Arnold and UC

[nibot]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a 2004-05 state budget proposal Friday with $372 million in cuts for the University of California system. The proposed cuts would reduce student enrollments, raise student fees, scale back student financial aid, reduce spending on faculty, eliminate K-12 outreach, and make deeper cuts to research, administration, and other programs. UC President Robert Dynes, in a newsletter to UC employees, calls the cuts understandable in light of the state's deficit, but notes that they will have "a very real impact on what this institution is able to accomplish for the people of California."

Comments

Re: the costs of education to the actual poor

[nibot.livejournal.com]

That the situation is good in California is no reason to let it get worse.

Re: the costs of education to the actual poor

[fanlain.livejournal.com]

i never, ever said to make the situation worse. i'm saying to keep it into perspective and to appreciate that the situation is still - even with the increase in costs - way better than what other, even poorer states are facing. but yeah who cares about anyone else?

btw, i was told in my county alone that there are 3,000 kids who don't have medical insurance b/c both of their parents can't afford it. worse, a significant percentage of these kids have working parents who are working full-time *and* still can't afford medical insurance.

arnie is also cutting some funds to health care and also increasing education costs. frankly, i wouldn't mind if some of the ppl who can afford the education have to pay a little more to help out with the existing budget crisis than to have even more kids go without medical care.

i'm just saying, it helps to look at the overall budget to see why education costs are going up. and to also compare it what other states are facing and to appreciate that even with education costs going up, californians still have it better than other, more economically disadvantageous states.

what, exactly, do you define as "worse" here? not everything can be free and someone has to pay for it somewhere. would you rather no education gets increased and have even more kids w/o medical coverage? the vehicle license fee didn't help. and taking property tax revenue away from the local governments isn't helping.

i think it might also be nice to raise the taxes in order to share the burden across the classes. but no one wants to raise taxes so then we have to take the existing budget and make cuts. this also means i most likely am also not going to be able to teach college this semester - i'm already one of the last part-time teachers to get cut. fortunately, my teaching job isn't my sole source of income.

i guess i think that b4 ppl whine about the education costs raising, it might be nice to step back a little bit and think about how much of a hit others have to take to appreciate how much you have.