Students across the country are having difficulty paying for the high cost of higher education. At the University of California, students face particular challenges in the wake of major tuition hikes due to the state’s escalating budget crisis. As the dire circumstances become glaringly obvious, students need to collectively refocus on dual goals of containing skyrocketing costs and maintaining the quality of higher education.

The UC system prides itself on providing quality higher education for residents of California. However, it currently lacks the ability to meet this goal because it is not responsive enough to its customers: the students. Intellectuals and pundits have argued over the reasons for California’s sagging educational performance for the better part of a decade, but they tend to ignore input from the students for whom the educational system exists.

If the self-pronounced education experts consulted with students, they would find solutions to the real issues that need be addressed. The flaws range from complex national issues like book prices, to institutional shortcomings like tenure policies that prioritize research over teaching ability, and often lead to vague, standardized lectures and over-reliance on Power Point presentations.

In the case of the college textbook market, supply and demand are controlled by professors and major publishing companies, not the actual customers. The publishing companies have a natural interest in selling as many new books as possible. Professors, who can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per contract, have an incentive to continue renewing with the publishing companies. In order to prevent resale, the companies and professors collaborate to make minor adjustments to the old edition, forcing students to buy the newest version each year or else risk compatibility issues with the lesson plan. The result is a never ending cycle. It’s what many economists have dubbed a “broken market”. Sadly, the “broken” theme isn’t restricted to textbooks.

Tenure policies at many institutions of higher education can be a good way to retain professors who might not be very well paid. However, many schools have prioritized the standing research of their faculty over the ability of professors to efficiently pass on knowledge to students. This prompts the question: What does it mean to be a high ranking university? Unfortunately, intellectual accomplishments and groundbreaking research bolster the perceived prestige of an institution and garner more attention than world-class instructors. After all, it’s much flashier for a university to claim to be home to the professor who discovered time-travel than it is to claim that your professors did the best job of educating students on the discovery. Again, the students’ interests are not adequately addressed by a policy that seeks to protect entrenched interests in education.

The issue of declining quality of education boils down to conflicts of interest like these. Administrators, politicians and countless education boards have convinced the public that the problem lies in the underfunding of education. There is enough money to maintain a system of quality education, but only if the students hold universities accountable.

Popularity: 2%