The U.C. Regents met at UCLA to make the decision to increase the charge for attending the 10 campuses of the University of California system by 32% or about $2,500 a year more, making the cost (without food, housing or books) come to about $10,000.
There were protests of this and many said that they were probably not going to be able to handle the increase. The thing that most that I heard on news clips talk about was the burden it puts on them and their inability to meet it. They did not really have all of the picture in at that time. There is going to be increased financial aid and what the University does is sort of give you credit for the expenses that would otherwise be payable when the term starts.
Instead, they hold off and then make you pay when you leave school by graduation or dropping out. And there's a large percentage of students that have financial aid in the form of grants that are simply "gifts" and don't get repaid like a loan. Those can change too. The ceilings for financial aid maximums for certain sums of aid is being raised to include more families.
BUT WHY THE INCREASE?
It's simple enough of a reason. There is not enough money coming from the state to cover the bills and the student payments will have to substitute for the difference. 32% is huge for a single bump up, and I don't know if this is one of those things to be made high enough so that another hike will not be needed so quickly the next time.
The State of California is on the verge of bankruptcy, only there's no bankruptcy relief for a State. There's cuts and more cuts but not enough to make the budget work out. The taxl boost of last Spring was a deception and they are, as often said, "kicking the can down the road," so that later it still has to come up again.
So the UC system charges more and then it's only for the undergrads. The professional schools, the grad students, all will have some big changes in their bill to after this part is finished. It looks like the plan is for the professional schools to pay higher fees eventually to help subsidize the undergrad program.
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN SACRAMENTO THAT GOT THINGS THIS WAY?
That is what some should be asking instead of just believing that sitting in is going to be an equivalent of printing money.
The people in Sacramento were elected to represent the people but when they got there, the people they worked for somehow transformed from the people in their district to union representatives and lobbyists for assorted industry and financial entities.
You saw many begin to handle THAT business to the detriment of the home town people. What happened, and this is largely to do with the Democrats who were and are the majority party, was that spending and spending and then more spending happened. More program and more payments to this project and that.
The good times came and brought revenues (that's the word that replaced "taxes" in Assembly Speaker Karen Bass' vocabulary) as the dot-com boom arrived and then as the real estate market heated up. Unions got what they wanted from legislators and public employee unions were replacing many as the influence on lawmakers. Raises in pay, more holidays, paid of course, and better and better pensions were happeining.
Well, it went downhill fast and the revenues dried up with economy downturn and there were all these programs created in years past that craved more money to stay alive. There were pensions modified over the years so that you have people makng lots while retired and these pensions are like salaries but here, the "retiree" is not doing any work for you. (And sometimes they actually get another government job and get that pay AND the pension- but that's another story in itself).
What students and maybe their parents might think of now is that it is very important to watch these people that get elected and that what they do and what they set up and promote in Sacramento does sometimes have a delayed effect on you and like the UC students, it is a profound effect. But you know, when government spends, no one really thinks about the money someday NOT being there. Many young people have friends (or may be that "friend") who spends and buys them drinks and is a fun-loving person that they like to have around.
But sometimes they may wonder where's this money coming from? Is it ok to spend so much for other people? Oh, well, let's enjoy it all since he (or she) would not do it if things were not covered. And that's the thought given to it for a moment and then you forget about it.
In government, these people spend, sometimes on nothing worthy of the tax dollars committed by their choices, and then for a moment, people wonder, "Is this idea actually making any sense?" But like most thing for the casual observer of government, that thought gets replaced by some new problem or issue and it's gone- for now.
Here, all that happy time of spending and raking in the revenue changed and the bills come due without the income to back it.
Still, government (the representatives are govenment) does not curtail it's ways, still spending like nothing is changed and things get worse.
Did you know about the bad times that California government is in? Is it news or is it a new situation? I think we have seen things going downhill for a while, but the State has been hiring an average of 42 people a day for years. All this is the wake of furloughs and lay offs. (By the way, some unions managed to get an agreement of no layoffs or even furloughs from the state- that's some pretty big power for a public employee union to have).
So now it's come to the point where the UC system undergrad students have the bill coming to them. And financial aid boost or not, this still causes class elimination and reduced services- all as the eventual consequence of an out-of-control spending proclivity that our lawmakers possessed. I repeat, you have to watch them and NOT let these people spend OP (other people's) money without accountability.
IF they were made responsible and not living lives so very privileged by the very fact of holding the public office, maybe the cuts to education would have been lighter or not at all.
It's like that for all the consequences, but no one connect the relationship of PUTTING PEOPLE IN OFFICE (voting for them) and HOW LIVES WILL BE AFFECTED.
Looking back to Fabian Nunez, termed-out Assembly Speaker who had travels to other countries, drank fine wines and made purchases of things that he could because of CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTONS and other people paying his bills, you see that this life-style does not make a person suddenly trim down the spending when it's time for handling taxpayer paid money.
Not at all, that spending Jones, the living high on the hog and feeding at the public trough is just too damaging and costly for voters to ignore. Nunez is not the only one who has travelled that path and is not the last one but we need to monitor all of them since "they are victims of their own greed" and can't be held accountable. Nor will they be held accountable with everyone turning away as this conduct goes on.
UC students may have a better insight into how these politicians made laws and programs that wound up damaging the common person who may never have associated politics with ordinary life. There is a connection and some of it is very direct and other times it is not direct or immediate, but it's there. Not voting, and especially not voting with at least a little knowledge, can be harmful to your own health.
I will talk about how bond measures have come to affect us another time, but that's another way we suffer now and maybe, maybe get some benefit later, much later, all because of what we think we will get for no cost but to make a mark on a ballot.
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