This SF Chronicle opinion piece puts it sharply and succinctly: “Ronald Reagan’s ghost runs the UC system. Expect strikes until that changes.”

It places the recent UC-AFT campaign in the history of declining state support for UC, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s imposition of an “educational fee.”:

“The result is a long-term decline in per-student funding in a system that is more dependent than ever on tuition and private funding streams — through industry partnerships and private philanthropy (which often leads to outlandish results, as the recent controversy over a planned mega-dorm that critics have likened to a prison, gifted to UC Santa Barbara by billionaire amateur architect Charlie Munger, makes plain).”

I have been saying that we can use the Munger dorm debacle as the poster child for what results from the dependence on tuition and private funding, which this Op-Ed does beautifully.

The authors, Samy Feldlum and John Schmidt, are UCLA graduate students and research fellows with the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. In early 2020 they will be publishing a history of labor at UC.

The hugely successful UC-AFT campaign led to fairer compensation and greater job security for the lecturers and spotlighted that higher ed reform goes through labor rights for all.

The amount of good press around the UC-AFT campaign and threatened strikes was terrific. Also notable was the way most of the coverage, from articles to op-eds to editorials, linked labor rights to sustaining educational quality and strengthening shared governance. See the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board lead editorial on November 28, 2021, “Colleges’ overreliance on adjunct faculty is bad for students, instructors and academic freedom.”

Pairing the call for renewed public funding for higher ed to labor rights can be seen in the several national higher ed reform movements, including the AAUP-AFT’s New Deal for Higher Education, Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education, Higher Education Labor United (HELU), Tenure for the Common Good, the #Cancel Student Debt coalition, and the College for All bills, among others. (Eric and I, along with Wendy Matsumura and Eileen Boris, together or taking turns, attend weekly meetings of these initiatives at which some of you have been featured speakers; feel free to join us. We also meet weekly with the UC Union Coalition.)

As the SF Chronicle piece puts it, “The modern UC system was shaped by Ronald Reagan. It needs a new social contract.”

CUCFA’s project to Reclaim/Reimagine the Master Plan for California Higher Education, the $66 Fix or a version of it, along with a strengthened labor movement, offers one template for that “new social contract.” Let’s think of ways to build on the unusually abundant and favorable press coverage and national organizing momentum to make progress on advancing our goals.

I told you this message would contain good news!

Happy holidays,

Connie

Constance Penley
she/her/hers
Professor, Department of Film and Media Studies
Founding Director and Past Co-Director, Carsey-Wolf Center
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations https://cucfa.org/
Academic Advisory Board Emeritus UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement https://freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu/