Protesters against tuition hikes at UC Berkeley called for “a massive, system-wide student and teaching strike” that began on November 18.
The University of California regents’ recent approval of tuition hikes sparked student protests and occupations on campuses across the state. But corporate media did little to contextualize the hikes within the regents’ broader turn toward privatization. Nor did they report on the robust student movement against privatization that contributed to student mobilization.
Instead, news reports mostly chose to frame the story as a political clash between California Gov. Jerry Brown and UC president Janet Napolitano, and to parrot press releases instead of checking the facts.
The New York Times (11/20/14) depicted the regents’ vote as a “showdown” and a “clash” between Brown and Napolitano (a former US secretary of Homeland Security), which “pitted two powerful Democrats and experienced political infighters against each other.” Much space in news coverage was dedicated to quoting regents’ comments on other regents (AP, 11/21/14), or to describing how opposing regents “cast blame on each other, each side insisting that it is defending the quality and affordability of one of the world’s great public universities” (New York Times, 11/21/14).
The primary story for mainstream media, it seems, was the fight of “governor vs. a governor,” as the San Francisco Chronicle (11/14/14) wrote, “a showdown…with savvy, seasoned players on each side.”
This way of sensationalizing the issue highlighted catchy soundbites but left readers in the dark about how California governors and regents alike have, since the 2004 Compact for Higher Education, steered the UC system away from the 1960 “Master Plan for Higher Education,” which guaranteed a free, quality education to all Californians who qualified. Reporters occasionally followed Brown’s opposition to tuition hikes with mentions of the state’s significant divestment from the UC (LA Times, 11/22/14), and countered Napolitano’s claims of austerity with the 20 percent salary increases approved for high-level administrators already making over $300,000 before bonuses (Contra Costa Times, 11/6/14).
But little effort was taken to research Brown’s proposal to expedite degrees through massive online open courses (MOOCs). As the graduate student union told the UC in 2013 (UCSWU, 9/13), there is no evidence that MOOCs provide quality education and, if anything, may have “disproportionately negative effects on the learning outcomes of low income Latina/o students.”
Nor did journalists make much effort to research the facts behind UC press release claims. One frequently reported point—taken straight from the UC’s “Long-Term Funding Plan”—is that “because of financial aid, most California resident students pay no tuition at the University of California…. The tuition increases will fall primarily on families with above-average incomes and on out-of-state students” (New York Times, 11/21/14), and that “only about 30 percent of UC undergraduates from California pay the full amount for their current $12,192 tuition, and the rest receive some financial aid” (LA Times, 11/6/14).
But as students know, “financial aid” often includes student loans, often with annual interest rates upwards of 6 percent. So higher tuition means that many students will leave school deeper in debt, financial aid or not. Work by Chris Newfield (Remaking the University, 11/26/14), a professor at UC Santa Barbara and vocal advocate against the neoliberal restructuring of higher education, demonstrates how the cost of tuition is only a fraction of the actual cost of attendance. Tuition hikes would leave students whose families cannot afford to pay out of pocket to borrow even more and/or to work more hours while in school.
Even more dubious is the UC administration’s claim that “reduced state support for the university forced the tuition increases” (New York Times, 11/20/14). In response to the 2009 tuition hike, UC Santa Cruz professor Bob Meister, who previously served on the UC budget committee, released an open letter to students (10/11/09) contesting the university’s “extreme financial emergency.” Meister pointed out that the UC “pledges” its tuition revenue, and its option to raise tuition at-will, to maintain good bond ratings with agencies like Moody’s and Fitch. This, in turn, allows the system to issue millions of dollars in construction bonds that are not subject to the requirements of state educational funds. Meister explains:
When UC pledges your tuition to its bond trustee (Bank of NY Mellon Trust), it’s really (legally) saying that your tuition doesn’t have to be used for education, or anything in particular. That’s why it can be used to back UC construction bonds…. Thereafter, construction comes ahead of instruction.
Since 2009, students have been adamantly following the financialization of UC. As UC Berkeley grad student Amanda Armstrong (10/1/14) pointed out at a recent event dedicated to discussing the UC’s neo-liberal structural reforms, UC’s bond ratings have gone down since the original “Meister Report,” because of what Moody’s described as “political and public scrutiny” of their ability to raise tuition. This, Armstrong argued, has led to further privatization of construction efforts, among other strategies of garnering private revenue and loans.
While some articles on student protests and occupations include a fair amount of student perspectives (e.g., LA Times, 11/25/14), they also often ignore the sophisticated critiques students make, and have been making, of the UC (e.g., Reclaim UC, Teach the Budget) in favor of fluff quotes about how, for example, at the occupation of Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall, “It’s actually kind of fun, we’re all there together, it’s like a big slumber party” (LA Times, 11/24/14).
Furthermore, the various forms of student protest are not merely spontaneous reactions to recent events, as reports might lead readers to believe; they are also the product of an increasingly organized student and worker population allied against privatization of the UC system under the auspices of austerity. Tuition hike protests follow on the heels of recent AFSCME service worker (5/8/14) and UAW graduate student worker (6/24/14) contract campaigns, in which undergrads acted as crucial allies. Both unions helped fund buses to shuttle students from other campuses to protest the regents meeting on November 20, and many grad students continue to organize against tuition hikes alongside undergrads.
With the exception of one NPR story (11/24/14) that quotes Berkeley’s organization, the Open UC, and links to its website, and one LA Times reporter (11/23/14, 11/24/14) who briefly mentions the Open UC’s “militant rhetoric,” corporate media have largely ignored the growing student worker movement in favor of soundbites that shortchange their critiques.
Caroline Kao is a graduate student in anthropology at UC Santa Cruz. Kao is a member of UAW local 2865 and participant in anti-privatization protest activities.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE 1339067. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
