But as the school year starts, the entire system is facing an upheaval as potentially earth-shattering as the San Andreas fault. Recession-mired California has had an estimated $25 billion budget shortfall over the past two years and that has led to drastic cuts in funds for higher education. All over the state, students are locked out of “required” courses because classes are full and there’s no money for extra sections. Thousands of other classes have been simply canceled. Faculty members-including those with tenure-fear for their jobs; hundreds have already been laid off. Virtually every service, from building maintenance to clerical help, has been severely cut. While other public universities are also in trouble, California’s situation is the most dramatic because the state’s vision is the most ambitious. Clark Kerr, the former University of California president who helped create the Master Plan in 1960, says it’s the most dangerous crisis in the system’s history. Last week UC officials said they were considering even more cutbacks over the next five years.
Critics say that the Master Plan-conceived in the postwar boom-is an unaffordable luxury in the lean and mean 1990s. The system is still huge, with a budget of more than $4.68 billion and more than 2 million students. But in the most recent budget negotiations, the Cal State share was cut 8.8 percent and UC lost 10.5 percent. The future looks even grimmer. California’s population is growing dramatically. By the year 2000, there will be 108,000 more students graduating from high school than there were this June-and the colleges won’t have room for them.
The Cal State system is the most sensitive to California’s fiscal woes because state funds make up 85 percent of Cal State’s budget. The state gets back the investment; Cal State turns out three out of every four California teachers (and one out of every nine teachers in the rest of the country). Last year, 4,500 classes were canceled. And space is so tight that stud have become “crashers,” begging professors to let them into jammed lecture halls. Though still a bargain, fees just increased 40 percent to $1,308 per year. Some students are heading north. Oregon officials say they’re “besieged” by Californians willing to pay higher out-of-state tuition to get the classes they want.
At many Cal State campuses, fiscal woes have become the subject of campus demonstrations. The epicenter is San Diego, where last year thousands of students gathered to protest budget cuts in the largest on-campus rally since the Vietnam War. A small band of student activists are in their fifth month of a round-the-clock vigil. Last month a majority of the faculty called for the firing of president Thomas Day after he announced a plan to eliminate nine departments-including anthropology, health science and Russian-and to lay off 146 tenured and tenure-track faculty. Although Day’s boss, California State University chancellor Barry Munitz, last week rescinded all proposed 1992-93 tenured and tenure-track layoffs, he warned that there will be layoffs in 1993-94 unless the legislature comes up with more money.
Senior Robin Buchanan, a 23-year-old health-science major, was “devastated” when Day announced the abolition of her department last spring. Now those classes are back on, but Buchanan is interested only in graduation: “I’m just trying to get out before it all falls.”
If she does, she’ll be luckier than many of the 1.5 million students at the state’s community colleges. “We’re at the breaking point,” says Evelyn Wong, president of West Los Angeles Community College. There’s little money for upgrading or even maintaining facilities. The satellite campus of Wong’s school, next to the airport, is decaying so badly it looks as if it would blow away in a strong wind. Unreliable air conditioning can send classroom temperatures soaring to 100 degrees. Instructors beg for fuel donations at the airport so they can start the engines on which students train.
The community colleges should be sheltered from some of the budget battles. California law mandates that 40 percent of state revenues go to community colleges and grades K to 12. But the community colleges’ share of that pot has declined and administrators say the number of applicants is way beyond capacity. California’s community colleges form the largest higher-education system in the world, enrolling one out of every 10 American college students. Next semester, fees will go from $18 to $30 a course for students with no college degrees; those with B.A.s, who are often looking for retraining, pay $150 a course. Although the community colleges are still a bargain, the fee increase hurts. " It’s going to deter a lot of minorities," says 20 year-old Ricky Troupe, a student at West Los Angeles. In his first two semesters, Troupe, an A student in the paralegal program, walked 3.5 miles to the campus because he didn’t have bus fare. When a professor gave him a hard time for being late, Troupe did not explain his tardiness: I was too proud."
If the community-college students are the most vunerable, then the University of California students should be the most privileged. There are 18 Nobel laureates on the 7,400-member faculty; the university boasts more top-10 ranked academic programs than any other public or private institution in the country. But as students struggle to pay fees that have increased 85 percent in three years, they’ve also had to contend with growing public outrage over salaries and perks for administrators.
The controversy began with the disclosure earlier this year that the UC Board of Regents had privately approved a nearly $1 million retirement package for president David Gardner. The state legislature ordered an audit of UC’s top executives. It found that the university bought two credenzas valued at $15,179, 12 Wedgwood china settings and two $44,854 Iranian carpets. UC was charged for a wedding gift for Gardner’s daughter and for his contribution to the San Francisco Symphony. UC officials argue that these were minor policy violations, but the negative publicity made it easier for legislators to cut the budget.
Not everyone has given up. Clark Kerr, for one, thinks that when the recession ends and the state’s coffers begin to fill up, Californians will once again support their colleges. In the meantime, he argues that the state must conserve one of its most valuable resources. Otherwise, he says, Californians may wake up and find that the Golden Dream was just that-a dream.
136
2 million
$4.68 billion
$780 million
85% since 1989, to $3,036
