Archive for April, 2008
Imprisoning people before educating them
Photo credit: 4PIZON
Everyone knows we are in a financial crisis right now, as a country, as a state and for many of us, as individuals. We can all be reasonable about the need to cut back in state spending. But when it comes to funding for California’s public universities - comprised of the California State University system, the University of California system and community colleges - a long history of contempt for higher education and students emerges. Legislators just don’t think college students are that important.
They should be ashamed.
The cuts to California’s college and university funding coupled with a rejection of additional funding to prevent student fees from rising 10 percent, means Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to cut $386.1 million of desperately needed funding for the CSU system alone. San Diego State’s portion amounts to an $18.2 million budget cut, which will probably have to be compensated for by tuition hikes. This is because of an estimated $14 billion deficit in state revenue from this year and next year, which caused the governor to declare a state of emergency and begin slashing funds across the board.
This comes as a particular blow after the budget cuts from 2002 to 2005, that amounted to more than $500 million. As a result, student fees have gone up by nearly 70 percent since 2002.
But if you’re imagining a panicked governor reacting in haste, madly slashing budgets with a red pen without realizing the consequences, strike that image from your mind. Cuts to education are chillingly deliberate and ridiculously out of proportion to other areas of less crucial spending. Budget cuts to California universities are not really about decreasing the deficit or a response to an economic downturn. It’s hard to see unless you look at the bigger picture and recent history of funding for public universities.
Between 1984 and 2004, the state’s population increased by about 35 percent, according to The Sacramento Bee. It makes sense that in response, the state would need to spend more money in order to meet the demands of more people. But during that 20-year period, public university spending only increased by 18 percent, as opposed to prison spending, which grew by a ridiculous 205 percent.
The Bee explains that higher education is the only major part of the state budget to grow slower than the population. State spending per person for prisons increased by about 126 percent, but declined by 12 percent for universities - the only major part of the budget that actually decreased in proportion to population growth.
Such disregard for our public universities is not just a matter of principle; it also doesn’t make business sense.
“The CSU is California’s economic engine, strengthening the economy by graduating 90,000 students into the state’s workforce every year,” SDSU President Stephen Weber wrote in a budget memo to the SDSU faculty. “We play a major role in the state’s workforce … The CSU returns $4.41 to California’s economy annually for every $1 invested by the state.” The prison system cannot claim that kind of economic return.
Even assuming everyone currently in prison deserves to be there - and let’s face it, between marijuana convictions and “three strikers” who could be incarcerated for 25 to life just for stealing a spare tire, this is a highly unlikely assumption - the spending numbers don’t add up. California does very little to rehabilitate criminals so they don’t commit crimes again, so the spending doesn’t even help decrease crime.
So when it comes down to it, California legislators care more about imprisoning more people with draconian third-strike laws in an ineffective prison system than investing in the higher education of its populace. They spend more money making your pot-smoking neighbor miserable than they do helping you pay for school. Perhaps our indifference to voting and politics reflects politicians’ indifference to our financial struggles, for which they are partly responsible.
Representatives can say all they want about budgets not reflecting their priorities, but they refuse to put their votes - and thus, our tax dollars - where their mouths are. Their actions speak louder than their denials and empty rhetoric.
Until something changes, our tuition will continue to increase along with the crime rate and the prison population. But neither legislators nor the governor care, as long as they still get votes.
Read the original column online here.
