UCSB Students, Faculty Take a Stand for Higher Education

» reality wrote on 09.24.09 @ 08:10 PM

University staff are fortunate to have jobs!!!..look around at small business establishments and private industry.  They need a reality check…. high pay, generous benefits and outrageous retirement plans are no longer affordable by taxpayers and parents of college students who are paying those outrageous increases every year for public education.

» b_reynaldo wrote on 09.25.09 @ 06:31 AM

Endless celebrations of diversity and narcissistic studies of one’s ethnicity do not create wealth.

» Maybe the TAX PAYERS SHOULD go on STRIKE wrote on 09.25.09 @ 07:07 AM

The common theme here should be real obvious to the casual observer:  Government Employees are paid WAY TOO MUCH.  Incredible pensions, high pay, lots of paid time off, paid health care for life.. IT has got to end.

Look around. In the private sector, these same highly paid individuals get half as much.  As a tax payer that pays a large amount of my earnings each year to pay the salaries of the UCSB Faculty, and the employees of the city and county of Santa Barbara…  I HAVE HAD IT.
We get so little value for our contributions.

Maybe the taxpayers should go on strike. Let the socialists sustain the high cost of financially supporting the government wonks’ salaries on their own.
I guarantee the entire system will collapse.

END the Tyranny.

» Paul wrote on 09.25.09 @ 07:47 AM

How many of these kids are protesting the economy that’s putting their parents out of work? They’d better start working now if they’re going to pay off the debt we’ve piled on them this year alone.

» babette wrote on 09.25.09 @ 11:04 AM

I’d like to point out that it was never the intent for everyone to pursue higher education. People seem to view that as a right these days.
It’s up to the student to figure out “how to afford college”. Get good grades and get a scholarship (yes there still out there), be a superior athlete (get a scholarship), take out a loan, start at a junior college (much cheaper) or get a job. I’m not trying to be cruel. It took me eight years to get through college, because I worked full time as well.

Yes, I agree the fees are too high, but if you really want to go to school it can be done, you just have to stop whining and do it.

» Neil wrote on 09.25.09 @ 12:05 PM

UC President, Mark Yudof gets paid $828,000 per year plus mansion, plus car, plus travel plus retirement.
He’s paid so much because he’s expected to deliver clever creative win-win solutions to difficult problems.
It would probably have been nearly impossible for any average person to propose such an imaginative tuition increase.
He gets the big bucks because he’s a creative management genius guru.
California is lucky since all of the upper UC administrators are so brilliant.
Including Confucian conformist UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang.

The most stunning demonstration of Henry Yang’s genius was his hire of Ron Cortez as UCSB Associate Vice Chancellor of Administrative Services.
When the $100,000/year position of Assoc.VC Admin was created, its purpose had been largely left undefined.
My Letter of Application defined the position with the purpose of planning and implementing a program to transform UCSB into a Graduate School and revenue-generating business park while liberating undergrads from a stationary bricks and mortar campus to enjoy a worldwide remote-study campus where they would enjoy an incredibly stimulating 4-year trek through the best places of the world while earning their degrees. I proposed the combination of several business models including UCSB, Netflix and Tourist Hostels to produce a state-of-the-art undergraduate program that profitably delivered increased quality educations to a dramatically increased enrollment consisting of greater numbers of Californians, out-of-staters, students of nontraditional age and international students. By providing a better more stimulating undergraduate product to an unlimited number of students, the business model would provide unprecedented amounts of profit to fund graduate research programs. I thought I would get the job.

Alas, my proposal was rejected without so much as an interview or even telephone interview being granted.
Remaining dedicated to mediocrity and mafia, Confucian conformist Yang chose Ron Cortez for the position and the exciting work on his project of campus foodwaste composting began.
Composting foodwaste has very high propaganda value as the word “sustainablity” has increased in popularity.
Making a token gesture toward conservation was thought wise by the brilliant style-over-substance Yang and Cortez’s $100,000/year salary was considered good spin.

The University of California is a criminal mafia organization.
It produces propaganda and little else.
It sucks money.
The UC system is California’s biggest liability that still has yet to reveal its full wickedness.
Knowing the TRUTH, I suspect Californians would descend on every UC campus to topple, burn and cast their ash to the wind.

» babette wrote on 09.25.09 @ 03:08 PM

If the students are unhappy with the school and the faculty is unhappy as well, easy solution, close the UC system down, start something new.
The students are skipping classes that they already paid for, the instructors are skipping classes they are getting paid to teach- bag the whole system and start over.
Maybe it could be free and without grades- just show up when you want and collect your degree-perfect system.

» AN50 wrote on 09.25.09 @ 04:29 PM

Good comments here. The UC system is a mirror of our entitlement culture that is so removed from economic reality that it fails to realize that it has now become a boat anchor. Kyle is right, that higher education is a great investment in our economy. It is also true that expanding that education to as many as possible is one way to short circuit elitism and stratifying class separation.  It is one of many tools, if available, that a poor person can use to gain a better life. But for Kyle’s or my statement to be true a system of accountability must be in place to show that benefit to society. That is the very least, we the owners of that system (taxpayers) demand from the management running it (the reagents).
So far UCSB has shown itself to be an emerging world class research institution and has shown that it has value in stimulating economic growth and wealth generation. What we don’t know is what it cost us and whether that benefit was worth the cost. As far as the education end, there is no data to support Kyle’s or my assertion what so ever from an ROI point of view.
My suggestion to the UCSB staff is demonstrate that you are worth what you ask for and then use the power of your education to figure out how to pay for it, since the owners (we taxpayers) are now broke and more worried about food and shelter than preserving a sheltered job in academia.

» L Davis wrote on 09.25.09 @ 11:21 PM

babette…I can’t stop laughing from your observation.  Quote “Don’t miss the classic picture of the girl holding the sign “Put the public back in educatin” I guess she meant education? How did she get to college if she cant even spell?” Unquote.  A perfect end point in this discussion.