Talk delivered by Amanda Armstrong at the Oct. 1 Berkeley Faculty Association panel, "The Operation of the Machine: UC Then and Now."
I’m going to be
talking today about the operation of the UC machine then, versus its
operation now. But not then as in 1965. More like then as in 2009.
I still have
vivid memories from fall 2009—a semester when students, workers, and professors
built assemblies, walked out of classes, and took direct actions to challenge austerity
measures being imposed by the newly-appointed UC President, Mark Yudof. These austerity
measures included a 32% tuition increase, furloughs for faculty and staff, and
layoffs of over 2,000 service workers across the UC system.
At one of the
first walkout planning meetings I attended that fall, people were talking about
something called the “Meister report,” which I later learned was named after
its author, UC Santa Cruz Professor Bob Meister. The Report talked about how UC
administrators were able to take out low-interest construction bonds because
they essentially pledged to Moody’s and other rating agencies that they would
raise student tuition if necessary to pay back the bonds.
The Meister
Report challenged the official story of the 2009 tuition hikes, which claimed
that the hikes were necessary given the state’s defunding of public education. The
report suggested that, in hiking tuition so drastically, UC administrators weren’t
only making up for state defunding – they were also showing bond rating
agencies that they had the political will and capacity to deliver steep fee
hikes if necessary. And they were protecting their ability to carry on with
construction projects, even if this meant trimming funds for basic instruction
and saddling students with more debt.
In this way, the
Meister Report opened up questions about how and in whose interests UC
administrators were managing the money they did have, and about why so many
construction projects were moving forward even at a moment of financial crisis.
2009 was thus defined by the politicization both of UC real estate development
and of rising student debt levels; it was also a period of significant political mobilization. Even so, we did not succeed in stopping the fee hikes,
or otherwise reversing austerity on a large scale. There were some minor
victories though: at Berkeley, some of the demands of those who occupied Wheeler Hall on November 20th were realized. The University renewed
its essentially no-cost lease to the Rochdale co-op, and a number of custodial
workers who had been laid off were rehired.
The larger
political victory came in 2011 and 2012. Facing another round of steep fee
hikes, students linked their organizing against privatization to the larger
occupy movement. We set up encampments on the campuses, and, after acts of
police violence, held massive strikes at Berkeley and Davis. The movement
broadened through the spring, with people in all sectors of education marching
to the capitol building in Sacramento and occupying it, in order to build
support for progressive taxation and for the refunding of public education and
social services. Ultimately, a ballot initiative for progressive taxation
passed and, with guarantees of more state funding, the regents agreed to freeze
in-state tuition for at least four years.
Since the
political victory of 2012, some things have changed. In the aftermath of the
in-state tuition freeze, the priorities and practices of UC administrators have
mutated somewhat, which, I want to suggest, presents an altered political
context, and some ambiguities, for those of us interested in challenging
University privatization. To begin to get a sense of this new terrain, we can
look at recent bond rating reports and UC financial documents.
This year, two
rating agencies, Moodys and Fitch, downgraded the UC’s bond rating. In explaining
their decision, Moodys noted that, while “The
university's debt doubled over the last eight years,…. Political and public
scrutiny of the rising cost of higher education will constrain UC's ability to
grow net tuition revenue.” They continued: “The university's relatively low
cost compared to other market leading universities and expansive geographic
draw of students help offset these pressures.” In other words, UC administrators
aren’t politically able to raise enough tuition revenue to offset their debts, but
at least they can make money on out-of-state tuition, and maybe sometime soon
they’ll be able to raise in-state tuition as well.
These bond rating reports, in addition to
vindicating Bob Meister’s analysis from 2009, help clarify and explain a couple
strategies recently undertaken by UC administrators—strategies that are spelled
out fairly explicitly in UC’s financial documents. First: In the absence of
a political context conducive to across-the-board tuition hikes, administrators
have nevertheless tried to increase tuition and fee revenues by admitting more
out of state students and by increasing other costs students have to pay
(including for housing and healthcare). And Second: In an attempt to
decrease their debt levels, administrators have begun to aggressively promote
the privatization of development. Instead of generally taking on debt to
construct buildings themselves, they are now often working to rent out university-owned
land to developers who are willing to build, and in some cases manage, dorms,
labs, and other facilities.
In what follows, I will discuss these two administrative
strategies, as well as some of their possible political implications.
First, on UC administrators’ recent attempts to salvage tuition
and fee income. This really varies by campus, and I’m going to focus mostly on
Berkeley. Following the crisis of 2009, Berkeley administrators started
actively recruiting out of state and international students, who paid more in
tuition. In the last couple years, as the cost of out-of-state tuition has
risen to almost three times that of in-state tuition, administrators continued
to admit progressively more out-of-state students. Last year, a third of new
admits came from outside of California.
Like other public universities, Berkeley has started “leveraging” student aid to compete to
enroll higher-income, out-of-state students. The new Middle Class Access Plan, the cutoff for which was just raised to
include those from families making up to $150,000, leverages relatively small
grants in exchange for the higher return of out-of-state tuition revenues. Berkeley
has also selectively increased housing costs since 2012, raising rents
dramatically on the most desirable housing options, while keeping other rents
relatively flat. This follows a period of dramatic rent hikes; between 2001 and
2011, room and board rates nearly doubled. Finally, as part of the
restructuring of SHIP in 2013, Berkeley raised healthcare premiums by thirteen
percent for undergraduates and twenty percent for graduate students—a cost
increase that mostly falls on grad students in professional schools, whose tuition
rates have also continued to increase.
Thinking
politically about this situation, it’s worth saying initially that a politics
organized around the principles of racial justice, class equality, and affordable
public education remain critical. Since 2009, the admission and enrollment
rates of black students have declined even further than in the immediate
aftermath of Proposition 209. Over this period, the class composition of the
student body has also been shifting; there are relatively fewer low-income students but significantly more from the highest income brackets. Since 2001,
the costs borne by all students have continued to rise, even for those
receiving the maximum support from Pell Grants and the Blue and Gold plan. For these
and other reasons, it’s critical that we continue to target the race and class
exclusions that are only becoming more entrenched in the admissions process.
But I think we
also should be thoughtful about how politically to address the fact that the bulk of new tuition and fee revenues has been coming from out-of-state and
international students, who now make up a greater percentage of the student
body and have the potential to take on a greater role—as either protagonists or
antagonists—of any student movement against privatization that might reemerge.
Perhaps advocating for across the board rent and tuition reductions, including
for out-of-state tuition, would be a generally compelling way to address
affordability issues, which would push back as well against UC administrators’ post-2012
strategy for increasing tuition and fee revenues.
The second post-2012 administrative
strategy concerns the privatization of development. In June 2012, right around
the time the Regents announced that they would freeze in-state tuition if
Proposition 30 passed, Berkeley housing administrators announced that, in order
to limit their construction-related debt, they would begin seeking out private
developers to build new dorms. This kind of privatization of dorm construction
had been happening for some time at Irvine and Davis. And Berkeley had done
something similar with the Blum Center, as well as in partnering with BP to
fund the construction of the Energy Biosciences Institute building on Hearst
and Oxford.
Just in the last
couple of years though, the privatization of construction has significantly
intensified across the UC system. The UC Office of the President recently
posted on their website documents outlining the various partnerships, or rent
agreements, the campuses are looking to make with private developers. At
Berkeley, housing administrators announced that the Martinez commons would be
the final dorm funded and built in-house, and they recently leased Bowles Hall
to a private entity interested in redeveloping the building. They are working now on finding a developer interested in building and managing a new dorm on
Ellsworth and Channing. The Berkeley rent stabilization board has expressed concern that such privately developed and managed dorms could further drive up
student rents, especially when other privately-run dorms, such as the
newly-constructed Metropolitan on Dana and Durant, charge rents higher than the
cost of room and board. Construction workers’ unions have also raised concerns
about the fact that, unlike building projects on campus, these development
projects won’t be bound by state prevailing wage laws, and so could involve
more dangerous and exploitative building practices.
UC Berkeley
administrators have also been working to make arrangements with private firms
for the development of portions of the Gill Tract, in Albany. So far, the
efforts of Occupy the Farm have stalled this development, and have put on the
agenda the conversion of the Gill tract into space for
community-based farming, research, and education.
Berkeley
administrators, including the newly appointed Vice Chancellor of real estate
Robert Lalanne, are also working on coordinating a massive development project
on 109 acres of land owned by the University in Richmond Bay. They are saying this
project will involve private construction and management of some of the
research facilities, and recently published an “Infrastructure Master Plan,”
outlining ways for private companies to buy space and influence at the Richmond
Bay campus.
A coalition of
labor and community groups has issued a number of demands around this
development project including the payment of prevailing wages to construction
workers, the promise that all service workers employed in the facilities will
be represented by AFSCME, the opening up of space for community-based and community-driven
research, that those profiting from the project help fund affordable housing in
Richmond, and that formerly incarcerated people be hired for some of the
construction and other work set to occur. These are demands that students and
workers on campus can help amplify. And in general, I think it’s imperative
that we respond to UC’s efforts to privatize construction by building relations
of solidarity with local communities and making the case for a kind of public
knowledge making.
I can imagine
some ambiguities and difficulties that might accompany such a project, aside
from just the myriad practical challenges of coalition building and of building
power sufficient to interrupt administrative agendas. It might also be hard to
know when to oppose new development outright and when to try and direct it to
less damaging, more accessible and public-oriented ends. And there’s a question
as well about federal research money, which is public in one sense but is often
linked to military or other state interests. In a power-point presentation last
spring, Robert Lalanne, the Vice Chancellor of real estate, noted that drone
development and testing is part of the research agenda for Richmond Bay. Given
the entailments of much federal research, how can we envision and struggle for
a kind of public knowledge making that is resolutely anti-militarist?
Any renewed movement
against university privatization will need to work through these ambiguities
and difficulties. But if the last six years have shown us anything, it’s that
concerted action on the part of students, workers, and instructors can
fundamentally shift the operations of the university, and can block the worst
effects of university privatization, if not reverse this process outright. So
there is reason to try, and to hope.
