This summer, a great debate is before us in Sacramento, a debate
with serious implications for you as college students: Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger has proposed more than $600 million in cuts to
California’s public colleges and universities, along with
student fee hikes at University of California and Cal State
University campuses, a 44 percent student fee hike for community
college students, cuts to the Cal Grant program and an $11.6
million reduction in UC research funding.
The Schwarzenegger administration has also proposed to ask the
UC to find “non-state resources” to fund most of its
outreach efforts, which help disadvantaged students compete for
college ““ after slashing them by 50 percent earlier this
year.
While there are many questions to be answered about how to solve
the state’s truly dire fiscal problems, I believe the choices
before us are more complicated than where to make cuts or raise
revenues. The real question is whether the leaders of this state
will keep the commitment that our parents and grandparents made to
invest in the next generation, or whether our elected leaders will
shirk that commitment, to the detriment of your education and, I
believe, to the future of our state.
As treasurer, my first priority is to protect our economy today,
and to build our economy for tomorrow. I believe the
governor’s budget proposals for our public colleges and
universities take our state in the wrong direction ““
undermining its historic commitment to a first-class higher
educational system that provides opportunity to all Californians
and that will be our ticket to economic progress in the decades
ahead. What is truly troubling is that the governor has proposed
slashing state support for higher education and hiking fees on
students, while refusing to consider closing one corporate tax
loophole or restoring the state’s income tax rates on the
wealthiest Californians to where they were under Republican Govs.
Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson.
In January of this year, I had the chance to tour some of our
state’s great UC, CSU and community college campuses. While I
have always believed education is an important investment in our
state’s economic strength, I came away from this tour more
convinced than ever of the importance of these great institutions
not only for the benefit they provide our economy, but also for the
opportunity and promise they offer the next generation of
Californians. In my opinion, we should be debating how we can
invest more, not less, in our students and in these institutions,
and in the future of our state.
On my tour, I met many students who told me their dreams of
attending our state’s four-year universities simply would not
be possible without the assistance, support and guidance they
received from the very CSU and UC outreach programs the governor
proposed in January to eliminate. At San Diego City College, I met
with four students in the Mathematics, Engineering and Science
Achievement outreach program. None of their parents had gone to
college, and all of the students in this program were working just
to make ends meet. Because of the program, Izzy Beth Rodriguez,
Barry Cordero, Michelle Scott and Jovanni Sarria are poised to go
on to our great university system, to study biology, engineering
and biomedical science, and to make their contribution to
California’s future.
Also, in January, I visited McClymonds High School in Oakland, a
school where more students drop out than graduate. There, I met
Antoine Davis, a truly inspiring young man who has defied the odds
against him. Antoine not only will graduate this spring, but will
do so as student body president, editor of the school paper, and
with a 3.7 GPA. Antoine says outreach programs helped him to
prepare for and apply to colleges. This fall, he will enroll in the
school of his choice ““ UC Berkeley.
We must ensure that our world-renowned public college and
university system can continue to provide the opportunity for
students like Izzy Beth, Barry, Michelle, Jovanni and Antoine
““ and tens of thousands more just like them across our state
““ to fulfill their dreams of attending college, where they
can acquire the knowledge and skills they will need to excel in and
contribute to a burgeoning 21st-century economy.
I plan to continue fighting to protect California’s higher
education system and to maintain its legacy as an educational
system worthy of your future. I urge you to make your voices heard,
too, so that together we can steer this debate in the right
direction. E-mail or call the governor and your legislators, and
let them know this fight is about more than dollars and cents
““ it is about your education and about the future of this
great state.
Angelides is the California treasurer.