Our View: UC regents place college costs on front burner

The vote was as clear as it was sobering for families: The University of California can now raise tuition by as much as 5 percent a year for the next five years. That means tuition can rise from $12,200 today to more than $15,500 by 2019 – or about the time your high school junior will be graduating from UC Merced or Berkeley.

Naturally, that doesn’t count a checkbook full of assorted fees, housing, books, dorm food, transportation and pocket money. Add in all what is costing families roughly $33,000 a year now will run up to $36,000 by 2019.

Those who attend one of the 10 UC campuses were not happy. They protested loudly over the course of the two-day regents meeting. It didn’t matter. A committee recommended passage on Wednesday, and on Thursday the full board approved the rate increases on a 14-7 vote. They softened it by saying the UCs now have the “option” of raising tuition. Apparently, UC President Janet Napolitano is suggesting that if the state comes up with more money, then the students might not have to.

Forgive our skepticism.

There is no doubt that following the crash of 2008, the state slashed its budgets for higher education. But Gov. Jerry Brown campaigned hard for Proposition 30 two years ago, essentially promising voters that a portion of the increase in state sales taxes would go to the colleges, negating the necessity for tuition increases. Voters believed him, and passed the tax increase.

But Napolitano has repeatedly insisted that the UCs weren’t getting enough. This was her move in a game of hardball.

The battle moves now to the Capitol, where, even as the regents spoke, the governor’s spending proposal for next year was being drafted. Now it’s Brown’s move. With the stroke of a pen, he could make it unnecessary for Napolitano to further soak the one-third of UC students who don’t qualify for financial aid and so pay full fare for their educations.

It wouldn’t be hard. The plan approved by the regents allows the state to “buy down” the increase with extra funding year by year.

The argument can be made that UC students already are paying far more for their educations than the system’s architects intended. And the state budget is, for the moment at least, running a $2.2 billion surplus for 2015-16. The governor has a clear path if he wants to be generous.

But as the regents were warned by former Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, whom Brown appointed to the board just two days before the voting, that Napolitano decision to hold student tuition hostage would not bring out the Santa Claus in California’s famously tight-fisted chief executive.

The governor, if he likes, could simply shrug and wish Napolitano luck with the mob of parents who are certain to express their anger. We believe that anger is righteous. The system has 237,000 students and 208,012 employees – nearly one employee for each student. Of those, only 18,900 are involved in academics. For the sake of comparison, the state university system of New York has 467,991 students served by an administrative staff 89,871 – and that includes the 34,024 teachers. The student-to-staff ratio is 8 to 1.

There are many things, we are sure, to justify the UC’s staffing numbers. And many top-quality state universities around the nation have a student-to-staff ratio closer to 2-to-1. Further, we want California’s UC system to be the best in the nation. After all, it educates our kids.

So both sides need to give. Napolitano needs to cut administrative costs and find more ways to streamline expenses. Brown, who has been too cheap both with the UC and the California State system, needs to increase state support.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Léon and Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins are both floating ideas for compromise. We believe there’s a deal to be struck. The only thing we know for certain is that if this game of hardball continues, it is the students who will be the losers.

This story was originally published November 20, 2014 at 11:46 PM with the headline "Our View: UC regents place college costs on front burner."