by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n The CSU system \u2014 California\u2019s multi-campus university system, and indeed the largest in the world \u2014 is once again faced with a $1 billion annual funding shortfall, and might have to raise tuition by 30 percent. The usual accounts of frozen salaries, unfilled positions, and cancelled classes flood the news. But rather than damn the voters or the Republican legislators who in the past have proved reluctant to increase California\u2019s 10 percent\u2013plus income tax, nearly 10 percent aggregate sales tax, and the nation\u2019s highest gas taxes, it might prove wiser to look inward.<\/p>\n What percentage of the faculty enjoy release time from classes? Are the numbers of administrators necessary, and might they take a pay cut? In my over two decades of experience with CSU students, about 65 percent attend class after the third week; will tuition hikes discourage those who otherwise would have gone to, but did not belong in, college? We hear of student outrage, but most faculty at CSU would probably admit privately that a large minority of their students simply do not do the work or attend class regularly, and that a larger percentage still are laden with electronic appurtenances and drive nice cars. The point is not to bash the students or the faculty, but to ask the university to reexamine the way it does business.<\/p>\n Maybe raising admission standards would improve the quality of student, end the trend toward watered-down classes, and encourage those who do not belong at CSU to invest their time more productively in the work place. As it is now, over 50 percent of incoming freshmen in CSU must take remedial classes to qualify for university courses; why are they there in the first place?<\/p>\n Faculty could reexamine release time and ensure that those who are not teaching full loads justify such subsidies by demonstrating greater output of research and publication. My experience is that all too often, sabbaticals and release times did not result in publishable scholarship. I think everyone in the system accepts that there are vastly too many CSU administrators, and their pay and spiked pension perks were long ago unsustainable.<\/p>\n In other words, before we get the annual student\/faculty\/administrator assault on the legislature and tax-strapped people of California damning their stinginess, there should be some introspection that the most highly taxed state in the nation may well not be getting a first-class university system that is turning out well-educated graduates in four years. When most CSU student do not enter college prepared to take college courses, and when most do not graduate in four years, something is terribly wrong \u2014 and that wrong may well not be remedied by ever larger budgets.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner The CSU system \u2014 California\u2019s multi-campus university system, and indeed the largest in the world \u2014 is once again faced with a $1 billion annual funding shortfall, and might have to raise tuition by 30 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[79],"tags":[1014,221,80],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ix","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":890,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-tuition-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":2761,"position":0},"title":"California Tuition Blues","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In so-called March in March protests, thousands of students in California universities recently demonstrated in outrage over spiraling tuition costs. At both the California State University and University of California multi-campus systems, tuition hikes in recent years have far exceeded the national average.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2122,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/thanks-to-the-forgotten-part-time-teacher\/","url_meta":{"origin":2761,"position":1},"title":"Thanks to the Forgotten Part-time Teacher","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Last week within about an hour, I got a form email from a UC administrator deploring California\u2019s cuts to higher education, asking for money, and pleading for support for the university \u2014 even as YouTube was airing the UCLA student protests over tuition hikes.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11690,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/californias-rendezvous-with-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":2761,"position":2},"title":"California\u2019s Rendezvous With Reality","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Californians brag that their state is the world\u2019s fifth-largest economy. They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods. Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are cited as permanent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3836,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jerry-brown-modern-sisyphus\/","url_meta":{"origin":2761,"position":3},"title":"Jerry Brown, Modern Sisyphus","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California Gov. Jerry Brown must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall. 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