With a new semester under way at CSUN, students arrive back to campus with more questions and a sense of urgency. The California budget crisis has seem to hit an all time low this fiscal year. CSUN alone will face close to five hundred eighty five million dollar budget cut. Professors are forced to take nine furlough days this fall in addition to a ten percent pay cut. However the Professors are not the only CSUN regulars feeling the pinch. Tuition has gone up to almost three thousand dollars and finical aid has been decreased. Universities across the country are facing budget cuts as well, but California seems to be taking a more drastic route.
There is more to be outraged about than raised tuition and decreased pay, our education is in serious jeopardy. With over crowed class rooms and professors being forced to take furlough days, we the students are being cheated. Most might think having less classes is cool, I feel it is severally handicapping our ability to learn and to succeed in the future. With less class meetings the amount of information we should be learning is decreased. Mean while students at other universities remain in eighteen week semesters learning what the furlough days have taken away. With over three million college students in the state of California, this year’s financial irresponsibility could be the end to higher education here in California. Which in itself is another scary issue. With less out of state students interested in coming to over crowded universities with over worked and under paid professors, the economy will take another huge hit. Furthermore the top professors California has fought to maintain will simply go else where. There is will be a decrease in the number of college graduates, which today’s society has grown to depend on.
“It’s going to be harder for me to continue to be in school,” said Nancy Santana, 25, a single mother who attends San Diego’s Miramar College and worries her financial aid will be reduced. “I may be forced to cut school and find a job without a degree.”
California’s once prestigious higher education system has now become little more than a joke. What would be incoming freshmen are going out of state and graduate students are looking else where as well. I myself am graduating from CSUN in May 2010. I am looking for graduate programs, however none are in California. I do not want to pay higher tuition for over crowded classrooms and irritated professors. Once students move to another state for a better quality education, the likelihood of them returning to work in an economically challenge state is extremely low. This is not just a CSUN issue, this is a state wide issue that desperately needs to be taken seriously before it is too late.
The UC system, which has about 220,000 students, is raising student fees by 9 percent, reducing freshman enrollment by 6 percent and cutting at least $300 million from the budgets of its 10 campuses. UC is forcing most of its 180,000 employees to take furloughs and pay cuts of up to 10 percent, which officials say will make it harder to stop competing universities from poaching academic stars.
There is a “Vent Tent” on the CSUN campus. I assume the media is covering this crisis on other campuses as well. I encourage all students to speak their minds. Because without action, there will be no results. Being cheated out of a month of learning is not cool, it will effect our ability to find careers in the future.
Throughout the day, students at a “Vent at the Tent” event signed petitions or aired their complaints on videotape, to be forwarded to Gov.Arnold Schwarzenegger. Students spoke of higher fees, of being shut out of classes, of losing financial aid. And of being unable to graduate. Some faculty members, who lost 10 percent of their income to furloughs, spoke of being on the verge of financial collapse.
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I went to CSUN for two years, leaving after my sophomore year ended in spring 2009. While I’m so relieved I left before the budget cuts started taking a serious toll on the university, I can’t help but think of my ex-classmates who will be held back. Students are suffering worse than I ever imagined. And I don’t even want to get into how ticked off most faculty are by the whole thing, including their 18 forced furlough days.
I posted on my blog recently, in response to a recent article stating that in-state tuition for the CSUs is going up another 30-something%, that Los Angeles tomorrow will be what Detroit is today: a wasteland with an uneducated work force and a bankrupt state. I view my LA friends’ friend lists on facebook and see where their high school buddies are going to school: less UCLA, less CSUs, more U Maryland, U Oregon, U Washington, even U Michigan and Indiana U, more of Pope’s “Colleges That Change Lives” (translation: awesome liberal arts colleges in the middle of nowhere that no one has heard of), and more universities in the east and midwest. What I’m saying is, I fully agree with you when you say that more young Californians are going out of state for college and, most likely, will never return. I live in New Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston which I visit frequently. One day as I was getting lunch in Harvard Square I met a young man from LA who chose to attend Harvard over UCLA and UC Berkeley. So we started talking about California vs. New England and I asked him, “So, how are you liking Boston so far?” He responded with, “I love it! I never want to go back to LA or California.” I think that sums it up. But the sad part about it is, as more of the educated younger generation leaves and never returns the state will go down the tubes real fast. And what’s even worse is, LA’s biggest industry, the entertainment industry, is slowly losing its audience to the internet. Why pay $12 for a movie ticket or $15 for a CD when you can watch movies or listen to music on YouTube for free? So even the UCLA and CSUN film students are going to find themselves without work.
But back to the budget cuts. I think the best short-term solution to this mess is to simply tax California’s oil companies and ultra wealthy so there will be money to pay for education. It’s a well known fact that Californian Big Oil pays very little tax. Not to mention California’s super rich are taxed far less than the middle and working class. The ruling class are the reason for this mess in the first place, and if the people are able to organize efficiently enough to overcome the power the ruling class has over the state government they just might be able to get back what was taken from them.
Anyway, good luck at CSUN. I put the link to my blog on my name here.