May 1, 2021
The Honorable Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, Sr.
California State Assembly
State Capitol P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0059
RE: AB-295 – Support, amendments suggested
Dear Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer,
Our coalition was very happy to see that you have proposed legislation, AB-295, which would create a working group and pilot program for tuition and fee-free higher education. It is high time for the California legislature to revisit the issue of tuition-free public higher education.
As you know, since the foundation of California’s public university system in 1868, the intent was that “as the income of the University shall permit, admission and tuition shall be free to all residents of the state” (The Organic Act—Chapter 244 of the Statutes of 1867-1868, Section 1). The state reaffirmed these tenets in the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California, which called for all three segments of California’s public higher education system to welcome students tuition-free (see pages 172-174 of “A Master Plan for Higher Education in California”).
In 2017 and 2019, our coalition published the “The Fix” policy papers that demonstrated how to restore tuition-free public higher education in California while also, importantly, restoring quality to the systems. Because it is our concern that higher education quality should not suffer as tuition is eliminated, but instead should be forefronted alongside the affordability and accessibility that tuition-free would provide, per-student funding should not be reduced in this process.
Spending per student at the UC, for example, is now half of what it was 20 years ago. For many years now, California has always been near the bottom in total expenditures per higher education student (see figure 2.3 of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association’s annual “State Higher Education Finance Report”). This budget starvation has resulted in desperate maneuvers by universities to try to stay solvent. But these efforts have adverse consequences: raising tuition to unaffordable levels; moving to mass-produced online education schemes, in reality at least as expensive as in-person teaching and often less effective, especially for underrepresented minority students; solicitation of donor funding, an expensive effort that can never raise even 1/10 the funds needed and almost always comes with strings attached; and so on. Today’s vastly more diverse student body should be entitled to the same high-quality education as in the 1960s.
Faculty are held responsible by accrediting agencies for that quality of education (see, for example, Standard 3.10 of the WASC Senior College and University Commission’s Handbook of Accreditation) and so should be included in the working group. The staff who administer the financial aid system and work directly with students to identify ways to pay for the cost of attendance should also be included in the working group. Students and their families, who have first-hand experience navigating the financial aid and tuition system, should certainly be included in the working group.
We would propose adding to paragraph (a) of the legislation to include “faculty, staff, and students from each of the three public higher education segments.”
We look forward to working with you and your staff to achieve quality, tuition-free public higher education in California.
Respectfully,
Council of UC Faculty Associations
University Professional and Technical Employees, CWA 9119
Teamsters 2010
Faculty Association for California Community Colleges
UC-AFT
Jonathan Abboud, Santa Barbara Community College District Trustee