When our California Department of Finance was drafting out the next budget for 2008-09, they were looking at a 14.5-billion-dollar deficit.
Since their job is to keep the budget healthy by balancing the state’s revenues and expenses, our Governator declared a “fiscal emergency” and proposed a 10% across-the-board cut back in January.
Our schools were one of the unfortunate victims in this proposal and [almost 5 billion dollars were taken from students? /or we lost almost 5 billion dollars of our education money (issued by the state????)]
Out of all the departments it could cut funds from, they decided to take put our education on the chopping board.

A FOOLISH CHOICE

Cutting funds from education is a foolish and short-sighted decision. Tuition doesn’t only refer to the fees we pay, it also stands for the education we receive in general – from its price to its quality and availability. As students, we are going to face decline in many aspects of our schooling in the coming years.
Regardless of the fact that we are willing to sacrifice more to afford the rising tuition fees, the education we receive in return are going to be of lower quality. And of course, many of us will fail in the battle against these fees and say goodbye to education once and for all.
We first noticed rapid increases in the cost of tuition. Many of us chose community colleges because we cannot afford to start our higher education at private universities. The state created this public school system to provide affordable education to students like us.
However, continuous increases tuitions in the California State University and University of California are becoming a vicious cycle of “privatizing” California’s public higher education system.
As a result of the budget cuts, student fee hikes have already been approved by CSUs and UCs to increase tuition by 10% and 7.4% respectively starting this Fall 08-09.
Yet system officials are still saying that even with the fee hikes they still will have to cut back enrollment, reduce course offerings and scale back campus services.
And that is after the state per-student funding for educating UC students falling from $14,210 in 2000-01 to $10,370 today (inflation-adjusted). Students will not be able to enjoy as many classes and services even though they manage to pay the expensive school fees.
As community college students, these budget cuts are going to affect us in one way or another.
For some of us, it means that our journey to higher education would come to an abrupt end, while for most of us it would simply mean decreased chances of getting into our preferred UCs or CSUs.
Since community colleges cannot limit enrollment, they have to reduce expenses by cutting back classes.
You could be one of those 50,000 students who will not be able to complete the classes you need to transfer or graduate.
The cuts also affect us in other less obvious ways such as instructor quality and on-campus services. Most importantly, we have to worry about our wallets being able to keep up with the climbing tuitions as we transfer. Why bother going to college if we can’t graduate?

IMPACT ON US AND OUR ECONOMY

We should also be concerned of this issue for the sake of our jobs and economy. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, by 2020, two of every five jobs will require a bachelor’s degree - yet, at our current rate, only one-third of the state’s workers will have those necessary degrees, driving unfilled jobs out of the state. Hence we need more people graduating to keep our students and the state competitive. As a result, it will be harder for us to find jobs that we want.
California Community Colleges are the state’s largest provider of trained workforce, serving 2.6 million students and granting more than 125,000 degrees and certificates every year. Thus budget cuts for education will hurt jobs, the work force and the economy – the very things that can help balance the budget. For that very reason, this is the time to invest in education; not to cut it back if we want to the next generation to turn the economy around. Businesses are going to move to where the talent pool is, and California will continue to suffer. As of now, most of the successful jobs and companies consist of graduates from our state universities. If these schools continue to reduce admissions, who will fill these jobs after the boomer-employees are retired?

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Let’s use prisons as a comparison. As you might know, our state allocates a lot of funds to support prisons to ensure our safety. Based on current spending trends, by fiscal 2012-13, prisons spending will come to about $15.4 billion a year while overall higher education spending will come to $15.3 billion. Although Gov. Schwarzenegger had cut funds from Cal Grant that helps the lowest-income students to get their education, he gave $70 million as a gift to California Community College Students to support private scholarships. In the May revision of the Budget 08-09, the governor also restored about $200 million of the $720 million he originally proposed cutting from UC and CSU’s requests. However in the end, that is still not enough as it barely covers the schools’ expenses for a year.
So what does this tell us? How ironic is that when the state could have improved its crime rates by educating more of its people? The budget tells us about the state’s priorities: the more important it regards an agency, the more money will be allocated to them. In what way is it justified that we, the generation of the future, are valued less than prisoners and convicts? Education has been proven to be successful and cost-effective in keeping people from breaking the law and ending up in prison.
Many people believed in the American Dream- a belief that everyone can achieve their goals through hard work. However as a result of such irrational funding, these people are less likely to get in to even start working towards that dream of theirs as they see how the opportunities for higher education are diminishing. In addition, 80% of California’s public education is funded by the state that is supported by taxpayers’ money. In other words, we are the ones paying for education through things like sales tax, income tax and property tax. As taxpayers, don’t you want to the benefits of where your money goes to?

WHAT HAVE WE DONE ABOUT IT?
Many students will not allow such problems to be neglected. The DASB funded a group of DA students to go to Sacramento to rally against these budget cuts on April 21. Many students were actively involved in spreading the word and raising awareness on the issue. Even though the May revision has been announced, there is always hope for us as long as we strive for what we deserve.

Did You Know?
Interesting Facts For You

Student fees for CSU has increased by 94% over the past 5 years, and UC fees has been increased by 84% since 2002.
California community college students see their wages jump 86% three years after earning their degree or certificate.
K-12 schools are going to be cut 4.3 billion dollars
California Community Colleges are going to be cut 403.5 million dollars
California State University is going to be cut 312.9 million dollars University of California is going to be cut 331.9 million dollars
Students, teachers, educators, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, and our entire state will be negatively affected because:
K-12 students will have less teachers, larger classroom sizes, less arts, music and sports programs
Over 50,000 potential community college students will be unable to afford attending college
Over 10,000 potential CSU students will be denied admission because the universities have reached their capacity