Tree huggers like me sometimes forget that money doesn't grow on them.

It’s with a great deal of pride that I’ve watched groups of students at the UCs recently protest fee hikes and incidents of intolerance. Their generation is often maligned as the “me-generation” but thousands of them are showing exactly how wrong that is.

My own activism tends to take place in lower-key ways. The past couple of years, I’ve been heading up to Sacramento to take part in WACAC’s annual legislative conference.  Our focus has tended to be on issues centering around providing financial support to the neediest of California’s students via programs like the very successful Cal Grants.  Last year, we were even there during the 11th hour of the budget crisis which hinged on just one Republican vote.  It was political drama at its highest. Despite being somewhat in awe of how direct democracy can be in even the world’s 8th largest economy, I still leave chagrined at how every “solution” feels like a tiny Band-Aid on gaping wound.

This morning, I was reminded that “gaping” doesn’t really do it justice.  San Andreas Fault-sized maybe? A Chicago fraternity brother sent me an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal regarding the immense toll that public sector pensions are having on California’s finance. But since I pretend to blog about admissions, what does this have to do with that?  More than you’d ever imagine. 15,000 retired public employees with annual pensions over $100,000. Really!?! This at the same time I’m listening to stories on NPR about college kids having to use food stamps and food pantries to afford their education!?!  I’m by no means a numbers guy but additional figures were shocking:

In the last decade, government worker pension costs (not including health care) have risen to $3 billion from $150 million, a 2,000% jump, while state revenues have increased by 24%. Because the stock market didn’t grow the way the legislature predicted in 1999, the only way to cover the skyrocketing costs of these defined-benefit pension plans has been to cut other programs (and increase taxes).

Yes, it’s easy to have that knee-jerk tendency to see “WSJ” and assume this is one of their concern-trolling bits that in reality pits various liberal factions against each other. That’s unfair in this case. Education is something both parties clearly agree on.  They simply disagree on how it should be done. (In a slight aside since this is my blog and I can do that, recently disgraced Republican state senator Roy Ashburn was a huge supporter of the Cal Grants as I learned from visiting his office last year. I imagine his vote won’t be there next time.) Anyways, read on for a couple more cherry-picked excerpts that illustrate my concerns nicely, or sadly as the case may be…

Last year, the state cut funding to the 10-campus system to $2.6 billion from $3.25 billion. To make up for the reduction in state funding, the UC Board of Regents increased tuition to $10,300, about triple 1999’s cost.

This year alone $3 billion was diverted from other programs to fund pensions, including more than $800 million from the UC system.

The governor’s office projects that over the next decade the annual taxpayer contributions to retiree pensions and health care will grow to $15 billion from $5.5 billion, and that’s assuming the stock market doubles every 10 years. With unfunded pension and health-care liabilities totaling more than $122 billion, California will continue chopping at higher-ed.

Do I have the answer? Of course not. I’m just a dude from rural Ohio. But I think it’s important for any of us who have a stake in the future of this state (ummm, that’s pretty much everyone given the role California plays in pretty much everything nationally) to be fully aware of what some of the underlying issues are and the role special interest groups play in the situation currently unraveling at the UCs. And maybe with a little more awareness, we adults can have a little less finger-pointing and whole lot fewer Band-Aids.