Questions arose about Cal Poly’s future as a public university after a talk given by Cal Poly Provost Robert Koob last Wednesday at a retired faculty and staff luncheon.
Koob discussed increasing cuts to funding and tuition hikes as signs that change is necessary in order for Cal Poly to continue offering students an education in the future, said retired forestry professor Tim O’Keefe, who was present at the luncheon.
“(Privatization) seems like a very strong possibility to me, the way he put it together,” O’Keefe said.
The talk covered both a possible proposal to privatize the university, as well as a suggestion by Koob to have undergraduates teaching in the future, O’Keefe said.
“He thought students were some of the greatest resources that Cal Poly has,” O’Keefe said.
Koob said, however, both of these ideas were misconstrued from what he originally said at the luncheon.
The talk Koob gave at the luncheon was the same talk he said he gave to the Associated Students, Inc. Board of Directors and Faculty Advisory Board, as well as several other bodies, about how students are now carrying more of the cost of education than in the past.
“What in effect is happening is we’re moving from public support to private support, which is fees and students,” Koob said.
Since Koob first took the post of provost at Cal Poly in 1990, students have gone from paying for 12 percent of their education to 59 percent, he said. The word privatizing could be used to describe this shift in funding, but does not mean that Cal Poly will be a private institution in the future, Koob said.
“The state of California is privatizing public education by shifting support from the state to students and their families,” Koob said.
With state budget cuts, student fees have increased steadily over the past several years, with an 11 percent tuition increase for California State University (CSU) students for the 2011-12 school year. Another 9 percent tuition increase approved last Wednesday by the CSU Board of Trustees for the 2012-13 school year.
The proposal of having students teach classes was also taken out of context, Koob said. He proposed having older students helping younger students in classes, with the supervision of a professor.
The whole process would be similar to the way student clubs currently work on and complete projects, Koob said.
“We’ve become famous for Learn By Doing, but there’s a whole other level we can take students to by giving them a class,” Koob said.
Koob’s talk at the luncheon was reported by Cal Coast News in an article by Karen Velie, which brought to the public’s attention the possibility of a private Cal Poly on Friday.
“What we have now is what you would call a public/private hybrid,” Koob said. “What (Velie) took that to say is that we’re intentionally privatizing education.”
On Sunday, Koob sent out an email to the Cal Poly faculty and staff clarifying what he intended to convey with his talk at the luncheon.
“At no point did I ever say, nor have I ever advocated, that Cal Poly withdraw from state support of from the CSU,” Koob wrote in the email.
Velie, however, said her article was an accurate report of the talk at last Wednesday’s luncheon. Koob’s statements have changed significantly since the article ran on Cal Coast News’ website, Velie said.
Koob’s quotes in the Cal Coast News article are direct and sum up the lengthy privatization discussion, she said.
“They’re trying to say now, ‘We’re going to be like a private institution,’” Velie said. “This was not just a statement. This was discussed.”
The discussion is a new one for a CSU school. CSU spokesperson Stephanie Thara said no school has left the CSU in the history of the system.
“From the chancellor’s office, there’s no precedence for it,” Thara said.
The CSU is comprised of 23 public schools, which are funded in part by the state, and in part by student tuition and private donations. The CSU schools all work together to create the system, and no school has considered privatizing, Thara said.
“All 23 campuses work as a team, so for something like that to happen, it’s never happened before,” Thara said.
Provost Koob’s comments are important because they shed light on the future of Cal Poly, the CSU, and public education in California in general. The lines in the sand have been drawn. One side wants to reverse the trend of decreased state funding and to restore the public CSU, the other wants embrace corporatism and profit off students seeking an education. The gradual corporatization of public universities developed alongside the gradual decline in state funding. But embracing the corporatization of the University is absurb. It should anger everyone that our university is being corporatized. It leads to a lack of administrative transparency in decision making (like the Cal Poly Corporation), corporate bias in research, the stifling of dissenting opinions, and higher tuition. Increasingly, only members of the upper class can afford to attend public universities. This encourages stratification of society. Corporations and administrators want to use the state’s economic woes and diminishing support of higher education as a pretext to claim public education is dead and profit from its privatization. Corporations already have influence over what is allowed on campus (the Michael Pollan speech comes to mind). California Polytechnic State University is turning into Harris Ranch Polytechnic.We can’t let it happen!
Provost Koob’s comments are important because they shed light on the future of Cal Poly, the CSU, and public education in California in general. The lines in the sand have been drawn. One side wants to reverse the trend of decreased state funding and to restore the public CSU, the other wants embrace corporatism and profit off students seeking an education. The gradual corporatization of public universities developed alongside the gradual decline in state funding, but embracing the corporatization of the University is absurb. It should anger everyone that our university is being corporatized. It leads to a lack of administrative transparency in decision making (like the Cal Poly Corporation), corporate bias in research, the stifling of dissent, and higher tuition. Increasingly, only members of the upper class can afford to attend public universities. This further encourages stratification of society. Corporations and administrators want to use the state’s economic woes and diminishing support of higher education as a pretext to claim public education is dead and profit from its privatization. Corporations already have influence over what is allowed on campus (the Michael Pollan speech comes to mind). California Polytechnic State is turning into Harris Ranch Polytechnic. We can’t let it happen!
I suggest that we should occupy Dexter Lawn and protest against the privatization of Cal Poly!
The students at Cal and Davis are willing to stand up to protect their university, are we?
I am already home for break, but this is the email I received from Occupy Cal Poly regarding their meeting today. If you wish to get on the mailing list, send an email to occupycalpoly@gmail.com
Hello everyone,
We got a lot done today at the meeting. Next Tuesday, November 29th, we will be holding an open forum to discuss the economic issues that we all face as students and faculty of this university. We composed a letter to inform the faculty, hoping that they will contribute vital ideas towards the progression of this movement. You can download the aforementioned letter in an attachment.
We also discussed goals for the future of OccupyCalPoly. In light of the OWS movement becoming more college campus affiliated, we have much planned for the new year. You can see some of the topics discussed the notes from today’s meeting attachment.
We are planning another meeting on Tuesday at 6PM in the Cal Poly library by Julians where will discuss the faculty’s reaction to our letter, as well as plan for the open forum discussion that will occur the following week.
Please pass around our letter of grievances to your teachers and peers. We are still in the stages of gathering support for future actions. The support will come, we just all need to do our part on spreading the word.
Sincerely,
OccupyCalPoly
Cal Poly going private may not be a bad thing for a couple of reasons.
1. Cal Poly’s unique educational approach and upward progress have been thwarted for years since it was forced in 1966 into the CSU system and its dumbed-down standards. Standards well below that of Cal Poly, the UC system and private universities. Warren Baker fought against the system and significantly elevated admissions, faculty, facilities at Cal Poly during his thirty years but it’s now apparent based on his hires that President Armstrong has been ordered by the CSU to bring Cal Poly back to the pack.
A move away from a politically-motivated CSU can only help Cal Poly because a quality eduction shouldn’t be a political football.
2. Cal Poly will skyrocket in virtually every area once it is free of its union shackles. From poor performing plumbers and gardeners working on campus to faculty and department heads, union contracts essentially prevent holding employees accountable and to a higher standard. In other words it takes an act of God to terminate people. As a result, Cal Poly has tons of dead wood hanging around. This dead wood draws critical dollars away from the university’s mission of an excellent “learn by doing” eduction.
3. When Cal Poly disassociates from the unions, it can be argued that the university also disassociates from Wall Street. This happens because the university is no longer associated with public employee unions which are some of Wall Street’s biggest investors and policy makers. In fact, CalPers, (California’s Public Employee Retirement System) is one of Wall Streets biggest investors and is well known for its investor activism. This means, CalPers (aka the union retirement system) is telling Wall Street what to do which is no surprise when you have nearly $200B dollars to invest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalPERS
In summary, a move to private status could be the best thing tha’st ever happened to a Cal Poly education. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.
It really just boils down to what you want the University to be. With its location, reputation, and endowment, Cal Poly could surely survive privatization. I do not want to witness a school that only a few years back was considered to be the best value in the nation become like USC; a university of spoiled children where the rich send their kids to network and ensure wealth remains concentrated in the hands of the few. Now reliant upon wealthy students and donors who have a financial incentive of keeping the status quo, ideas viewed as subversive will be silenced. (Harris Ranch and Michael Pollan)
The notion the CSU is holding back Cal Poly is ridiculous. I believe our grads have more earning power than almost all of the UC’s. I actually see this as a negative because it exposes our campus as a corporate pipeline, but it illustrates the point that Cal Poly is not being held back.Cal Poly’s admission selectivity is on par with the UC’s. Despite California’s financial struggles, the state’s semi-public education system remains the greatest in the country. I give credit to the Unions you think are holding the campus in “shackles.”
Apparently it’s been missed that Cal Poly’s rep has already begun to slip. For example, In the most recent US News ranking, Cal Poly fell for the first time. The architecture and engineering programs have also fallen in recent national polls and applications to the school have dropped for the first time in 20 years.
Why? How could this happen? It begins with lack of class availability, over-crowded classes, student to faculty ratios and the inability to terminate poorly performing faculty and staff due to union intervention.
As was reported in today’s San Jose Mercury News, so much money is being diverted to the Cadillac benefits of existing employees and the pensions and benefits of retired civil servants, sufficient funds aren’t available to support the primary missions of the organization.
At Cal Poly, it’s well known the problem is similar. Critical learn by doing labs are now starving for funds to sustain themselves. Something Cal Poly has chronicled in various university publications. What’s more, in multiple national articles, Cal Poly has lost its “best value luster” as many students must attend school for five years to graduate and pay more while doing it. On the upside of course, plumbers on campus are making $150,000 a year as reported in the Sacramento Bee just last month.
It’s understandable that those who benefit from union abuse support their policies and are willing to turn a blind eye. On the flip side, however, Cal Poly’s 200-300% tuition increase over the past five to six years tell a very different story about the “credit” unions are due.
The unions are against the defunding! When the state fails to provide sufficient funds, it is the job of unions to stand up for their employees to ensure their salaries and quality of life don’t suffer. The CSU employees are the victims of the defunding like the students. Blaming the financial woes of Cal Poly on the plumbers is ludicrous. The people actually working to improve campus deserve their money. Colleges in California are not frugal with their money, but it is the inflated administration costs that are to blame. The administrators whose job is sit back thinking of new ways to waste money, such as the people that decided to pay some company thousands of dollars to revamp the Cal Poly logo, ought to be fired in dramatic cost cutting measures. I say get rid of the administration all together and install a council of professors to administer the school. That would free up funds to preserve learn by doing.
Of course Cal Poly isn’t the best value any longer. It’s expensive now. The number of applications remains high because there is 40 million people in this state.
Well, we agree on one thing at least!
Your comment about wasting thousands on a new logo is right on target. That was brought to Cal Poly by the now deceased, Sandra Ogren.
For the brilliance of that decision, how she managed the Crop House incident, and many others crack moves, senior admin at Cal Poly named an award after her!
It’d be interesting to measure the revolutionary transition that’s now taken place since the new logo has been launched. A logo that nobody had a problem with for 25 years.
As it so often stated in the business world…Sandy Ogren changing the logo of Cal Poly is akin to rearranging the deck chair on the Titanic.
I love it. The Sandy Ogren award for the administrator who spends the most tax money/student fees with nothing to show for it.
My political science professor said that the company redesigning the logo came up with three choices for the school to choose from. Two didn’t meet NCAA regulations and the other was ugly.