Two Birds With One Stone Or How UCI Managed to Dumb Down Students and Become a Threat to National Security

Two years ago there was a proposal being tossed around amongst the decision makers at the University of California, Irvine regarding several of the general education requirements. The thought was to cut general education requirements (including the multicultural and foreign language categories) in order to make it more enticing for students to pursue a degree in other fields (i.e. engineering, science). There was a protest in which students and faculty discussed how the particular targeting of these categories amounted to an assault on culture but it only made the university governing body flinch a bit and delay what they believed to be the inevitable based on their poor assessment of education and student needs. Subsequently, and during a month of active student protest which included a mock funeral for education on the campus, three people (an undergrad, a grad, and a faculty member) were allowed to witness about 10 minutes of a two hour meeting in which they were told by the decision makers that nothing was going to be cut, that everything out there was merely a rumor gone viral.

A year passed by and the foreign language requirement got cut in half.

Later, the Humanities faced a large budget shortfall. In order to save the faculty and the school, the Dean of Humanities proposed, among other drastic measures, that the foreign language requirement be shortened or cut (just like it was proposed the previous year), although it is still unclear how this would save the Humanities any money. The logic behind this, was the infamous "Needs Attention" memo, predicting a grim future for the Humanities at UCI.

Today, UCI's requirements in categories VI, VII, and VIII (Foreign Language Other than English, Multicultural Studies, and International/Global Issues, respectively), have been reduced to a single course per category (See UCI General Catalog Page 56), while categories II and V (Science and Technology and Quantitative, Symbolic, and Computational Reasoning) still stand at three courses minimum requirement for all undergraduates.

With this overhaul, the University of California, Irvine has managed to accomplish only three things: dumb its student population down, increase their health risks, and contributed to heightened threats to national security.

How exactly have these results come about?

The New York Times reports that according to two separate studies performed in 2004 and 2009, researchers have found out that bilingualism is a fundamental strategy for problem solving that not only increases brain function but helps people to live healthier lives:

"Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset."

Surely, a single course in foreign language is not enough to develop "proficiency" in it.

Moreover, a recent meeting from the Council on Foreign Relations which included former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and New York's former school teacher's Chancellor, Joel I. Klein, announced that threats to national security are heightened when there is an inadequate (or poor) emphasis on foreign language learning at schools. Albeit, the focus of the Council's meeting was prompting the creation of a more adequate "human capital" pool for a "volunteer army", the fact that even the military is recognizing the need for more and better language learning and teaching only emphasizes the real and immediate consequences that poor decisions by other types of capitalists like UCIs decision makers have on the future of America.

Yes we are becoming dumber, less healthy, and we are letting our poor military down... (read the sarcasm on the last point). But at what gain?

How much money has the School of Humanities really saved in all of this? How long can it sustain itself by making equally worthless decisions that will, no doubt, end up creating a vicious cycle in which there will be less students taking foreign language, thus needing less T.A.s to teach the courses, thus needing less Faculty to teach graduate courses, thus needing less of everything over and over again?

This is a race to the bottom that all of us will lose.

Solidarity Social this Thursday!

This event is intended to provide a space for people from multiple activist groups on campus (and for those currently unaffiliated) to come together and do something besides have meetings. Hopefully we can all get together and hang out, network, and have fun.

Please invite anyone you think might be interested.

Also feel free to bring food items, so far there is a possibility of pizza and curry.

(Sign up for the social on Facebook)

School of Humanities' Response to the "'Needs Attention' Plans"

SOH Response to NA(1)

Have We Protected Poor Students from Debt?

(Via Remaking the University)

By Chris Newfield

Administrative hand-wringing over access has been focused on the giant hole in the income donut where dwell "middle class" students with family incomes of between around $80,000 and $150,000 per year. For example, UC President Mark Yudof recently assured the anti-tax California Chamber of Commerce that UC's Blue and Gold plan makes UC tuition free for all students with family incomes under $80,000, effectively covered the $1890 tuition increase in 2011-2012 for families making under $120,000, and in general makes average net tuition at UC only $4000, or about a third of the current sticker price. In December, UC Berkeley announced a Middle Class Access Plan (MCAP), designed to help those same Middle Earth students with family incomes in the $80,000-140,000 donut hole.

So why, when I was at UC Riverside to give a budget talk three weeks ago, were students trying to show the Regents signs like this:

Here's the simple picture that illustrates the problem:

This chart is from the College Board's Trends in Student Aid 2011. It shows that low-income students borrow almost as much as do middle-class students. Low-income Pell Grant students, who in some accounts have it good, in 2008 "had an average debt of $24,800 — nearly $2,000 more than the average for all seniors graduating with loans." The authors of Crossing the Finish Line, with their uniquely comprehensive data base, confirm this pattern, and show that students from the bottom income quartile increase their annual borrowing by 50% from their first to their last year in college (chapter 9). Low-income students are going broke as fast as middle-income students. Actually, given their lower income base, they're going broke even faster.

What about all that grant income that supposedly waft poor students along? It doesn't close the funding gap between financial aid for tuition and related expenses and the overall cost of attendance. As background, take Berkeley's MCAP plan, which estimates Berkeley's cost of attendance as $32,000 per year. In the new scheme, a student from a family grossing $80,000 pays net tuition of $8000, and then family contributes a maximum of 15% of their gross income or $12,000. The university comes up with the missing $12,000 ($4000 coming from the existing return-to-aid program), But the student and her family still pay $20,000 a year, or a quarter of their gross income. This will require the borrowing that appears in the College Board's data.

2010 median family income in California was not quite $55,000 in 2010 (slide 9). Let's say that a student from this median family -- still not technically poor -- gets all tuition covered through a partial Pell Grant combined with a Cal Grant (at least until Jerry Brown messes with it again). This saves another $8000. This student and her median family then need to find $12,000 per year. Factor in this family's net income in relation to California mortgage or rent costs, plus just one other child in the family, and the family's capacity to contribute disposible incomerapidly approaches zero. A student borrowing $4000-5000 per year for four or five years will easily rack up the total debt seen in the chart. UC President Mark Yudof recently noted the debt figure for UC is close to $20,000.

When public university officials claim that access for low-income students is guaranteed by grants, they wrongly lowball the overall access problem. This may have the bad effect of reducing public interest in fixing the whole access problem.

The EVC's Measures of Qualities Memo

Here is another document that was presented on June 11, 2012 in a meeting with the School of Humanities. The document is called "Budget Reduction Memo" and it was sent from the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, Michael Gottfredson's office. This document is dated last June and re-distributed by then School of Humanities Dean, Vicki L. Ruiz in October. It pertains to cuts Gottfredson passed down last spring, in other words, cuts that started to be implemented in 2011-2012 and that he stresses are "permanent." It makes clear that the cuts are differently--widely differently--distributed, and notes that Athletics was given no cut. It also shows the breakdown of votes that the individual members of the Academic Planning group and the Budget group conducted on whether a unit should be on the "Needs Attention" list or not. Budget Reduction Memo.2011-2012.Humanities 20110720171641-1