Volume 30 · Number 2 · Winter 2013
Letters
From the editor
Living through a home remodeling project some years ago changed forever the way I looked at walls.
What’s so innovative about raising taxes?
I was disheartened to read “The Uncertain Fate of Higher Education” [fall 2012]. The feature devoted a full 60 column inches to a plea that only increased and never-ending state subsidization will sustain the UC system and avoid tuition increases. Only two inches mention a handful of initiatives that would save approximately 2 percent of UC’s $22 billion in annual expenses.
Notably missing from the article were any initiatives that would revise the delivery of education using technology. Teaching remains a “brick and mortar” activity: Students file into lecture halls for a few hours a day and take a few classes a week. Streaming these lectures via the Internet could increase enrollment; increased tuition revenue would spread the university’s fixed costs over a great number of students (thus keeping average tuition down). Does it really matter whether you attend a lecture in 194 Chem (now Rock Hall) with 400 students and the instructor 30 yards away, or in your dorm room or home via streaming video?
As Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi says: “To realize this aspiration, to transform our university, we must chart a new course of action, an equally transformative vision to guide our actions and define our future.”
Simply asking taxpayers for more funding is hardly a new course of action. Designing and implementing new education processes is, should be pursued and will benefit our state and fellow citizens.
Editor’s note: Please see story “Classroom to Go” to learn more about online and hybrid instruction on campus.
Make K-12 schools pay
Chancellor Katehi brings up an interesting point: “I wonder . . . what is going to happen to these other students who cannot enter any of the systems [UC, California State University, and California Community Colleges]. Do they stay uneducated?”. . . The chancellor implies, probably rightly so, that many graduates of the K-12 system are not educated. We Californians are getting cheated when we are paying for students to obtain an education in the K-12 public schools, and they do not. And we are getting doubly cheated when the universities attempt to make up for deficiencies in some K-12 education by expending tight university resources on remedial courses.
The K-12 system that graduated them should pay for that remedial education. School districts that had to pay university costs for high school education services would figure out how to educate their students properly at the lower K-12 costs.
Invest in California
I am pleased to see the passage of Proposition 30. After graduating from UC Davis in 1979, I moved to Oregon. With sadness and disappointment I have watched the no-new-tax-at-all-costs zealots tear down California. On my many visits to California I am always struck by the spectacular wealth—magnificent houses, freeways filled with expensive trucks, high-end stores and restaurants with eager patrons waiting in line, etc. Perhaps Proposition 30 is the beginning of a new era in which some of that wealth is invested in the infrastructure (like the UC System) that carried the state to prominence.
No monopoly on compassion
I wonder where Jennifer Ball (letter “Editorial Balance?” fall 2012) got the idea that she (or a proponent of any cause) has an exclusive claim on kindness, love or art, or health care support.
I hope she didn’t get the idea during her year at UC Davis.
Offended
[Re: “I ‘heart’ UC Davis,” a fall 2012 Aggies Remember essay about how one alumna met her wife] I realize that this is 2012 and this sort of thing is accepted and tolerated, but that you applaud it and shove it in my face offends me.
By now you are aware that there is no check in the envelope with this letter.
Editor’s note: The magazine, in selecting content, follows UC Davis’ “Principles of Community,” which affirm freedom of expression, celebrate diversity and reject all manifestations of discrimination including those based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs.
Correction
An obituary for Matthew Lyon ’97 in the In Memoriam section of the fall 2012 issue omitted part of the name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We apologize for the error.