In 2004, the state of California was facing $38 billion in cumulative shortfalls, and decided to cut funding to almost everywhere, including higher education. This was part of the first budget plan proposed by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was intended to be “backfilled in large part by student fee increases.” Backfilled it was, as the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) raised tuition costs by 40% going into the 2004-05 school year. The price would then remain the same over the next three years until 2008, when the housing market crash would increase tuition costs again. Over the coming years, funding would further decrease and in response, UC Berkeley increased the amount of non-California residents they accepted, as non-California residents pay up to four times the amount in tuition that California residents do. However, this decision is not only UC Berkeley’s. UCOP makes the final call on how many students are accepted by schools in the UC system, and how many are California Residents. UCOP Regent Policy 2109 keeps all UCs above 82% California residents and in coming years, the % of California residents at UC Berkeley will be increased by UCOP. This will cause UC Berkeley to lose money, money that will be provided by the State over the next three years.
This situation leaves us at an interesting point. UC Berkeley is forced to accept more California Residents, which will lose them money, money they used to have before Arnold Schwarzenegger cut funding in 2004 to address a now-gone $38 billion shortfall. The state will tide them over for a time, but once that’s over, UC Berkeley will be out hundreds of millions. But the money was there before 2004, and the shortfall this year is only $23 billion - why can’t higher education get their funding back? Increasingly so, the State of California has been putting that money towards the prison industrial complex. In an almost comically evil way, funding has been slowly taken away from public education and given to prisons over the past twenty years. This missing funding is the root cause of the UAW strikes, housing issues and general problems, all for the benefit of private prison companies. But, on the bright side, experts here at the Blazer predict that in 2043, prisons will be a better place to attain higher education than universities.