Lets raises tuition because we like to raise tuition

University of California (UC) regents raised undergraduate fees today by 32% for next year. They are trying to squeeze in a current year raise as well, not sure if that will hold up in court. The regents periodically try to pull a fast one on people, get sued, and lose in court. I can think of twice they've lost court cases, one on delayed compensation and one on tuition that was increased without sufficient warning.

The tuition increases were protested loudly by students to the point that UCL A police and highway patrol (if I can believe my memory of what the radio announced) were called to escort regents off campus.

I'm fully in sympathy with the protesters.

I'm also fully in sympathy with the regents.

The way UC is run and organized is based on standard expectations on what funds the state will supply. Long term contracts are signed, particularly with tenured faculty. Students are admitted with the presumption that they'll be allowed to stay long enough to get a degree. Competent staff are prized and kept. At a state university, students staff and faculty represent expenses. In particular, students do not pay the full price of their education, which is heavily subsidized by the state.

When the state makes massive cuts in its payments to UC, UC must respond immediately to balance its budget. Either cuts in spending or increases in revenue are required. UC has severely restricted hiring, particularly of new faculty. UCLA says it will hire perhaps 25 instead of the more usual 100 faculty each year with an implied loss of 75 faculty this year. Each loss of 75 faculty will cut the budget by a substantial amount, perhaps as much as 10 million dollars each year in salary and benefits. However one can only lose faculty at some rate, one cannot force out extra faculty. The amount of shortfall just at UCLA is 100 million dollars. Where else can UC get the money to pay salaries?

Spending cuts are difficult and painful. If you eliminate a professor, that is a number of students who cannot be taught. As you eliminate more and more professors, fewer and fewer students can be educated. A lot of professors can not be fired due to the tenure system. Each year a few retire and a few relocate to other universities. The retirees are senior faculty, the relocators are usually top faculty who can manage to land jobs at other institutions. A few faculty who leave probably didn't get tenure in the first place, but those are rarer, at least at UC. If you don't replace leavers and retirees, the faculty size will shrink and fewer students can be educated. By not replacing these generally senior faculty, the remaining faculty will tend to be a little worse. Retirees are presumably average professors, on average. But leavers are usually substantially above average and can't easily be replaced. My argument is that when new faculty are not hired, the average quality of the faculty declines. And the total quality -- the sum over all faculty declines substantially, as there are fewer faculty to do research and teach classes.

A further problem with eliminating faculty: some faculty actually turn a pretty hefty profit for the university. Through grant getting, faculty bring in extra money. The university essentially taxes these moneys (taxes are built in to many grants, and are called overhead), gaining money that can be spent on the business of educating students and running a university. Thus the 10million savings must be partially offset by an unknown and substantial amount of income that the university forgoes by not having another professor on staff.

The state has directly forced UC to increase tuition and fees. Especially so because UC can not reduce expenditures rapidly. In the longer run, fewer students can be educated, fewer faculty will be maintained on payroll.

Where can UC find the additional money needed to pay faculty and staff salaries? Revenue enhancement is key. Hence fee increases.

Why should the state subsidize the education of its residents? The reasons are several and revolve around the direct benefit to the state and to all of us when one of us is educated. I directly benefit when your kid is educated. That's why we have a free public education system. Think about all your neighbors. How would you like living in your neighborhood if none of the neighbor kids had the slightest bit of education, hadn't even gone to kindergarten. Couldn't read or write or do math. How good a neighborhood would you think you had? Would you leave as soon as you could afford to? What would those uneducated kids do? Gardening services? Gas pump operator. Wait, that job went away. They couldn't teach grade school. No large business would hire them, for example to answer phones or to be secretaries. Much less to invent new products. What would the crime rate be if there were large numbers of uneducated Americans running around (or is that already happening?).

Having educated neighbors makes my neighbor a better place and a more interesting place as well. And that benefit extends right up through to a college education. I benefit by the presence of silicon valley in California. Jobs, high tech, high quality jobs are created when a google or Hewlett Packard is started. HP and google aren't going to hire uneducated folks to work at their companies. No education, no entree to Silicon Valley. Those jobs are created initially by a few people, then more and more jobs if the original company does something very useful for society and is successful.

It's obvious to me that undergraduate fees will continue to rise in Fall 2010 as well. I predict another 32% raise. Its unfortunate when a state backtracks from educating its young. We will see the consequences of disinvestment in education for decades to come.

Sadly the students are protesting the wrong people. Too little to late. The governor of the state of California and the California legislature are directly responsible for the rise in fees at UC. The governor and legislators are the people the students should be protesting, not the regents.

-- BSP

Research is an Attitude

I do research for a living. It is sometimes a little hard to explain to people what research is. After all, many people can go a lifetime without running into valid research.

Headlines:

• Porcupine quills cure cancer (okay, not porcupine quills, but peach pits);
  
• Vitamin C cures the common cold (an otherwise good scientist goes slightly off his rocker, and everyone follows suit in the face of overwhelming evidence against the hypothesis);
  
• aliens abducted my mother (and every other supermarket checkout headline);
  
• Vitamin E halts aging (last study I read about found it slightly harmful in large doses).
  
• The latest activities of Brangelina, Britney, Paris, Bennifer, Julia, Bruce, Nicolle, Tom, Mel.
  

What is research? It is curiousity. It is an attitude towards facts and towards life. It is the finding out of 'things', the discovering of how things work, why something is done, why someone behaves in a certain manner. Is a given fact actually true? It is the discovering of

• explanations;
  
• rules;
  
• laws;
  
• how to achieve something new;
  
• what happens if you do something a different way.

Here is an example involving curiousity more than research. In my neighborhood, rubber hoses have been stapled down on the street and connected to a small box on the sidewalk. The obvious questions are

• What are the hoses?
  
• What are they doing there?
  
• Why are they there?

Some less obvious questions are:

• Who put the hoses there?
• How long will they be there?
• Can I remove them?
• Can I move them?
  
• Are there any consequences to them being there?
• Will there be more?
• Can they damage my car?

Lots of questions. Research starts with curiousity. The more questions the merrier, as long as they don't get overwhelming.

What are the hoses? I believe I know that they are for counting the number of cars going by. In research, it is important to identify what you know already, and also to know how certain something is. I believe this, but it is knowledge from my childhood, not from being told by the owner of the hoses.

What are the hoses doing there? Measuring traffic. In a few places, there are a pair of hoses close by. That could be used to measure speed, for example, because the traffic engineers know the distance between the hoses. Actual speeds of cars is useful for setting speed limits, and knowing whether drivers are treating a road as unsafe. The impact of a stop sign is determined partly by the speeds that cars go past the intersection.

Why are they there? Well, obviously somebody or someone wants to consider changing the traffic signs: speed signs, presence of two or four stop signs, perhaps a cross walk.

Bringing other information to bear is important in research. I know that this street has recently been extended. It used to go nowhere, but now it is a through street. Many houses have been built along the road. Traffic patterns must be different from when the street was originally marked. I know people often complain about hazardous traffic conditions in our neighborhood (though I don't know of any complaints about this street), and this street is more hazardous than many, because cars park on both sides of the street, it is busy, and it is not particularly wide. When someone opens a car door on the street side, pulls out of a driveway or parking space onto the road, or when the trash truck or mailman stop their vehicles, an unsafe condition is created. Pedestrians are at risk because the street turns, and they cannot be seen. Skateboarders occasionally pull directly out into traffic along the street.

Making suppositions can be fun and useful. I conclude from this information that traffic changes may be warranted, and due to the many hoses placed, that quite a number of changes are under consideration. Possibilities include four way stops, speed limit changes, and I bet parking restrictions on one side of the street (boy would that be unpopular for residents!) are options I would consider.

But be aware that these are suppositions, and not facts!

What is the truth? How can I proceed? There are several possible actions I could take here:

• Someone knows about those hoses, just not me. Research includes getting information from other people or sources when you do not know yourself. This may be considered spreading information around, rather than discovering something totally new. On the other hand, it is new to me, and for me that is research.
  
• I could ask city traffic engineers (probably best);
• I could ask a traffic engineer not connected with these hoses;
• I could look up about traffic management in books or the web.
  
• I could collect more data. In this situation, if I wait, the hoses will disappear, and traffic changes will or will not occur. If after six months or a year no changes have occurred, then I conclude that no changes were warranted. Personally, my bet is something will change.
  

Suppose I wait, and eventually traffic changes occur. It is important to understand that I have learned something. This is support for my suppositions. It suggests that my suppositions are sensible. It does not guarantee their truth, but it increases the probability of their truth. Compared to other possible explanations about the hoses, (residents gathering evidence for the city, aliens, act of God), my explanations are more plausible.

Aliens and acts of God would predict destruction of the street as equally likely as traffic changes, or straightening the street, or permanent hail storms. If those happened, my suppositions would be discredited, and the aliens/act of God hypothesis would be indicated, though not proven!

Residents directly installing the hoses seems implausible -- the hoses are specialized equipment, carefully and systematically installed, not someone's expensive play toys. Seems unlikely to me, though this could also lead to traffic pattern changes.

In summary: when I see new data (traffic changes, or no changes or miraculous straightening of curvy roads) I will change my opinions. Traffic changes increases the probability of my suppositions, and the resident hypothesis. But the resident hypothesis was implausible to begin with. No changes means I learn nothing and am left with my suppositions, because they seem most likely to me in the first place. Straightening the roads will cause me to either reread HG Wells, or start going to church, synagogue or mosque, depending on the decorations of the newly straightened road.

Research is an attitude. It is a way of thinking about the world, always looking, seeing, observing. It is about thinking of the whys, wherefores, whats and hows of the world

• Why things are the way they are,
  
• What are they in the first place??
• How they came to be?
• Wherefore will happen next because the world is the way it is right now?