Day 80

On NPR this morning, a report of the proposed fee increases and system-wide student protests was reported as national news from Washington DC, right between a report about the safety of the H1N1 vaccine and something related to the war in Afghanistan. When I walked by Sproul Plaza at lunch time, parked on Bancroft Avenue were four TV news vans including the local NBC and CBS affiliates, and another two unmarked. The headline "Regents Raise College Tuition in California by 32%" tops the New York Times homepage.

When I arrived on campus this morning, much like yesterday morning, I could hear chanting from Sproul Plaza, and it's been going steady, interspersed with speeches from the steps of Sproul Hall, all day. Someone in the office said that it was a lousy time of the semester for these protests since everyone's got papers and mid-terms due. I noted that the timing was based on the Regents meeting taking place in LA, and that I really don't blame students for at least trying to do something about the enormous fee hikes. Her response was, "Well you know it's not going to make a damn bit of difference. They're going to raise the fees anyway." The attitude made me a bit sad, not only because she was acting flip about something obviously so hugely important and momentous for the students, the university, the state, and public higher education as a whole. But because, at least for the moment, she turned out to be right.

I attended a lecture yesterday afternoon given by Dr. Hanna Holborn Gray, former provost and interim president of Yale University and former president of the University of Chicago. With a voice like Julia Child and speaking style like the dullest of college professors, Dr. Gray proposed that universities need to pare down their functions and get back to focusing on the specifics of what each institution does best. This solution was aimed at boosting the quality of our universities and dealing with declining financial resources. During these discussions about the UC budget cuts, many have asserted that the issues are not entirely a problem of resources, but of priorities. The UC system as a whole, and certainly Berkeley campus have about a zillion functions (give or take) with a good deal of overlap, inefficiencies, and all of the typical problems of major research universities and state systems. As it seems now, when history reflects on the presidency of Mark Yudoff, it will not look at him as a leader who re-focused the university system on its most important functions and mission during a time of financial crisis, but as one who marked the end of an era of one of the greatest free public services to the students and citizens of the state of California. His and the Regents' claim that the fee increases are the only answer to this budget crisis, but that we shouldn't worry because they will only affect wealthy students is a huge load of crap.