Two prominent Asian American legislators in California have proposed bills about public higher education in California.  While I'm glad that Asian American electeds are taking education policy action, and I know their hearts are in the right place, I have some serious concerns about the 2 bills proposed. 

In the Senate, we have Senator Leland Yee advocating for SB 217, which increases state oversight of the management of executive salaries in the University of California. In the Assembly, we have Assemblymember Alberto Torrico pushing AB 656, which would create a public endowment for public higher education in California.

Let's tackle SB 217 (Yee) first... I get where Yee is coming from, especially since I was appalled as a student that UC execs were getting tons of cash when student fees were simultaneously being increased (see Executive Pay Scandal, 2006).  However, it's a very slippery slope here.  Academic freedom is very necessary in our universities, and while the bill seems to only address salaries of execs, I'm concerned that it will be the first step toward more and more state management of the universities in other areas, like faculty tenure cases and curriculum - 2 areas that have never fared very well when politicians are allowed access to determine fates... especially in academic fields of Ethnic Studies, Women's Studies, and other areas of critical/postcolonial studies.

As for AB 656 (Torrico)... It's a bill authored by the California Faculty Association, which is the union of California State University faculty.  At first I was pretty excited about the prospects of levying a tax on the oil industry in California, which is one of only a few states not to have significant taxes on this industry. The idea of taxing big oil to invest in public higher education seems great!  However, when I actually read the bill.... EEEK! Terribly written bill for the following reasons:

1. It creates a whole new bureaucracy to run a corporation to manage the funds collected from big oil. Do we really need yet another layer of bureaucracy? Can't we just have the money go straight to the universities?
2. The bill doesn't define whether the $1 billion expected to be raised in the first year on the oil severance tax would be in place of what public higher ed (CSU & UC) gets already from the state general fund or if it's to supplement funds.  Would the funds supplant or supplement?  This is not answered or determined in the bill, which then would make the bill devastating to the public higher ed system if passed and signed.
3. The distribution of oil severance revenues would be 60% to CSU, 30% to UC, and 10% to Community Colleges. Ummm... hello? Did the authors of this bill not know about Prop 98, which guarantees a minimum of funding to K-14 in the state from general funds? This would mean redundant funding to the community colleges.
4. Only 1 student would represent all UC, CSU, and Community College students on the corporation that would be established by the bill. Wow! 1 studuent to rep hundreds of thousands of California public college students??? That is not real representation!

I'd be down with this if they could rewrite the bill to be about the UC and CSU, and if they eliminate the added bureaucracy. We don't need another public higher education management corporation!

Good try, Senator Yee and Assemblymember Torrico. Try again!