Why I'm Asking You to Support Proposition 92--The California Community College Initiative on the February 2008 Ballot

I can certainly see the need. Community college is equally as important as K through 12. Another issue that needs to be addressed is the cost of BOOKS. They are outrageous when you buy them from the school store and are still quite high and Barnes & Noble or the like. Paying over $100 for any book is crazy. The books cost more than the classes themselves.

Although this sounds good on the surface, it will have a devastating effect on the budgets of the CSU and UC systems. Community colleges will get their guaranteed funding, but it will come at the expense of higher ed, which has no similar guarantees or protections.

That's why the UC Regents voted yesterday 15-0 to oppose Prop 92.

Community college is affordable at current prices, but annual fee increases have pretty nearly doubled the cost of a UC or CSU degree in the past few years. What good is it to make an AA/AS degree cheaper, but then make it extremely expensive to go on for a BA/BS, MA/MS, or a PhD?

Prop 92 will accelerate the decline and de facto privatization of the CSU and UC systems. Its a bad idea. VOTE NO!

Single working parents also attend the Cal State and University of California campuses. In fact, that's where many single working parents will go on to when they finish at a CC.

Prop 92 will make it harder for them to fulfill their degree goals by making their tuition more expensive and by leading to budget cuts that will make classes more overcrowded and harder to get into.

Anyone who has to struggle to pay the fees for community college classes - whether they are $15 or $26 - can get them waived. Additional financial aid is available to help with the costs of books, housing, food, etc.

This measure sounds nice, but further jumbles the mess that is community college finance policy. Worse, it will be almost possible to change down the road when the effects start to hurt the system, and the state. It's short-sighted, and misguided.

You should have stayed in school and finished your education 25 years ago like your parents told you.

Valerie, Glad you are getting involved in politics. Prop 92 is about students like you. Prop 92 provides the opportunity for every Californian to go to college. That is why the California Young Democrats and groups like the California Labor Federation join you in backing Prop 92.

While no one wants higher education cuts the concern about the state colleges and universities is a bit misplaced. Community colleges receive about $4,300 per student (State support and student fees) while state colleges are at $12,500 (approx) and the universities are at $17,000 (approx). The K-12 system average is $8,600.

A change in funding may temporarily stress state colleges and universities that may have to adjust to a slower increase in funding levels. However the continuous stress on under funded community colleges to provide quality programs and services to our students is virtually a way of life. Additionally most of the universities and many state colleges have extensive endowments, some in the 100's of millions of dollars, on which they can draw to start new programs and provide expanding services.

About half of the State’s college students are in the community colleges and it would seem only fair that they have the same opportunities for a properly funded education as the other half. Let’s start building a more equal access to education this February.

Prop 92 is an interesting idea and a good look at how politics works in California. CC students understandably like the idea of cutting their fees. CC administrators and allies like the idea of a share of the budget. Non-CC educators for the most part circle the wagons.

Read the text of the proposition. The interesting part to me are the changes in the Ed. Code, and good arguments can be made pro and con. What I don't understand is enshrining funding processes in the Constitution, where it is generally immune to second thoughts down the road...like prop 13.

Generally I think changing the state Constitution to include details such as these is a bad idea. Proponents disagree, saying politicians have failed to make necessary policy choices.

I just don't see how the benefits promised by 92 are important enough, compared to say, the state's scary emergency rooms, infrastructure needs, tax burden....you fill in the blank....to justify changing the constitution to make a policy shift that will forever change the balance of funding in favor of one class of institutions and services over another.

Who wrote this thing? Who circulated it? The ballot pamphlet doesn't disclose the identities of the interest groups at work here. I don't doubt their purpose is good.

I'm unhappy to have to make such a choice: a vote for $150 tuition cut for Valerie, and a new governing body for the colleges to allow them to plan needed expansion, or a vote against another obtuse unchangeable funding mechanism and a state constitution that will soon expand beyond understanding.

Read the text yourself: this proposition does a whole lot more than regulate tuition and I regret that Valerie's message comes across as an unthinking plea generated by self interest, or worse, was solicited by a group with a whole lot more at stake here.

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