This morning, I received a plea from California Governor Jerry Brown to help raise funds for education. It’s a pledge thing, not very different from sponsored walk/run events:
OK, my kids have done that for their school. I’m not crazy about the fact that we can’t seem to collect enough tax money to pay for education, but that’s not what bothers me this time. No, it’s this:
WTF? The University of California, the crown jewel of California education, arguably the finest public university in the world, has moved beyond hitting up the alumni and is now begging the public for charity, like the March of fucking Dimes? What’s next, a goddamn bake sale?
There is something tremendously wrong with it. When I graduated from Cal in 1988, the total fees were a hair under $1500 per year. Inflation would bring that to about $3000 in 2013. Know what the actual fee is now? $13,000! Thirteen fucking thousand dollars per year. That’s $10,000 in tax cuts and administrative bloat for each of 235,000 students.
They are not going to admit more students, nor hire new faculty. They will continue to pay for unnecessary staff, but mostly they are going to take it in the ass because tax-dodging dipshits can’t or won’t see what they’ve done to California.
Maybe next year they’ll let us “sponsor” individual students, and we’ll get term papers in the mail – hey, it works for World Vision, right?