The new President of the University of California, Janet Napolitano, has said she doesn’t want a “shoot out” with Governor Brown, but they do have “different visions.” Today, with a crowd of angry students outside the building in San Francisco, those visions were in stark conflict as a committee of UC regents voted to increase tuition by five percent a year for the next five years despite Brown’s opposition. The full board will decide the issue tomorrow. Napolitano’s push to raise student tuition comes after a 20 percent increase in administrative salaries. Napolitano herself gets $570,000 a year. Governor Brown, who voted against the raise, questioned the idea that high salaries are needed to maintain the quality of a public institution. There’s competition between their different “visions” with students caught in the middle. We hear what the trade-offs are for student access, support from the state, Napolitano’s salary -- and the quality of a great research institution.
Photo: UC Berkeley student Matthew Lewis