UC Tuition on the Rise Again

It’s not news that the University of California is in financial disarray. Over the last few years, Californian taxpayers and students alike have watched as the UCs have drastically raised tuition, cut programs and laid off employees. It’s also no secret that this isn’t a problem that will go away anytime soon; all of the consequences of budget cuts to the University of California will continue to plague these schools and their students until the state’s economy becomes healthy enough to restore the funding necessary for the University of California to operate as it’s intended to.

We’ve become largely complacent about the situation, since it doesn’t seem to be set to change, but we shouldn’t be. There’s a problem with our educational system when state college tuition steadily rises by nearly ten percent every year, and there’s a problem with the people of California when we sit by and accept that fact time and time again.

However, there’s an even bigger problem that isn’t ours to shoulder — this one falls on the shoulders of the UC regents. The past few years have seen tuition and fee raises to accommodate basic university services that lost funding due to various budget cuts. However, the latest round of tuition increases is going to a more questionable recipient: salary raises provided nearly across the board for University of California employees.

Now, in some cases, maybe that’s a good thing; two–thirds of the University of California employees receiving these raises make less than $80,000 per year, and surely those at the lower end of the salary scale will deservedly benefit from their bonuses.

That being said, there’s a different group of UC employees with whom the board of regents ought to be less concerned. One third of the employees receiving merit raises make over $80,000 per year; some up to $200,000, and in a few cases, as much as $400,000 with bonuses adding to $1 million.

One such employee, Patrick Lenz, was recently promoted to Vice President of Budget and Capital Resources in the Office of the President. The promotion earned him a raise of nearly $30,000, bringing his total yearly salary to $300,000, which is funded in full by the state of California. It’s one thing to give merit raises to employees of the University of California who make $14 an hour or less, but it’s a waste and an abuse of students’ hard– earned tuition to give comfortably wealthy executives like Lenz tens of thousands of dollars in raises.

Despite his arguable lack of success in the endeavor, President Obama stated recently, during the debt ceiling debate, that a goal of his was to emphasize “shared sacrifice” in shrinking the national debt by putting an appropriately heavier financial burden on the rich in addition to drawing revenue from the middle and lower classes.

In July, the President stated in a speech that it’s not right to “ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries,” the essence of which applies here: in times of a budget crisis, it’s time to stop putting all of the financial pressure on students and low-earners while coddling the wealthy.

What the University of California regents have done with their latest round of tuition raises is basically supported the opposite sentiment; indulging the desire of the rich to become richer at the expense of college-age students struggling to finance their higher education. Students across the country are in greater financial need now than they’ve ever been in the past, and those in California are no exception. The last thing they need going into college is the news that they’re going to have to pay almost $2,000 more for tuition than they would ha ve the previous year.

It’s unacceptable for the University of California to be simultaneously delivering that news to students while informing administrators with salaries of $200,000 or higher that they’re now going to be paid twenty to fifty thousand dollars more per year. The University of California needs to take a step back, reevaluate its priorities, and remember that the needs of students come first.