PD Editorial: Playing politics with student futures

There’s nothing subtle about the latest tactics employed by UC President Janet Napolitano to get money out of the state Legislature. It’s a take-no-prisoners approach.

To be precise, it’s a take-no-more-in-state students approach – a tactic that puts high school seniors around California in the middle of a political squabble at the worst possible time - when many are poised to make their college choices.

In short, the academic futures of many will be put on hold while state leaders bicker over money. California is better than this. At the center of this feud is a dispute about funding and the admissions policy for the nine undergraduate campuses in the University of California system. At the moment, UC admissions officers are working through a record number of applications for next fall, the 11th straight year applications have increased.

But the UC president told state lawmakers Tuesday that she would cap the enrollment on in-state freshmen and transfer students at current levels unless the state ponies up another $218 million - on top of the $2.9 billion the UC system already receives. This would put in-state students at a disadvantage as their numbers would be capped while the number of out-of-state students, who pay almost three times as much as in-state students, would increase at all campuses except UCLA and UC Berkeley.

State legislators are right to recoil. Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said she was frustrated by UC’s latest attempt to turn students into “bargaining chips.”

“UC’s job is to educate students not wait list them,” said Atkins,

This is just the latest skirmish in a battle that erupted in November when UC regents voted to increase tuition by up to 28 percent over the next five years. Gov. Jerry Brown, who serves on the UC regents, responded by threatening to withhold $120 million in state funds if the university went ahead with the increases. Brown and Napolitano have since agreed to meet as a committee of two to work through their differences. But one can presume, by virtue of the UC president’s presentation on Tuesday, that those discussions are not going well.

Amid the fog of this funding war, Napolitano appears to have lost her way, forgetting that the the purpose of the UC system to educate and protect the interests of students, not hold them hostage.

There are reasons to question whether whether the UC system has been spending taxpayer money wisely and for its intended purpose. As Atkins points out, UC’s core spending has increased 27 percent over the past seven years while enrollment has increased 4 percent. More to the point, pension costs have soared while the number of UC employees making more than $200,000 a year have doubled over the past six years.

High school seniors should not be asked to put their lives on hold while state leaders settle their differences. And in the fierce competition to gain admission to UC campus, being an in-state resident should not be a handicap. If there is to be a cap, it should be on out-of-state residents and further threats like this one.