Golis: Shutting the door on deserving students

Friends tell the story of their family’s newest high school graduate. A hard-working young man with a 3.85 grade point average, he dreamed of attending the University of California, and so he eagerly applied for admission to five UC campuses. All five turned him down.

Here’s a kid who did things right, and in the words of one family member, “He feels like he got kicked in the teeth.”

We are reminded of the ferocious competition among high school seniors seeking a place in their colleges of choice. Grades, test scores, essays, Advanced Placement classes, elaborate resumés - at best, it’s stressful; at worst, it’s unhealthy.

And the outcomes are always imperfect. Who can say one student will be more successful than another because he or she got a better grade? And how do we even define success?

There was a time when the UC system welcomed bright kids who weren’t A-plus or A-plus-plus students. Many successful Californians can be grateful for that.

During the same time, deserving students at UC and California State University campuses were guaranteed a world-class education at little or no cost.

That world is long gone, but it’s worth remembering that the students who graduated in that era went on to make California an economic powerhouse, a place admired and imitated around the world.

Nothing stays the same. Globalization changed California, and so did the recession that began when real estate markets turned upside-down in 2008.

Now, we’re waiting to learn if the state’s political leaders want to hold on to California’s unique and historic commitment to higher education.

The Public Policy Institute of California is in the business of providing independent analyses of state issues. Here’s what PPIC reported in November:

“Between 2007-08 and 2012-13, state appropriations to UC and CSU fell by $2 billion (from $6.3 billion to $4.3 billion in 2013-14 dollars) or more than 30 percent, even as enrollment increased. On a per-student basis and adjusted for inflation, the declines have been even more dramatic. General fund subsidies per student fell by more than 50 percent at UC and CSU. Inflation adjusted per student general fund revenues fell from more than $16,000 in 2007-08 to about $10,000 in 2011-12 at UC and from almost $9,000 to less than $6,000 at CSU during the same period. Recent increases in general fund allocations to 2013-14 are relatively small (less than 10 percent per student), and state support for UC and CSU students remains near the lowest level in more than three decades.”

Left to make do with less, university officials did about what we would expect them to do. To reduce costs, they began to restrict enrollments. To increase revenues, they raised tuitions. They also began to enroll more out-of-state students (who pay more in tuition).

Our young man with the 3.85 GPA may have given up his place to a student from Illinois or Nebraska. This is how the state says thank you to a family that lives and pays taxes in California.

More than 30 percent of the students in the freshmen classes at Berkeley and UCLA come from out of state. A decade ago, the percentages were in the single digits.

A New York Times report last week declared the decline in in-state students at schools such as Berkeley and UCLA to be evidence of “the creeping privatization of elite public universities.”

The students fortunate enough to gain admission today also find themselves paying more. Tuitions at UC and CSU campuses have tripled over the past 20 years. Between 2004 and 2013 alone, average tuition at the state’s public universities increased from $4,000 to more than $9,000.

The same PPIC report said: “Our examination of expenditures by the (University of California) and (California State University) systems shows that the cost of providing public higher education in California has not risen dramatically.

“Instead, the tuition increases over the past several years have merely shifted the cost from the state to students and their families.”

After months of squabbling between Gov. Jerry Brown and the UC Board of Regents, the governor last week proposed a compromise that would increase spending on higher education in return for a promise of no tuition increases for in-state students for two years. UC President Janet Napolitano said the arrangement will permit the universities to admit more California students.

Still, it’s not enough to eliminate the ongoing pressure to reduce enrollments and increase tuition - and it won’t happen in time to help the young man who wanted to attend the University of California.

Instead, he will attend one of the CSU campuses. A good kid at a good school, he will do fine.

But he deserved the opportunity to choose. He wasn’t a C student, after all; he was an A-minus student.

Going all the way back to Gov. Ronald Reagan, politicians have been happy to demean public education as they advanced their own agendas.

Brown, in his first go-around as governor, argued that university professors and administrators should be happy to accept smaller salaries because they enjoyed what he called “psychic income.”

Lately, politicians have decried tuition increases even as they voted for budgets that left college officials with few other choices.

After World War II, a world-class system of public colleges was the engine that drove prosperity in California.

The unspoken agreement was that every generation would help the next find success. Now that promise to pay it forward looks to be in jeopardy.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.