All over California right now there are walk-outs, occupations of buildings, and huge protests being staged at the UCs (University of California), California State Universities, and community colleges. To Californians, public education is supposed to mean access to all, including low-income students, immigrants, and people who are considered to be part of a minority group. It is also supposed to mean access to resources such as libraries, good professors, and specialized programs. UC Berkeley, for example, is considered one of the top academic institutions in the world, and is a public university. However, California has recently found itself in a financial crisis, with a statewide deficit of $42 billion. To cope with this severe lack of funds and inspired by neoliberal reforms that have been sweeping the nation for the last couple decades, the California government is cutting the amount of money they spend on their universities, thereby forcing the universities to “privatize.” In the University of California schools, the Regents (the board that runs the school) have recently approved a 32% increase in student fees over the next two years.
Privatization is a neoliberal tactic and can mean many things. In the case of privatizing California schools, it means replacing public funding with student fees, increased corporate sponsorship of academic research, and increased reliance on endowments, to name a few. Privatization means that universities will rely heavily on private donors and corporate funding, which means the corporate sponsors will potentially have the ability to dictate the material taught and to sway publicized results of research. Increased fees mean that many students will no longer be able to afford higher education.
Privatization is a neoliberal tactic and can mean many things. In the case of privatizing California schools, it means replacing public funding with student fees, increased corporate sponsorship of academic research, and increased reliance on endowments, to name a few. Privatization means that universities will rely heavily on private donors and corporate funding, which means the corporate sponsors will potentially have the ability to dictate the material taught and to sway publicized results of research. Increased fees mean that many students will no longer be able to afford higher education.
This privatization of the university affects everyone, and it hits low-income people and people of color the hardest. People of color are already sorely underrepresented in the university system; even though 37% of the population of California is latin@, only 9% of students at the UCs are latin@, and this number will decline with a fee increase. Many lower income students or students from lower class families will be forced to drop out if tuition or fees are raised unless substantially more financial aid is given. Course options are also being cut, which is a huge problem for students receiving financial aid. To receive aid you must be enrolled as a full-time student, which means you must take the required number of credit hours each semester. However, with decreased course options and hundreds of students vying for the same spots in the lecture halls, people are struggling to find enough classes to take that contribute to their degree path in order to keep their aid.
Anger about budget cuts and shortfalls has been brewing for a long time in California’s universities, and all across the country. At the beginning of the school year, students, faculty, and staff in California came together for a week of teach-ins, walk-outs, and rallies to raise awareness about the financial crisis. This is what many view as the start of the movement part of this history, where various student and faculty groups came together and started acting. Throughout the next few months there were many protests and acts of civil disobedience, including a number of occupations of administration buildings and classroom buildings at many different schools around the state. Students’ rallies have been met with police force and many arrests, and aside from repression have been widely ignored by Regents and other decision-making officials. In December, the California students issued a national call to action, asking people across the nation to join in solidarity with them in protecting public education, which they consider a basic human right.
As a result of California’s national call to action, solidarity groups are coming together all over the country to plan for a day of action on March 4th. This movement is very fresh and very new, and most of the discussion right now is about how each individual wants to be involved, how to get everyone else involved, and what demands each local group should set forth as the reason they are acting. Some say Demand Everything, others say Demand Nothing, but the idea of the movement is that this is an issue that affects everyone and therefore everyone should be involved. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with someone’s tactics; if you disagree with a group’s tactics then don’t be a part of that group, but start a different one that goes about things in the way that you think is right. With all of these combined, with everyone fighting, then how could anyone lose?
Student movements to defend public education and keep it accessible have been springing up all over the globe. In 2009 alone there were recorded protests in 52 countries around the world, on 5 continents. There were protests in the US, Canada, Zimbabwe, Burundi, France, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Bangladesh, the list goes on. 2009 is not the only year in which this struggle has taken place. Students of public universities have been fighting neoliberal reforms for years. One of the most famous of these struggles was the strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1999. In January of 1999, the rector of UNAM announced a tuition increase that would bring its fees from about 20 cents up to $150, thereby severely limiting the potential incoming classes. The students rose up and protested this increase, and the strike lasted 292 days before police stormed the campus and ended the strike.
Though there are reforms and protests happening all over the world, it is only recently that they have begun to unite into what may become a worldwide movement. Through the use of internet blogs and social networking websites, students in different countries are able to communicate with each other about their struggles and unite in solidarity. The California movement is becoming part of a network of solidarity groups fighting for education. The media has been slow to pick up on this battle, and the main coverage that is happening is via internet blogs and indymedia- an independent media website in which anyone who considers themselves knowledgeable on a subject can write and publish an article.
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