Students speak out on fees, budget crisis

by Clifton B. Parker
December 11, 2009

Student Leslie Flores: "I'm full of loans."

Almost a week of protests gave way to a respectful dialogue with Chancellor Linda Katehi the night of Nov. 30, as students shared their stories of financial pain and some pressed her to come out against the UC system’s recently enacted fee increases.

The chancellor said the fee increases, while very difficult for students and their families, will keep the university system from laying off thousands of workers. “If that is the alternative that I would have to take, I will tell you, I will not take it,” Katehi said during the two-hour forum.

She also pointed out that the fee increases are but one part of the university’s plan to make up for a drastic cutback in state funding. Employees are being furloughed, faculty hiring has been slowed and programs are being cut — but those steps alone, Katehi said, are not enough to close UC Davis’ two-year gap of almost $150 million.

In fact, fee increases last year and this year are covering only about $30 million of that amount.

The chancellor addressed an audience of some 150 people, many of them students, in the Activities and Recreation Center Ballroom. The student assistants to the chancellor arrange these forums quarterly; the Fall Dialogue with the Chancellor happened to come in the wake of the fee increases that sparked protests around UC.

The fee increases — 32 percent for California resident undergraduates, from winter quarter through 2010-11 — gained approval of the UC Board of Regents on Nov. 19. A sit-in that day in the lobby of Mrak Hall led to 52 arrests, and, in the days that followed, students launched a daily study-in that at times drew hundreds of demonstrators to the lobby.

The night of Nov. 24 brought another tense situation but no arrests. Instead, shortly after 11 o’clock, more than six hours after the building’s normal closing time, the demonstrators left on their own after forging an agreement with Student Affairs Associate Vice Chancellor Janet Gong on several points, most involving the fate of the “Mrak 52.” (See separate story on the disposition of the charges.)

At the chancellor’s Nov. 30 forum, student Leslie Flores asked Katehi if she would ever meet with “big groups” of students like those who had gathered in the Mrak Hall lobby over the previous several days. Or, Flores asked, “Are you only willing to work with us on your terms?”

Katehi responded: “I’m willing to be engaged in a dialogue. And a dialogue is a give and take; it’s not my terms or your terms. From the time we started saying this is my terms or this is your terms, then we are not talking about a dialogue.

“And, so, if you want to tell me when to meet with you, give me time to do this, and get together and discuss it, but come with suggestions and ideas and a willingness to listen, not to create demands, not to create deadlines. And I’m willing to sit down with you and discuss it. And that’s what I would like to start as a process this year.”

Besides the prospect of further meetings, Katehi also invited students to share their comments and suggestions via e-mail, advisory groups and her student assistants.

Enrique Lavernia, provost and executive vice chancellor, and Kelly Ratliff, associate vice chancellor in charge of the budget, joined the chancellor in urging students to share their ideas for cutting costs and setting priorities.

It is an ongoing process, Lavernia said, not only to deal with this year’s budget shortfall, but the likely shortfalls in the years ahead as the state becomes more of “an unreliable partner.”

Shared sacrifice

Katehi said all segments of the campus community — students, faculty and staff — are sharing the “intense” budget pain, in higher fees, work furloughs and program cuts.

“A chancellor is a chancellor for many people, and on this campus I am the chancellor for 32,000 students, for 20,000 staff, and for 3,000 faculty and lecturers, and every single one of them is hurting. And it is very difficult to find a solution that will protect anyone in today’s environment.”

By not fully funding the UC system, the state left UC Davis with a $113 million shortfall for 2009-10, on the heels of a $33 million shortfall the year before.

State Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada (D-Vacaville), whose district includes Davis, was the last audience member to step to the microphone. She acknowledged her “ugly votes” on the state budget that left UC in the position it is in, while also noting that the UC system’s 2009-10 shortfall was only a small part of the state’s $60 billion in red ink.

Still, Yamada said, she was happy to see students at the chancellor’s forum put “a face on this assault on education in California.”

Those faces delivered testimonials on the challenges that would come with a 15 percent fee increase (for resident undergraduates) in winter quarter, followed by another 15 percent increase in 2010-11, pushing the cost of a year’s education past $10,000, not including books, room and board, and campus-based fees.

One student spoke of eating only one meal a day, with maybe some snacks in between. Another said he would be forced to get another job and move to a “much crappier” apartment. Another said he would take more classes each quarter so he could graduate sooner and thereby reduce the amount that his parents must borrow on their mortgage.

Flores, a third-year student majoring in community and regional development, said: “I’m full of loans. I can’t take any more loans out, so my mom gives me the call, and says, ‘You know, Leslie, turns out, if your dad keeps doing the amount of money he’s doing right now, you’re not going to able to go back to college next year.’

“Two quarters before I graduate, I’m not going to get a degree.”

Katehi said she sympathized with the students’ financial challenges, and she shared some of her own history — growing up in an underprivileged, working-class community in Greece, and going to college only after the government established a free public system of higher education. Before that, the only option was private college — something her family could have never afforded.

She set out to make a better life for herself, and she did — earning her master’s and doctorate at UCLA, and then becoming a professor and administrator in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.

Along the way, her salary grew — to $400,000 a year at UC Davis, an amount that she defended as commensurate with her qualifications to run a university with an annual budget of nearly $3 billion.

She also came in for criticism for being paid 27 percent more than her predecessor — a difference that she attributed primarily to the difference in their academic disciplines (she is an electrical engineer and Chancellor Emeritus Larry Vanderhoef is a plant scientist).

Of course, this year, all UC chancellors and other high-level administrators are taking a 10 percent pay cut. So Katehi is making about what she earned as provost at the University of Illinois.

Committed and frustrated

Katehi has spent her entire career in public education, and she said she remains committed to it. Yet she is frustrated by the decline in state support and by the public’s failure to do anything about it.

The situation, Katehi said, is especially sad to see in California, where, “for me, the California dream is the University of California.”

“And we are letting it go down,” she said, “And it is the responsibility of the public for what is happening. And why is that? Because maybe we have not been high enough on anybody’s priority list, from those who are influential, and they are allowing us to go down this way, and in such a short period of time.”

But, she added, “as difficult as the solutions have been in my mind, there is always the opportunity to think together and think forward and try to find actions that will help the university make the case that it is a mistake for the state to let this great resource go away.”