University of California Regents Approve Enrollment Cut

educational shortfall

It is a terrible injustice to inflict knowing pain and degradation upon students suffereing from learning disabilities because of a mandated state measure to just roll over and play rover. I find this to be a such a grecious action. The state of California or any other state that knowingly overlooks children with disabilities and send them on to the next grade level as unprepared citizens who eventually become discouraged and dejected due to a few failed measures; will in the end come back to demand attention at a price. Voltaire says that those who are neglected at the onset because of avarice and greed will eventually come back to haunt the very society that created classless citizenry unable to cope with the daily strategies of everyday living.

Bad Policy creates Bad Choices

It is wrong to blame Prop 98. It would be more appropriate to blame Prop 13. California had the best public school system in the country before Prop 13. The system was funded by property taxes. Most of the people whose work led to the tremendous economic growth in California in the 70's through 90's got their educations in pre-Prop 13 public schools and universities. We were near the top in per pupil spending, but we had a fantastic public education system to show for it. Prop 13 dropped California spending to that of Alabama and Mississippi.

Now, even with the Prop 98 money, California spends less per student on K-12 education than most of the other states. If you factor in the high cost of livingbhere, we are still in the bottom 5 states. Our schools still have too big a class size, and do not have suficient resources. This has real consequences in terms of quality of life , and crime.

I have a friend who works trying to help people sent to prison as juviniles to re-integrate into society. He has told me the first thing they always have to do is test for learning disabilities. They almost always find previously undiagnosed disabilities. The failure to diagnose the disabilities by the schools is deliberate. If a child is diagnosed with a learning disability the school is required to provide additional resources to the child so that the child can keep up. This requires additional spending by the schools. They do not have the money, so deliberately do not make the diagnosis. The child moves from grade believing he is stupid. Eventually he gives up on himself, drops out, and becomes involved in crime. He becomes a person who will live at taxpayer expense, whether in or out of prison, for the rest of his life. Had his learning disability been diagnosed, and had his school the money to fund specialists andgive him a proper education, he could be paying taxes instead. The money it would have cost to give him a good education is only a small fraction of what he will cost us for having failed to educate him.

When it comes to education, you get what you pay for. If you are unwilling to pay, you get what you deserve.

Cut foreign student admissions

When reductions must be made in enrollments, state residents must be admitted before any foreign or out-of-state students. Currently enrolled foreign nationals and out-of-state resident students must be told to find other institutions to which to transfer.

The issue should not be diversity but fairness to the taxpayers of the state. Someone needs to be watching the universities to make sure that they are giving the preferences to in-state students and cancelling the enrollments and properly notifying the USCIS for all of the foreign students.