Busy day for the Sproul Steps as students, faculty and staff join together to protest steep tuition hikes, enrollment cuts, layoffs, furloughs, and increased class sizes -- changes which have largely come in response to some $800 million cut from state funding for the UC system.
The latest of issue of California, which will reach readers soon, addresses many of these issues. In particular, an article by veteran reporter John Wildermuth wonders at the seeming lack of public outrage over recent threats to the University. He writes:
"With the rising cost of a UC education, growing selectivity at the various campuses, and the eagerness of University officials to compare their schools to elite private universities like Harvard and Yale rather than to other public universities, it's the little wonder that more and more Californians are thinking that they and their children don't have a place at UC. And if those people don't feel a link to the UC system, why should they be concerned about the troubles it faces?"
If you're a concerned citizen or alum who wants to know more about the issues at play in this crisis, you could do worse than listen to yesterday's Forum discussion hosted by KQED's Michael Krasny, embedded below.
Response to John Wildermuth's California Magazine Free Speech "Pawning the Jewel"
Dear John
Jason Spencer was at one time correct that “Our prosperity is due to higher education,” but it must now be recognized that when California’s political, economic and social institutions fail as much as they have today then the providers of higher education must also accept some responsibility and accountability for their own failures.
Unfortunately for California the worst-case scenario is that neither the UC faculty nor UC’s administration are willing to admit their failures that enabled the totally unacceptable consequences of climate change we are experiencing in California today.
UC’s welfare state culture of arrogance and benign neglect has now resulted in out of control drought, clean water shortages, firestorms, etc., as reported in the most excellent September/October 2006 CALIFORNIA “Global Warning” issue.
Like Pogo said at Earth Day in 1970: “We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us,” which should be chiseled most conspicuously in granite on the UCOP building.
More to the point, President Eisenhower must have been thinking about scholars like those at UC when he wrote his 1961 “Farewell Address to the Nation” which the powers that be at UC apparently ignored, so his gravest concerns have now come true.
Thus We The People of California really have nothing left to pawn.
If all you hear is silence, it is because no one has been listening at UC.
FYI:
President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
“Big Oil Buys Berkeley”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-washburn24mar24,0,6286060.story
“Fusion Factory Starts Up”
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/fusion-factory-starts-up
Posted by: Anthony St. John '63 | October 02, 2009 at 04:46 AM