After a raucous start Thursday morning outside UC Santa Cruz, demonstrations over California's funding for schools were mostly peaceful and reasonable.
Most of the heat Thursday was generated at university campuses, where a 32 percent hike in fees and budget cuts have infuriated many students. Protesters' argument against increases in tuition is that a public university education is becoming unaffordable to poorer families. This in turn would mean California's economic future is in doubt, since a highly educated work force would seem essential to future job creation.
Fees at UC campuses will be above $11,000 next year; at Cal State campuses fees will be $4,827.
California taxpayers who have experienced wage cuts and furloughs, not to mention job losses, may be wondering why they should be subsidizing higher education.
So, are the fee hikes unjust?
That would depend on who's paying the tab.
But in a San Jose Mercury News story published in Thursday's Sentinel, reporter Lisa M. Kreiger found that protesters may not realize state public university educations for the poor are being subsidized by middle-class families, who don't qualify for government aid readily available to lower-income families. Poorer students often pay no tuition at all in the new model of California public higher education, which Kreiger describes as "high tuition, high aid." Without substantial new taxes for Californians, this model will probably stick. Meanwhile,
the state's contributions to higher education as a percentage of the general fund are about half of what they were in 1984. That's why fees are rising.
The nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office says fees are not the sole culprit, because they subsidize higher education for needy students. Reducing fees would reduce access.
That's probably little solace to hard-pressed families trying to keep up with drastic fee hikes, but it does put the current situation in context.
Legislative analyst Steve Bollard's solution is that UC and CSU systems create a formal fee policy, much like one in place from 1986-96 that specified increases should be gradual, moderate -- and predictable. By determining increases at least 10 months in advance and never jumping by more than 10 percent in a year, families who don't qualify for aid can budget for college costs.
The volatility of the state's budget has meant wealthier families are on the hook for ensuring that poorer students also have access to a UC or CSU education. That doesn't make it right, but protesters should do their homework to find out what's behind fee hikes.