Valley deserves a voice among UC regents
When Fred Ruiz was appointed to the University of California Board of Regents in 2004, one of his biggest tasks was educating fellow regents about the San Joaquin Valley experience and our region’s economic and educational challenges.
Ruiz, co-founder of Dinuba-based Ruiz Foods, was up to the task. He knew Valley prosperity hinged on persuading more Valley families to realize the importance of education and encouraging more youngsters to shoot for the stars: a college education and, for the most qualified, a degree from the internationally renowned UC system.
Ruiz could speak with authority to fellow board members, the governor and lawmakers. He had helped build the El Monterey lineup of frozen foods into a powerhouse brand. And, as a Valley resident, he could testify to the hardships that immigrant families often must overcome to get a fingerhold on the American Dream.
Ruiz’s 12-year term ended March 1 and he didn’t seek reappointment by Gov. Jerry Brown. The reason? “Realistically, it would be difficult for me to maintain the same kind of commitment that I had in my first term,” the 73-year-old Ruiz told a reporter with our sister newspaper, The Fresno Bee.
The 16-member board (not counting the governor and other ex-officio members) is jampacked with lawyers and lobbyists, mostly from Southern California. Ruiz is the only regent from Bakersfield to Stockton. So Ruiz made one request of Gov. Brown: Replace him with someone from the San Joaquin Valley to be “a voice to the regents.”
Ruiz is absolutely right. Our Valley is home to 3.3 million people and is the poorest region in the state. Just last week, WalletHub released an analysis of data that ranked Modesto, Fresno and Visalia among the nation’s least-educated metropolitan areas.
In case you missed it, WalletHub compared the top 150 metropolitan statistical areas based on the percentage of adults with a college education and other factors such as the quality of the area’s public schools and universities. Fresno ranked No. 145, just ahead of Modesto (146), Bakersfield (147) and Visalia/Porterville (148). Merced was not consider large enough to have its own ranking, but the implication is clear: Of the 150 cities surveyed, our valley fared better than only two towns in Texas.
California’s most educated metro region? The high-tech hub of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, which was ranked the third-most area behind Ann Arbor, Mich. (a college town), and Washington D.C.
Education, combined with hard work, is the springboard to success. That’s why the UC campus in Merced – which emphasizes research –is of such critical importance. But it took decades of wrangling with Sacramento’s powerbrokers to secure that campus.
Under a partnership with a private developer approved by the regents in July, UC Merced will see its enrollment increase from 6,700 students to 10,000 by 2021 or 2022. And, as UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland has noted, at that size, UC Merced would be financially self-sustaining.
Much has been written about the “two Californias” – the economically vibrant, highly educated coast and the economically struggling, less educated interior.
As Brown has spent much of his third and fourth terms trying to close the wide income and education gaps within our state, we are confident he recognizes the importance of having a Valley voice on the UC Board of Regents.
We do not want someone, even with good intentions, speaking for us; we deserve and demand a voice of our own.
This story was originally published August 1, 2016 at 2:13 PM with the headline "Valley deserves a voice among UC regents."