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nk you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] hi and welcome to uh our viewers and listeners to the latest in the series of state senator Bill Dodd's Town Halls tonight event is presented in partnership with KSBY 91.3 FM and Sonoma and Sonoma TV tonight Senator Dodd is joined by four distinguished panelists to discuss the state of higher education in California with leaders from the UC CSU an
d Community College systems I'm Rick Nguyen as I was introduced one of the volunteer hosts of KSBY 91.3 FM in Sonoma this evening's town hall is being presented on multiple video platforms including Senator Dodd's Facebook page facebook.com send Bill Dodd a student presented on sd03. senate.gov.ca Sonoma TV Comcast channel 27 of the Sonoma Valley sonomatv.org and the Sonoma TV channel on YouTube for Audio Only You Can you you may be tuned in or you can tune in to KSBY 91.3 FM and Sonoma or strea
m anywhere in the world on ksby.org on your home or on your home smart device again tonight we will be discussing higher education in the state of California Senator Dodd and the panelists will take your questions beginning around 6 30 Studio call in number is 707-933-9133 that's [Music] 707-933-9133 we also have questions previously submitted by email and we'll make every attempt to get to those that are not addressed in the panelists opening remarks and subject with discussion Senator Dodd rep
resents all are part of six North Bay counties including Napa Sonoma Solano Contra Costa Sacramento and YOLO counties and now turn it over to Senator Dodd we'll make his opening remarks introduced to this evening's panel good evening senator thank you very much Rick and thanks to our panelists and KSBY for convening this latest in a series of town halls as you've heard this is our 24th virtual Town Hall over the last two and a half years tonight we'll discuss the latest from our colleges and uni
versities focusing on access affordability and enrollment trends after we open the floor to your general questions I'm very glad to be joined by this group and thanks for to the hundreds of people that are tuning in tonight later in the town hall we'll be reading your emailed questions we will start by taking your calls around 6 30. the call-in number is 707-933-9133 the lieutenant governor will be participating via recorded video at this moment she's actually traveling back from Cal Poly Humbol
dt her flight was scheduled to this time slot but she was able to record a short video which will play in a little bit across the country this month millions of high school seniors are graduating and will turn to one of California's colleges or universities this fall to complete their educations we all know that getting a college degree is essential to competing in today's Marketplace the California public policy Institute estimates that families with a college degree holders earn twice as much
uh as those with without over a lifetime and the golden state is always ranked at the top of the list for places to go to school our UC CSU and Community College campuses are the best in the nation six UC schools placed among the top 10 Nationwide in this year's U.S news and World Report rankings all 23 CSU campuses landed in the best bang for your buck rankings by the Washington monthly clearly people recognize the value of our schools I'm a Chico State graduate myself I won't go into detail ab
out the great times I had as a wildcat but suffice it to say the California State University system gave me an excellent start yet there are challenges ahead as we seek to maintain access and affordability stall population growth coupled with the pandemic have led to an overall decline in enrollment according to the ppic between 2019 and 2022 enrollment in the UC the state's most selective Public University increased by two percent while CSU experienced a six percent decline Community College en
rollment dropped by 17 percent if these Trends persist there will be fewer new college graduates entering the workforce in in the coming years that is a troubling that's so troubling considering the link between prosperity and college education at the same time the cost of tuition in California May soon be going up CSU leaders are recommending the first hike since 2017 to ensure long-term sustainability given the strong job market that could discourage many high school graduates from pursuing a
four-year degree in the capital fellow lawmakers and I are always mindful of these Trends it is why I've voted to increase enrollment of in-state students I've also supported programs to encourage first-time College families and people of color to seek higher education however the solution to some of these problems remains elusive there's no Silver Bullet to ensuring everyone can go to college here tonight are four people to talk about the state of higher education and how we can make it better
for all of California first of all lieutenant governor Elaine kunalakis is the first woman lieutenant governor in the state of California serving since 2019. she is a former ambassador to Hungary under President Obama and currently sits as an ex-officio Trustee of the California State University system she has degrees from Dartmouth and UC Berkeley Dr Michael Drake is president of the 10 campus University of California system he's a Stanford and UC educated physician and former president of the
Ohio State University for two decades he was on the faculty of the UCSF School of Medicine president Drake was raised in part in Sacramento and got his start at Sacramento City College there's no denying he's a rock star in the field of Education leading the world's Premier University system in fact during the summer in the 1970s he actually worked at Tower Records now he's on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and plays guitar Larry galizio is the president of Community Coll
ege League of California where he has been since 2015. previously he was president of klatsop community college in Astoria Oregon before that Larry worked in the Chancellor's office for the Oregon University system he has degrees from UC Berkeley San Francisco State and Portland State and Susan green is a professor of Multicultural and gender studies at Chico State University she is the treasurer of the California faculty Association representing CSU instructors Statewide and she's also the past
president of the California faculty Association CFA now let's hear from the lieutenant governor can we roll the video one sec please my name is Eleni kunalakis and I'm California's lieutenant governor I want to thank my friend Senator Dodd for hosting this town hall and for allowing State and higher education leaders to discuss important issues facing our college students today although I can't be with you all I'm proud to say that I'll be touring California's newest Polytechnic Institute Cal P
oly humble at the same time that this event is going live as lieutenant governor I've had the unique privilege of being the only person to serve on all three boards of public higher education in the state of California the UC the CSU and the community college system which collectively serve over 2.6 million students and in my opinion represents the best system of higher education in the world Cal Poly humble will be the 16th CSU Campus I've visited since becoming lieutenant governor during these
visits it's a priority for me to hear directly from students about the challenges and obstacles they are facing on a day-to-day basis something clear to me from my earliest campus visits was the need to address the total cost of attendance not just tuition in particular the high cost of housing in the communities for our campuses are located is a major factor driving affordability a report on student homelessness from UCLA noted that one in five California community college students one in 10 C
SU students and one in 20 UC students experience homelessness this is simply unacceptable California students deserve to be able to focus on their education not worry about where they will sleep at night that's why I'm proud to have voted to approve housing projects on our campuses that will provide 35 000 new beds for our students another issue we've been working on is making it easier for students to transfer from Community College to complete a four-year degree in 2020 the public policy Insti
tute of California reported that among students with the declared goal of transferring only four percent successfully did So within two years that's why our office has co-sponsored legislation for students to be placed directly into transfer level math and English courses rather than remedial courses to ensure students are graduating on time and with less debt despite these challenges I remain very hopeful about the opportunities our public higher education system provides our students like mill
ions of others my family has benefited immensely from California's public higher ed system my father a friend of Senator Dodds immigrated to our state in 1951 as a refugee from Greece he attended Sacramento State University where he paid just sixty two dollars a semester including books he could afford this by working as a waiter for a local restaurant that frequently catered events in the governor's mansion access to Affordable public higher ed gave my father the tools he needed to start a busi
ness and support his family my father's story is one that is shared by so many students past and present California is currently the largest majority minority democracy in the world and no single ethnic group makes that more than 39 percent of our population additionally over one in four Californians are immigrants that's 27 percent of the population which is almost double the national average of 14 our diverse population and robust public higher education systems together have helped our state
become a global Innovation capital and the world's fifth largest economy I know the ties between diversity higher education and a strong economy are also very important to Senator Dodd with UC Davis Sonoma State University and numerous Community College in his district he sees the challenges students and our colleges and universities face Senator Dodd again thank you for having me here virtually and thank you for bringing your pragmatic can-do problem solving approach to the legislature to help
solve these challenges thank you also to UC president Drake and Mr galicio from the community college League of California for providing your important perspectives today as well and thank you everyone in the audience for joining let us all continue to work together to ensure our public higher education systems are accessible to all Californians and provide a pathway to Greater opportunities for all thank you well thank you to our lieutenant governor for that message and now we're going to go to
president Drake president Drake welcome it's great to see you we're uh great to see you Senator and you know I like it when people uh say that I'm on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sometimes they say I'm in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and there's a I I have been in many times but I have to buy a ticket but I I appreciate that as a part of the introduction and uh good to see you and good to be here with with all of you and a pleasure to be able to spend this time with with you wi
th my friend uh Governor lieutenant governor kunalakis and nice to be on with you as as well Dr galicio and uh we're looking forward to a a good conversation uh this afternoon let me say you know at the University of California we'd like to use the phrase boldly Californian to be a theme in everything that we're doing from from teaching to research to public service we are here we exist to serve California first and foremost and you can see that in everything we do you know we have students who
come from all over the world we're popular all over the world we appreciate that but 83 percent of our undergraduates are California residents we provide support and training to K-12 schools we do Cutting Edge research on things like wildfire position prevention and climate change and in things like resilient crops in addition to the Quality Health Care and research that we do through our six academic Health Centers so we're really thinking about California all the time just this afternoon in fa
ct I meet with our campus leaders periodically um and the leadership from UC Davis came to meet with me in the office in in Oakland today and what a tremendous campus that is what tremendous leadership you have there with Chancellor may my my good friend for many years and watching the university move forward watching the things that Davis has done with his community like the healthy Davis together which literally saved lives in Davis as compared to other similarly sized cities about half the fa
tality rate than other similar size cities had so an incredible incredible effort there of the campus and the community working together through the through the covet epidemic Aggie Square which is uh just being uh built and was really imagined and kind of the chancellor came with some ideas of things he'd done in the past and now the place where I used to go to the State Fair before it was the new place that Cal Expo uh that's really being revitalized and made into a vibrant Center for for stud
y for research and for people to live and and work and we're looking forward to that very much Davis is also a leader in community safety there we care very much about our communities we have a university we have a 500 000 person uh population every day if you look at our students about 300 000 and our faculty and staff just over 200 000 we work really carefully to keep everyone safe and we we know so that the people at UC Davis care greatly about that and are were locked up with us and doing al
l the weekend to continue uh to protect our our communities I know we have a lot to cover tonight and so I I will now just in my comments here and look forward to the questions but say again very pleased to be on with you tonight look forward to hearing the questions from our audience members and in participating to participating in in the discussion thank you thank you president Drake appreciate that uh Dr galizio welcome well thank you senator I appreciate your support for all education in Cal
ifornia and thank you for having a focus tonight on higher education and uh Dr Green nice to meet you virtually look forward to your remarks and and uh the discussion we have and nice to see you again Dr Drake uh you you may recall that we had a a a podcast that featured you and and we really appreciate you being on and being being such a great partner to California's community colleges uh before I talk a little bit about the California community colleges I I want to again uh Senator Dodd thank
you for your support and although the negotiations continue the the cola that you and others have supported and and the governor's office is essential for I think all the sectors of higher education um and and so that's greatly appreciated on behalf of the all the California community colleges and also wanted to we're excited to see that there's uh money 60 million dollars for nursing as we all know all all too well there's a there's a severe nursing shortage um and so that's really very very im
portant I also want to recognize that uh your your staff and your family uh not just you uh support public service and community colleges um I don't know if listeners know this but the chair of the Napa Valley College is a gentleman named Jeff Dodd and he uh does excellent work and they have just hired a well maybe it's a year now a a young president who is uh really doing wonderful things at Napa Valley college so I really appreciate his Public Service uh Jeff Dodd and also I want to recognize
uh Inez de luna who's also on the Napa Valley college board but she also serves on the leagues board and just for clarification the league is the Statewide membership Association that all California community colleges are members of and then finally I want to recognize Senator Dodd your chief of staff who is also trustee Siobhan at the Sonoma County District's Santa Rosa Junior College so uh your office and your family and uh others are are supporting higher ed and community colleges in so many
ways and I also do want to recognize the lieutenant governor who sits on the Board of Governors now and has a I think a unique perspective because she sits on the the three boards and she's been a strong supporter of California community colleges so it was mentioned in the opening I'll just start with enrollment and the even prior to the pandemic California community colleges like many colleges we're seeing uh if not decreases uh enrollment not growing the pandemic disproportionately impacted Ca
lifornia community college students because we our students tend to be lower income students of color more students of color and the good news is though many of our colleges are coming back in terms of enrollment some some are seeing double-digit growth others single-digit growth but they're fairly confident that over the next couple three years uh barring unforeseen circumstances we should see stronger enrollment at California's community college is in a court of course as president Drake knows
and Dr Greene know we are a large feeder of both the Cal California State University and the University of California um and you know I think I'll just stop there because there is so much to talk about and and look forward to questions okay thank you very much Dr galizio uh Susan uh green welcome uh thank you very much for participating tonight great thank you good evening I'm really honored to be here this evening with such a distinguished uh collection of experts on the topic of higher educat
ion and as an aside to president Drake as a Golden Gopher I'm hoping that in Big Ten football we will be beating the Ohio State Buckeyes later this year so uh so thank you Senator Dodd for assembling this town hall to address affordability accessibility and enrollment in higher education and for those of us in the Cal State system there are no more important issues to us and these are really value issues not just numeric ones on a spreadsheet I think we all agree that higher education is a publi
c good that requires public investment and is not solely a private investment for personal gain the California master plan for higher education which we heard discussed before really prioritized access to free higher education and made us the Envy of the nation the CSU and its Partners in the community college and UC systems produce the majority of teachers nurses social workers construction engineers and other workers who really benefit the people of the State of California for the CSU every do
llar of State investment ripples out into our campus communities creating 6.98 of economic growth also in California's higher education system we believe that student learning conditions and faculty and staff working conditions are two sides of the same coin for really inextricably linked and so as we have this conversation today we're talking about students but also about faculty and staff who often send their students to one of the three segments of higher education we'll see that the most rec
ent California Budget really reflects our priority of higher education there's an increase to State funding to increase seats in the higher education segments there's an increase in funding for the middle class scholarship funding for affordable housing as the lieutenant governor just addressed and zero interest loans for the construction of student and faculty and staff housing in addition to some additional protections for students in CalFresh and Medi-Cal and while these are really good thing
s I think we need to explore in regards to what makes our campuses affordable and accessible in a variety of different ways and one of our greatest concerns in higher education before the pandemic and even more so after in the CSU in particular is the mental health of our students and of our faculty and staff and how people access those Support Services the International Association of Counseling Services the iacs recommends that colleges and universities maintain a ratio of one full-time equiva
lent mental health professional for every thousand two fifteen hundred students and the CSU average right now is about 1700 to 1. with an average wait time for students of four to eight weeks for mental health services and I think most of us would agree that those average wait times are not acceptable we wouldn't want to see that for ourselves or for our children and I really want to thank Senator Dodd for his recent support of sb11 on this issue in the CSU system in supporting Mental Health Ser
vices post covid campus enrollment continues to be a challenge for all of the segments of education and I think we'll be talking about how we need to renegotiate workloads how we redefine modes of instruction how we address commuter versus residential campus issues or online versus in-person enrollment shifts that we've been seeing on all of our campuses and this is a really good conversation for tonight's Town Hall campus affordability and accessibility also covers safety and sustainability tha
t make it possible for the diverse bodies of students and staff on our campuses to do their work student employees in the CSU are now organizing which is part of a national Trend to improve worker conditions and wages post covid I think this is something that will help students make higher education more affordable and accessible but we're also promoting student faculty and staff participation in campus health and safety issues creating campus accessibility conversations for safe spaces for bipo
d queer trans students and faculty and staff and finally I think accessible campus issues also include academic freedom and that core value of University education is one that's increasingly under attack and perhaps one that we're going to be discussing this evening but these are a few ideas that I have about the discussion around enrollment access and affordability to help us kick off the questions and discussion that I know we're all looking forward to having and again I'm really glad to be he
re this evening to talk about these complex issues thank you Senator Dodd thank you so much Susan now it's uh time to hear what the folks uh on the phones or uh who've emailed in think Rick takeover thank you Senator um we have a call to start us off for Logan who's a student rep on the Santa Rosa Junior College Board by the way Santa Rosa Junior the name of Junior College Logan Logan hello everyone I don't want to thank you all for having me and everyone here has done such great work for higher
education in California and I'm honored to speak with all of you what I wanted to know was regarding the new budget proposal that may be opening up the transfer admission guarantee to UCLA tag as is called for short guarantees student admission for certain majors as long as they stay above a certain GPA threshold this is a great program throughout my time as a student trustee for the JC I've heard from countless people about how they've benefited from this program I've spoken to many students w
ho plan to use this program in the future in March the Los Angeles time reported that Governor newsom's planned budget would make UCLA a part of this transfer admission guarantee system what are the panel's thoughts on this is this plan still moving forward and are there any plans include UC Berkeley and UC San Diego into the transfer admission guarantee system thank you thank you Logan any comments yeah yeah I probably should start on that and I will say that you know the university has the mos
t successful transfer program of any similar R1 Public University system in the country we about uh just about just under 30 percent of our students began as uh as community college students and transferred the national average is more in the 15 ratio so we're very pleased about that we have a two to one that's two freshmen through each transfer student or for every uh two freshmen we admit we admit a transfer students there's a two to one ratio across our system it's really quite effective and
interestingly you know we are very popular among applicants uclas and has more applicants for undergraduate admission than any other university in in the country but we still find that we uh so because of that we are are quite selective you know we we don't have room sadly for everyone who would like to come and see us and so we have an overall uh admission rate that is less than 100 percent I will say that at for our transfer students between 70 and 75 percent of those who apply to come to us t
hrough the transfer pathway are admitted to the University of California it's much higher than it is for freshmen admittee so it's a great pathway there are uh we we have transfer tags or transfer guarantees that many of our campuses not all and I'll say that yeah UCLA has I mentioned we have a two freshmen for every transfer pathway that or guarantee ratio that we use across the system UCLA is actually 1.6 freshmen to every transfer so more transfer students as a percentage of the undergraduate
population than our system-wide average they're the they're the highest so they're very successful there and the issue that we have with transfer application that with the with the tag program is that it tends to both limit the pathway uh that students can use to move forward and then also narrow the majors that It prepares them for so find where it works but the Habit across the board would mean that students would have a difficult time preparing for some of the specialized Majors that in fact
they come to the University of California for so what we have done is actually work with our academic Senate and work with our colleagues in Sacramento to look at a pilot program to try to create a guaranteed pathway for some of the majors at UCLA and to do that in a way that works with particularly community colleges that don't send us many students and to develop that over time what what we don't want to do is to say gosh it sounds nice to have a guarantee but know that that guarantee means t
hat since we the guarantee doesn't increase the number of slots that are available uh because again we're already don't have enough room to admit everyone so no one extra would get in with a guarantee it just means that in fact the pathways that would be available to community college students would be narrower so we think that it actually limits their opportunities for in fact a particular campuses you you mentioned so sounds like a nice idea and we're all in again we're very proud of our of ou
r transfer programs we lead the nation in in this this aspect but we don't want to change the programs in ways that limits the opportunity for for students to transfer so we we have working with the academic center come up with a a way to work on a pilot program to create some Pathways for transfer guarantee to UCLA but not to make that the uh our pathway that crowds out the other opportunities that students have thank you well by the way for our listeners and viewers our phone number is 707-933
-9133 that's 707-933-9133 that will connect you with your studio and we will put you on with our panel uh line three Rick from Roanoke Park has a question about part-time family faculty right yeah good evening uh Senator Dodd and your guests my name is Rick lutman I live in Roanoke Park and I'm on the faculty at Sonoma State University although I'm no longer on the payroll uh I wanted to talk about the problem of the gig economy I think we all know that this has been an increasing problem throug
hout the United States and throughout every sector but it's particularly a problem in higher education over the course of my career which goes back over half a century I've seen more and more reliant on adjunct faculty um as opposed to tenure track and tenured faculty it's unfair to them because they can't really make a living they can't make a career and it's it's bad for the University because these people uh have trouble making it a significant uh commitment to the university it's it's not th
eir permanent career um so I I think this is a problem and it's probably related to money but I think that uh it should be addressed because it really is a growing problem and is affecting the quality of Education thank you for your comments thank you Susan do you want to handle that one absolutely um as part of the California faculty Association and you're a member at Sonoma State we've been working on lecture issues from our Inception and we really have for lecturers the gold standard of contr
acts and protections for lectures but I absolutely agree that on some campuses the ratio of tenure track faculty to lectures is 70 to 30 percent instead of the other way around the ideal is about 70 percent tenure track faculty and 30 percent lecturers some of our most recent contract gains have been looking at new Pathways for lecture conversion to put lectures on the 10-year track if somebody's made a 20 or 30-year commitment as a lecturer to a campus you know they ought to have first opportun
ity to get a 10-year track job when they become available so I think there's certainly some things that can be done at the bargaining table um but I absolutely agree that it is not fair to lecturers it's not fair to the tenure track faculty and it's certainly not fair to the students who have sometimes they find a lecturer uh for the very first time who knows them and they go to find them to write a letter of recommendation for college and the person is no longer there um so it's not good for th
e students either and so I think looking at legislation or at the bargaining table to increase the number of tenure-track positions in relationship to lectures is always a topic of conversation that we want to have so thank you for uh thank you for the question and thank you for working at Sonoma State Dr galizio uh not to put you on the spot but no I I've certainly heard from different trustees here and there that that may be a little bit of an issue at some community colleges as well oh withou
t question it's a national issue and um it's a resource issue and Rick you're right money might be involved it certainly is I mean the community colleges we have about 1.8 million students were the lowest funded per student segment of Education public education in the state additionally I think what's important and this this doesn't obviate the the issue and the set of issues and and how to approach it but some of the costs that have occurred uh that have increased significantly certainly at the
community college and I would dare say at the CSUS and the UCS as well uh you know pers the the cost of pers and the liability of pers is a significant issue for all higher education and for the state as Senator Dodd knows all too well the increasing costs of Technology uh the pandemic uh created a situation where now community colleges and the expectation of students is that we run two colleges Napa Valley uh or Santa Rosa not only have to have on ground counselors courses parking and all the
technology for that but it has to run a virtual College and so just the costs the sustainability of the institutions are becoming more and more challenging and unfortunately that lack of sustainability or difficulty uh means that when ninety percent of your costs are personnel you have to figure out how to make it how to balance the books so it is you know I I that makes it sound so um hopeless but it is a it's a national issue and it's it's one of concern the only one bright spot for community
colleges is because we have many Career Technical programs where we have professionals who are in the field perhaps uh people in nursing or firefighting or EMTs or other you know Auto auto uh Tech uh often those individuals are employed in their segment of the economy and the profession and they do just teach part-time but of course that's not the case for for every part-time faculty member you've got to unmute right see it seems that the um affordability is a topic a with regard to higher educa
tion uh Helen from Vacaville sent in an email asking about why tuition has gone up so much faster than inflation it said when I went to UC Davis in 79 my quarterly tuition was 250 dollars my kids went to UC Santa Barbara and UC Merced and we had to take out a second mortgage to pay the bills and we've covered some of that today but uh Helen is actually on the line and I thought we would um maybe summarize an answer to her question if um who would like to tackle that yeah Dr Drake if you don't ye
ah I think I'll start uh look at she is absolutely right we have uh recognized this now for some time probably well the last 10 or 15 years it's been talked about but I think the legislature since I've been in and it's not as a result of me being in the legislature we've got it you know like-minded legislative Center both senators and assembly members that were just uh you know outraged over the tuition increases you know over the years that have led to where we are today but since I believe sin
ce uh 2015 uh there has been very little if no increases uh intuition in both youth UC and CSU and we've actually had free Community College uh in in many of the campuses not all of them you know today but a lot of what's happened in the past yes in my view was the disinvestment from the state of California to our UC system and our CSU system and that self-realization that hey look at we got to look in the mirror and the problem was the legislature you know the governor not funding our public ed
ucation systems more and allowing them to you know to try to find their own way and that was not that you know obviously that did not work I think we're on the right path that the prices aren't going down anytime soon I can tell you that I do have one comment I'd want to make up first I appreciate that Senator Dodd and you're exactly right it's there's been a national uh problem over really a generation of a disinvestment in public higher education and tuitions have escalated uh in every place w
e've done a few things that I think are really important though and and that many people don't know first uh we through uh Pell Grants and Cal grants and University grants uh families who make under eighty thousand dollars now have their tuition fully covered the average income in California and we'll get this rise about 60 65 000 um and so above that eighty thousand dollars is a cut off for us then if your family has a family income of eighty thousand dollars or less then tuition is fully cover
ed so when people say 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 50 years ago I paid 200 or 400 like the tuition I paid when I uh was that UCSF actually for most California families that tuition there's less than it was 320 or 50 years ago because it's zero and then we have a graduated tuition plan for families up to about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars so there's a middle class there's middle class support as well so that uh the you don't pay in Family full tuition until you're around 180 000 or or
so of of family income and and that helps us to be we're not cheap we're not free but we we try to be affordable about 54 of our of our undergraduate students are California undergraduate students so most of the California undergraduate students at the University of California today pay no tuition their tuition is fully covered it's about a hundred thousand but a hundred thousand people and one of the things that's nice about this is that um about more than 60 percent of our California students
who graduate leave the university with no loans or any debt whatsoever 61 in fact leave um uh debt free and of those who have that that 39 who have debt the average debt at graduation is about eighteen thousand dollars um about one-third again less than the thirty thousand dollar average across the country so we are we we work hard to be affordable and we have plans in place that we're working on and continuing to improve every year to make it that the University of California has a debt-free p
athway for all of the students that enter and we expect that debt-free pathway to be available to students by about 20 30. there'll be you have to some students have to work a bit it's not again we can't make it free but doing a reasonable and controlled amount of work for all the students who interest with the appropriate amount of family support should lead to a debt-free pathway for all of our admitted students the target is to get there by about 20 30 but again as we said 54 or about a hundr
ed thousand students no tuition today and uh debt about one-third again lower than the national average and so we're pleased to be there but looking to make ourselves even more more affordable who's in green do you have a comment on the state system absolutely um I I absolutely agree with Senator Dodd on that the disinvestment over previous administrations um in public higher education absolutely put the burden on the backs of individuals and families for what I think most of us believe is a pub
lic good people who provide Public Services coming from the house of Labor um I I think there's an expansion of uh Administration that doesn't necessarily serve students in the classroom or the libraries in ways that we need to take a closer look at to make sure that how we're spending the resources that we do get from the state of California is is efficient and so I'm always one who's looking at it Administration and some of those administrative costs which have grown much more rapidly than the
ranks of the tenure track faculty as you heard the colleague from Sonoma State discuss so I think there's some looking internally as well about how we spend the money once it comes to our campuses yeah I would just want to make sure that we have a conversation about that that that's uh that's fair and appropriate and when we look at the things that have caused cost have cost costs to grow we we have an incredible number of regulations and other things that we have to uh address we have our inte
rest is in serving students and serving patients and doing research and so we we were I've met all day today we look at our budgets every day to skinny them down as much as we can all the time but I'll say that we have uh a lot of things that come that have to be addressed a variety of things that I think are good that we have to address but we really are balancing uh each of those the the regulatory environment that we live in with our interest in serving our patients serving our students and a
nd serving the research needs of the world and um and I know that we're all interested in getting this done right but um I'll say their pressures that come to us externally that are sometimes quite expensive to deal with Dr galizio has the low-cost alternative for starting College anyway do you have a comment sure um number one if you compare California and the quality of post-secondary Education available I would compare California favorably to any state in the United States that does not mean
that uh Helen's uh concern and question is not valid but still comparatively uh having served as a legislator in another state and and been involved in higher ed so I think famously California community colleges were tuition or free up until about 1981 um and where I when I went to Santa Barbara City College the largest cost for the students of California community colleges are the non-tuition costs housing child care textbooks Transportation so that is those are the major costs um so two two ot
her points I mean number one I would agree with President Drake uh there are laws and regulations on the books in the state of California not to mention federally that might have made sense 60 years ago or 40 years ago for California community colleges they no longer make sense and they actually hinder our institutions from from being more affordable and having the flexibility that they need second is um the point that um now you know it's kind of gone out of my head what that second point was b
ut in in terms of costs at the California community colleges we have many of our colleges offer generous scholarships we have a promise program so more than half of the students at California community colleges even though now it is 46 dollars per credit uh more than half of the students do not pay any kind of tuition again it's the non-tuition cost look at your housing costs look at your medical costs look at your your costs if you have a business for retirement and and those things are are qui
te difficult but I also agree with Dr Greene we need to look internally and try to figure all this out to do a better job for Californians um we have a we're kind of stacked up on the phone lines so we're going to have to go for short answers to some of these Megan from Davis everybody's from Davis by the way um has a question about accessibility for disabled students staff and faculty Megan yes uh hi I I'm a 57 year old uh grad student and I graduated uh I'm an alumna of UCLA but I was not disa
bled when I went to UCLA and my experience here has really shown a very different world for disabled uh students and when we're talking you know in this town hall about accessibility as we have several times and we've also talked about declining enrollments and things but we're not doing enough to retain the disabled people that that managed to make it into the UC system and so I wanted to ask what uh the lieutenant governor the senator uh you know president Drake and others are doing about what
was sent to UC three years ago which was a demand defesto uh outlining what it has been going on in UC in terms of accessibility and and what could be done uh the action steps that could be done to address it well I'd leave that one for the lieutenant governor but she's not uh not here I I can I can address that especially or daughter would you like to go I mean I actually there's something in the budget this year as you know so well you know look at I would expect that the state of California
has to follow the state of California's rules and regulations on uh you know disabled uh you know disability access you know on the campus also the federal rules I'm not aware of unfortunately of the manifesto I will I know my staffs uh we'll look into this and get me that tomorrow uh so I apologize I can't really address that right now Mike much I know we're doing our short answers but you know we have a Regents uh uh uh a group that is studying this with in fact a faculty member who represents
the the campuses is from the Davis Campus looking at our disability services this uh budget that was just uh we just saw yesterday in fact has an increase in the funding for disability services so we're pleased to see that be the case we you know when we say access we we really do mean broad access to the people of California and as we are able to reach further we have people come to us with a variety of abilities and a variety of of things that they can do well and and as our population contin
ues to grow the number of people that we need to serve continues to grow and our goal is to continue to do everything we can to make us the the most uh friendly person place for students no matter what their backgrounds or abilities are to be able to come and to get a higher education I'm a medical doctors as you heard and I'm an ophthalmologist and so my career was really working from the very beginning with people who were visually disabled and I I know that things that we can do as a society
to help people who have different abilities come and reach their full human potential is very very important to us all I will say and I won't harp on this anymore and I'll apologize to my colleagues Dr Greene when we talk about administrators but those are things like people in our Title IX office the people in our disability office and many other things that that we do so when I said that we have Regulatory and other things that we're supporting many of those we really do support but they show
up not as faculty but other types of services and and again they have cost to them but they help us to be we think a better and a more inclusive Enterprise over over the years um thank you Deborah a quick question about and I know it's not going to be quick answer but we need to have quick answers actually Deborah from Davis had the question about student housing yes I I heard um also one of you said uh more more than one of you said how it's the non-tuition areas that really are causing a finan
cial hardship and so when it comes to the housing I wanted to know what how do the California colleges and University prioritize on campus housing I in my opinion I I'm a lifelong resident of Davis and that doesn't seem to be a priority and the student footprint there's more students living in houses in Davis and families are actually renting the apartment so it's a financial hardship for everybody because as there's more students off campus the cost of rent goes up so what are the chances of th
e colleges and universities in Davis in particular opening more on-campus housing um Drake that was like me again yes um uh the uh where my batting gloves you know make sure to wear my hands out let me say that housing is uh very important to all of us in California and it is a real challenge for California as a state and it's a it's a challenge for our faculty and our staff as well as our students it's really difficult for all so we have many programs to try to facilitate the ability of the peo
ple who live and work and study with us to be able to live uh near us since 2010 I'll just use some uh data since 2010 we've added about 34 000 beds and we're on track to bring about 22 000 additional beds online by 2028 so I mean those together are more than 55 000 additional beds that we'll be adding over that over that period we're building all the time we're building today the legislature has been tremendous many of our good friends in the legislature I'm thinking of uh Mr McCarty who's uh u
h has a district that's near uh that of yours Senator Dodd has been a very a good Champion with others of having a revolving Loan Fund be available to the university and to the into higher education broadly so it's available to the state universities and the community colleges to be able to build more student housing for the many reasons that it's very very helpful I will tell you that some of the challenges that we have are that in some of our campus communities there are neighbors who don't wa
nt us to build uh dense uh space dense Housing close to campus for our students we think it is a good thing to do for students it brings them close to campus decreases commute times etc etc and lowers the impact on neighborhoods but we sometimes find ourselves in lawsuits um where those things are at at issues so we are working hard to build as much student housing as we can we've added tens of thousands of bed and are adding tens of thousands more and we appreciate your support um thank you all
very very much um and to the folks who are still on the line I'm sorry but we do have a hard stop at seven o'clock I have one one last question maybe you could each spend 45 seconds on it that's a it's a tough one though if you had a magic wand uh what one thing would be your top priority to change in higher education in California I'll start with Susan boy that is a tough one um I think the one thing that I would change in higher education is I would go back to making it free I mean I would go
back to getting us as close to the master plan as possible I think that investment um is what helped grow the economy of the State of California and make it as successful as it is and so I think that reinvestment um is one of the things that I would change Dr glizzio aside from increasing funding for California community colleges uh eliminating laws and regulations that no longer pertain or recognize the current students that we have the needs mental health advising and everything else Dr Drake
well I appreciate and agree with my colleagues that state investment in higher education is uh every dollar investment pays for itself in many other ways so I agree with those things I would want to have us can make I want it to be that all of our citizens understand that the higher education system is here to serve them and for people for young people in particular to think that there's a a pathway forward within higher education and to think of that as a part of their Futures it's not the onl
y way it's not the best way for everyone but I want everyone to grow up with the idea that they have a chance to go to college and we're here to help them oh right thank you very much Senator Dodd final words well I agree with all of them on on their answers to your uh question uh I I absolutely concur I think when the legislature puts mandates on UC CSU or uh the Community College systems they ought to pay in full uh right from the very very beginning and I did hear tonight twice about regulati
ons laws that are in place that are outdated that aren't working so I'm looking to get some information from all three of you or your organizations to uh just kind of let's take a look at those laws and let's get those laws off the book books or modify them so they do make sense and they're not a drain on our overall system and I just want to tell you Rick once again thank you and uh to our panelists you guys were awesome really appreciate you taking time out of your personal lives to be here ye
ah from six to seven PM with us and all the people uh that dialed in thank you very very much or sent emails and those who were left on the line you can go to uh our our website uh senator.com or you can find it Google it uh the bottom line is is we'd like to get those questions answered so don't hesitate uh to uh hold us to that thank you all very very much and good night thank you Senator and uh once again sorry for the folks we had to leave on the line um good discussion good night everybody
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