Quote:Step 1: Gov't assistance goes up! We must provide an education for the disadvantaged!Cool story bro.
Step 2: Gov't giving away free money! Get more of it! Tuition rates go up.
Step 3: GOTO Step 1.
California spends much less per student and per citizen than it did 50 years ago. In-state tuition was free back then, and there were good scholarships for the poor. I know several people in my parents' generation who went to school entirely on CalGrants. That's simply not possible today.
Compensation for college administrators is ridiculous, though. The last UC President made $800,000 annually (not sure what Napolitano will make). The highest paid employee in the entire state is the football coach at UC Berkeley, who got something like $2,100,000. This, like executive compensation in the U.S. private sector, is inexcusably high. But it's dwarfed by the lack of investment by the government, which has been reducing university budgets for years while available grant money for pure research and humanities is also decreasing. Administrators are a big drain, but not big enough to be the major cause of student fees increasing, if you look at the numbers.
My recipe for fixing this, back when I was a student lobbyist, was to ask for more funding and more oversight -- both which are badly needed. There are other win-win things that could be done, like online journals. Online classes could be interesting, but I'm not yet sure.
Quote:20, 40, maybe even 60K of debt when they get out60k$ of debt isn't all that high these days. A bit of postgraduate work will typically put you over now. I'm glad I finally found a good job that will help me take care of my astounding level of college debt.
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