Innovative Class Examines State Budget Crisis in Public Education

The California budget and several other factors have combined to put the Golden State's once-shining public education system into one of its deepest crises. Faculty from the UC San Diego divisions of Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities are responding with an innovative class: Remaking the University: A Team-Taught Course on California's Public Education Crisis. Offered through the department of ethnic studies, the 10-week course can be taken for credit but is also open to the campus community and the general public for free. Taught by a dozen faculty members from seven different departments, the class will provide a critical, historical, comparative and global examination of this public education crisis. Topics to be covered include California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, the material and cultural forces behind the privatization of higher education, the impact of the withdrawal of state responsibility for public education, and the student, staff and faculty coalitions that have emerged to demand high quality, affordable and accessible higher education for all qualified students. The class convenes in the spring quarter on Fridays, from noon to 2:50 p.m. in the Comunidad Room of the Cross Cultural Center. The first meeting is April 2 and will feature an introduction by Ethnic Studies Chair Yen Espiritu and a lecture by Danny Widener of the department of history on the University of California in historical perspective.