Resuing Post Secondary Education necessary in today's world

By Tim K. "Timothy" Fitzgerald

Our once superior system of public Higher Education in this state has been deeply wounded by recent fiscal policy and budget cuts in the last decade, preventing the youth of this state to meet their essential responsibilities in their preparation to join a highly skilled and competitive work force - threatening our continued productivity in the decade to come

Higher Education

I have completed four degrees from San Jose State campus over the last 45 years (Bus. & Econ + 1971; Hist.-1980; Social Sci.MA -1985; Hist. MA + 1997; and am completing the one remaining requirement for a MA in Philosophy graduating in 2012) As an undergraduate in the 60s I worked one year on work study, as Executive Assistant to the student President, Richard Miner. Previously I played an important role in campus politics and leadership beginning in 1966. In 1969 I ran on a ticket that elected the first black student body president in the history of the California State University system. In that election I was named student body treasurer. The year before as Exec Assist, it was my delegated responsibility, to work in conjunction with leadership from University President Robert Clark, to bring about a re-organization of the Campus governing process to become a shared student / faculty governing system. In the process I crafted a new student campus constitution, and much of the legislative action approved that year by the 20 member campus student body Council. In the fall of 1969 when I was named as the student representative of the campus to meet with the State University Chancellor Glen Dumke, I negotiated, as part of a three man team from the campus which was part of a mandate from the State Board of Trustee to select a new University President to replace outgoing Dr. Clark + who had accepted a position to preside over the University of Oregon in Eugene beginning that year.

I worked closely that term with Acting President Dr. Hobert Burns in administering the finances of the student body, I was re-elected as a student representative to the faculty campus Senate in 1973. And much later, I served two more years representing the student body to the faculty academic Senate in the early 90s.

In the late 90s I worked for a short while as a substitute teacher in secondary education in Silicon Valley, having studied for a secondary Credential at SJSU in the late 80s and getting a life time Credential to teach Social Science in Community Colleges in 1989. I used that privilege between 1998 and 2000 teaching social science subjects in this Assembly District at Cerro Coso Community College in Mammoth Lakes + teaching History and American Government, and designing a program which I then implemented for an interdisciplinary course in `Society and the Future'. In 2004 I relocated to Sonora, CA teaching at Columbia Community College `Principles of Economics 1A' for the second time in my career.

Unemployment runs high in the Mother Lode at almost 15 percent and residents in this Assembly District rely almost solely on State funded higher education to train and prepare to re-enter the labor market, in many cases elsewhere in Central California. Columbia Community College is an old, established Community College here in Sonora that the community takes great pride in attending. Other Community College Services are available elsewhere in the district. Most students transferring to a four year college attend at nearby Fresno State or CSU Sacramento. An educated and learned work force is critical and central to re-vitalizing the state's economy and returning to full employment and a productive contribution to the nation's economy. With over 10 % of the nation's citizen's now living in California and dependent on the Educational system in this state to keep them at the cutting edge of global competition, we cannot afford the neglect the post-secondary school system has felt in the state budget in the last decade or more.

The economic `miracle' that drove the nation's economy in the last boom of the 90s came out of the high tech organization of labor largely located in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco South Bay. The UC system, was once the pride of the nation and a leading factor in the development of research and scholarly contributions that set the standard in the nation during the Viet Nam era, and through much of the Cold War.

Funding education, particularly higher education has long been recognized as a key ingredient necessary to support economic growth and development by those committed to advancing our knowledge of the discipline of economics which provides guidance to the essential development of every nation on the globe. It is a fundamental contributor to management of a nation's economy whether of a post-industrial, heavy industrial, or otherwise developing nation. Every nation on the planet will be bidding for scarce intellectual property in the decades before us, and to ignore the possibility of coming in behind global competition in the knowledge revolution which is now upon us. This would relegate the proud role California has played in the last century to a foot note in history + never to return again

An educated and sophisticated labor force is essential for economic growth and prosperity, more so now in the 21st century than ever before. Furthermore, the CSU and UC systems are long overdue for a re-visit to their primary mission and a new look at the curriculum design and delivery of Instructional methods, if we are to regain our once superior role in education throughout the Western World. Newly Industrializing nations will gladly compete for highly skilled and prepared labor around the globe, and with the recent advent of globalization and the evolution of a highly competitive world market, we must invest in our children and future generations or suffer the neglect and exodus of Industry to overseas markets if we don't .

Since the advent of the `Great Recession' ushered in with the failure of the Financial Institutions in this country the state legislature has made drastic and unacceptable cuts in public education + both at the K-12 level, and in post-secondary instruction. Thousands of eager students have been turned away and denied a four year degree in the California Higher Educational System. Unacceptable student costs have mushroomed in the form of doubling tuition and fees in the last decade, causing the cost of education to be shifted from the tax base of the workforce to the next generation who can only afford the necessary and essential training to enable them to enter this country's work force, and who are saddled with deeply crippling financial aid loans and part time jobs to supplement the income necessary for their education. We must restructure the state budget to return to previous levels of funding for our state system of public Higher Education. This is s critical element in reviving the economic engine that has made this state the 7th largest economy in the world

In addition, it is time to admit, that the Tax Revolt and passage of Jarvis + Gann has devastatingly crippled our state finances and left the state unable to provide essential services necessary for an industrial and growing population + as is the case with California today. I believe we must find new sources of revenue by re-consideration of the tax breaks and tax shelters Jarvis Gann created for business and Corporate ownership, and adopt a new tax base with the advent of a new value added tax, or other measures to return to the previous funding levels of the public sector in this state. We must create a competitively educated work force with this new tax base, and re-distribute the funds we raise in our urban and industrial centers to meet recent new mandates for rural and underfunded sectors of the state economy.

We have already done great harm to the training and education systems for the next generation whose role will shape the future of this nation's economy. Further reductions will do serious and permanent damage to the role higher education plays in the productivity of postindustrial societies such as California and the nation. We suffer a doubly difficult situation with our grammar schools and middle schools which have deteriorated to be amongst the least competitive and creative of the entire reservoir of educational opportunities and services in the nation. And we may well lose the preferential privilege for federal grants and aid to which we once were entitled when we led the nation in research and technological advances.

It is my view that the budget cuts to California's public higher education system since 2007 have been far too deep, and almost destroyed our intellectual base essential to maintaining the outstanding performance once enjoyed by people in this state. We may never regain our superior performance we once enjoyed for young minds, if we do not retreat from this thoughtless act and abandonment of a key factor previously in California's success

I am a strong believer in the potential of a good education and would both fight strongly to restore funding by eliminating the revenue choking hold the Jarvis Gann Initiative resulted in creating and aggressively advocating within my caucus for this position. The master plan of Higher Education adopted in 1960 set a new course in the history of the role post-secondary education which played a powerful role in the post industrial world our nation once led. I was a laboring student my entire productive life, and I credit my perseverance and tenacity as a consistently returning student in times of hardship + sometimes very great hardship + that made it possible for me to achieve success in my field despite the fact I was crippled almost from the start of my career with a handicap that would have terminated all opportunity in my life had I not found help from the medical profession and the care I received at the hands of social services in this state, letting me pursue my career goals and objectives successful with none too little sense of accomplishment and achievement

Until we have escaped the death grip which Jarvis Gann has placed on our ability to raise desperately needed funding, this will remain an increasingly desperate condition, creating a dismal spiral of fewer economic opportunities due to reduced educational opportunities necessitated by less revenue available to support Higher Education. This is why it is so critical to re-vamp the Big Business tax shelters and loop holes that have resulted from Jarvis Gann.

Under the state's Master Plan for higher education, this state's system for higher level learning must constantly be evaluated by the Regents and State Board of Trustees to see if we are getting `the biggest bang for the buck'. These state agencies have a responsibility to report to the legislature if there are new, unexpected demands to be made on the state's primary player in the information/knowledge revolution. We have set out before us in the last decade or two, goals in this state that determine the needs of our society for a very, very, long time into the future.

The life of the mind, as professed by my good friend Dr. Robert Clark, while he was President of San Jose State, is becoming the new comparative advantage 19th century economists spoke of. They proposed that thought and education were the only options that would enable competitive capitalism in this nation to survive and prosper given the nature of resource allocation shaped by the circumstances of geography and culture unique to each nation and region on the globe. As a leader in this global competition for resources, California must return to its best assets and cultivate inquiring, creative and original minds if we are to continue to apply our labor force to the necessities of the cutting edge of change, and the material opulence once enjoyed by the people of this state, and as promised across our nation and throughout the world

I am trained as a social scientist charged with the task of probing the inner workings of Western Institutions which have evolved in the last few centuries', and which became an integral part of the function and purpose of our modern world. I am considered an authority on Keynesian economic principles, as well as a scholar of Western thought and the evolution of creative ideas that have guided and shaped the world we live in

I would never have become a recognized authority in social institutions and practices, had I been barred from my persistent and continuing pursuit of educational opportunities provided in this state to every citizen and resident now living here. I am fully prepared, even anxious to make my learning and understanding that I have acquired available to the people of California and our state leaders through contributions to leadership and knowledge necessary today to return California to its rightful place in this nation and throughout the world

Tim K Fitzgerald, Candidate to Assembly District 5. 2012