as grant income is shrinking. No cash, no research, no honour's theses. The current plan is that they hired several new professors in a bid to get grant income, but this isn't going to succeed. Half of the full professors here have no grants. The social contract has always been that professors pull in grant money, that is what justifies their salary, as compared to teaching-only staff. But now they haven't got grants and won't get any ever, and you can't explain that to the taxpayer. I don't think anyone has a plan, going forward.
geebee 13y ago
UC actually does raise a lot of money. Last year, Berkeley raised about $400mil from private donations, compared to about $650mil for Harvard and over a $1bil for Stanford. However, those institutions are including a med school. If you add Berkeley and UCSF (a stand alone med/health sciences research university), it goes up to about $730 mil. Of course, most of this goes toward research, which is probably a big part of why Berkeley hasn't really slipped much (if at all) in graduate standings (UCB actually has more PhD programs in the top 10 than any other university, according to the NSRC). The problem is, what to do with those pesky undergrads. Stanford and Harvard solve the problem by not enrolling all that many of them, charging a sky-high tuition, and then providing very very substantial financial aid even into the middle class (Harvard will charge 10% of family income to students from families earning between $120-$180k a year). The problem on a societal level is that this doesn't scale, there just aren't enough spots. Berkeley alone enrolls more low income students than the entire ivy league combined. I'd rather see Berkeley continue this tradition at the undergrad level than emulate an elite private college. But it isn't going to work without state funding. The state just can't demand a huge undergraduate enrollment with lots of low income students and a high (70+%) from California without also kicking in a lot of money. There's a reason Stanford and Harvard are structured this way - this is the optimal way to run an elite private research institution - more graduate students than undergraduates, and lots of grants and private donations, along with a small but very elite and well heeled undergrad population, with extremely generous financial aid to small numbers of low income students. Berkeley was different because it was a state supported school with a different mission - and a different and substantial source of funding. You can't keep the first without the second, it won't work.

emehrkay 13y ago

> We need to grow up. This fantasy of American individualism is killing us. We need to grow up and learn how to share—and this is the worst part: as we once did. Reminds me of the very first chapter of The E Myth book (good little book if you haven't read it).

caseysoftware 13y ago

I think the vast majority of people are okay sharing when they can see things moving towards some sort of mutual benefit. For example, funding students in STEM, medicine, etc. But now we have programs like "[choose "minority" group] Studies" and we talk those students as seriously STEM.. or worse, we consider the STEM students as an afterthought. Also, if tuition is now 8x what you paid before, I would suggest that there's a problem with the program itself and not necessarily how we're funding it.

hack_edu 13y ago
Those "[choose "minority" group] Studies" programs were en vogue far more in the 80's and 90's, the subject of this piece, than they are now. They're also ridiculously cheap to provide, along with being the first to go when budget cuts get serious. And if you think that the vast majority of people would be willing to pay a little bit more for STEM kids to go to school... I don't even. Very few people out there care what you study in school, and considering some sort of social ROI for undergrad majors is about the last thing on most peoples' minds. Even if there is concrete proof that its better for the whole of us in the first place.
- patmcguire 13y ago
  Why would they get rid of them if they're cheap to provide? I thought the general rule was that the humanities subsidized the sciences, why cut the profitable portion?
  - hack_edu 13y ago
    Because they're small programs that aren't missed by most. And the rule of thumb that humanities and social science programs subsidize sciences seems a bit misleading. There are an enormous amount of other funding sources within the American system (federal government, industry, military) that patronize science programs. There isn't a comparable system on the other pillar of the academy.
glesica 13y ago
Just because there are some majors that you object to ("get off my lawn") and deem worthless that a handful of students choose, you're willing to throw out the whole system, including making STEM degrees just as difficult to get as the rest of them. Nice. That's just brilliant. You're an asshole and probably a bigot.
- caseysoftware 13y ago
  While that's my bias, I believe the stats back it up. For example, in all the hand wringing about "recent college grads not being able to get jobs" there's always the implied (and rarely stated) "except for STEM majors." Since society deems people outside STEM qualified to do basically nothing, we should take that as a warning sign that something is very wrong with the system. It's like if everyone who worked at a restaurant refused to eat there. You have to start wondering what's going on. (Also, I never said throw out the whole system, that is your straw man.)

ctdonath 13y ago

I earned half my undergrad tuition for Syracuse University (in no way an "inexpensive" school) working summer & part time, parents providing the other half from what they saved. No debts. No socialism. American individualism works. ETA: individualism does not preclude working hard to save resources for your offspring (no strings attached at that), or anyone else you choose to assist entirely at your own discretion. Individualism does not require one start life under a rock and never accept gifted assistance. There is a profound difference between helping those you brought into this world, vs compelling strangers to give up their earnings for people they never met.

hack_edu 13y ago
Lots of folks would be debt-free too if they were on the hook for just half of tuition. Most I know from good public universities worked full-time and still couldn't pull it off without five figure debt four years later.
king_jester 13y ago
Today without any tuition assistance, the tuition for a year of undergrad study at Syracuse is tens of thousands of dollars. If you are having to feed yourself and pay rent while paying this tuition, the vast majority of available part time or summer jobs will not pay enough to meet even half of your financial needs. Also: > parents providing the other half from what they saved and > American individualism works are contrary. You didn't do anything on your own to get the money your parents provided. This is not individualism, you relied on your existing social networks to meet your financial needs.
- scarmig 13y ago
  Well, duh. Handouts from parents = rugged individualism. Crush those lazy welfare peons who haven't worked hard enough to have rich parents!
glesica 13y ago
Boy, if only I had worked harder, I could have had well-off parents too!

Spooky23 13y ago

California is an entirely different level of crazy. You guys are steadfastly determined to pay way more than you need to for services that usually kinda suck. Hell, there was a reality show that visited people doing jobs that made things in the US when they visited the San Francisco fire department's ladder factory. Yes, the SFFD manufactures it's own ladders. (http://www.sf-fire.org/index.aspx?page=1004 http://www.sf-fire.org/index.aspx?page=1004) I live in NY, which is similarly insane. The per-pupil costs to send a kid in my small-city school district (plus fund the gaggle of Charter schools) is over $26k/year per student. I could literally send my child to a catholic school for 50% of that, or an elite non-religious private school for about 75% of that sum.

fakeer 13y ago

On that scale(which is cost it seems; you say?) which American university is "great value" in USA then? Considering almost all charge those high fees.

Crake 13y ago

Since it has such a reputation for great STEM programs, I looked into Berkeley when I was trying to find colleges to transfer to after I got my associate's. The cost for an OOS student is something like $50,000/year now, without any hope of institutional grants or scholarships to lessen the cost (they make it pretty clear they're not available for OOS students). I don't have access to even half that amount per year in loans! Since California clearly didn't want me, I'm going to NY instead now, since they are very friendly to OOS students. (At my public college, tuition is basically free for me after the first year, and even the first year where I have to pay OOS tuition it's roughly the same cost as in state tuition in the crappy flyover state I'm in now.) California should really think about revising their financial aid and tuition policies if they want to be known for being anything other than someplace only the rich can afford. I guess the days of colleges being known and valued for the academic merits of their students are over.

Taylorious 13y ago

It makes sense that public universities would become more expensive (because of state funding being cut), but what explains private universities raising their tuition so much? http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

HarryHirsch 13y ago
The stagnant NIH and NSF budget. High-end research is expensive, and the money to keep the place running has to come from somewhere. If it isn't from federal grants it has to come from tuition.
- maaku 13y ago
  This. I was part of a program managing NASA grants, mostly to universities. The University overhead was atrocious, in a few cases approaching 40%. Of course that's just how the industry works, which means grant agencies get accustomed to it and start giving out higher grants to compensate, and the subsidy increases. Sequestration must have hit universities hard.
- munin 13y ago
  what!? if universities can't have their research funded by grants, they just don't do the research. if a professors grant funding gets cut and he can't pay that grad student any more, they don't pay the grad student out of tuition funding, they just let them go.
  - HarryHirsch 13y ago
    This is what is happening right now in higher education, it is going through a structural change. MIT and Harvard will continue to be fine, at Purdue and Carnegie-Mellon they have to struggle a little harder, but they will be fine. Lesser places have no chance. I cannot see how they will deal with it. In my department 80 % of the undergraduates go up to medical school. Up to now, the deal was that you had to have some kind of research experience as an undergraduate to be accepted at a decent school, but this is going to change, as grant income is shrinking. No cash, no research, no honour's theses. The current plan is that they hired several new professors in a bid to get grant income, but this isn't going to succeed. Half of the full professors here have no grants. The social contract has always been that professors pull in grant money, that is what justifies their salary, as compared to teaching-only staff. But now they haven't got grants and won't get any ever, and you can't explain that to the taxpayer. I don't think anyone has a plan, going forward.

geebee 13y ago

UC actually does raise a lot of money. Last year, Berkeley raised about $400mil from private donations, compared to about $650mil for Harvard and over a $1bil for Stanford. However, those institutions are including a med school. If you add Berkeley and UCSF (a stand alone med/health sciences research university), it goes up to about $730 mil. Of course, most of this goes toward research, which is probably a big part of why Berkeley hasn't really slipped much (if at all) in graduate standings (UCB actually has more PhD programs in the top 10 than any other university, according to the NSRC). The problem is, what to do with those pesky undergrads. Stanford and Harvard solve the problem by not enrolling all that many of them, charging a sky-high tuition, and then providing very very substantial financial aid even into the middle class (Harvard will charge 10% of family income to students from families earning between $120-$180k a year). The problem on a societal level is that this doesn't scale, there just aren't enough spots. Berkeley alone enrolls more low income students than the entire ivy league combined. I'd rather see Berkeley continue this tradition at the undergrad level than emulate an elite private college. But it isn't going to work without state funding. The state just can't demand a huge undergraduate enrollment with lots of low income students and a high (70+%) from California without also kicking in a lot of money. There's a reason Stanford and Harvard are structured this way - this is the optimal way to run an elite private research institution - more graduate students than undergraduates, and lots of grants and private donations, along with a small but very elite and well heeled undergrad population, with extremely generous financial aid to small numbers of low income students. Berkeley was different because it was a state supported school with a different mission - and a different and substantial source of funding. You can't keep the first without the second, it won't work.