you can tell a lot about a society by looking at how well it educates its people. this week's post will be comparing California's systems of education and incarceration, examining state spending levels, number of facilities, and other factors.
state spending
maybe you've heard the claim that California ranks 41st in the nation for annual per-student spending, while ranking 1st in the nation for annual per-prisoner spending. let's explore the numbers on this topic...
this year, Governor Gavin Newsom’s state budget plan states that California's K-12 education system "provides academic instruction and support services to nearly six million students" with over 10,000 schools around the state. the system also includes "58 county offices of education, approximately 1,000 local school districts, and more than 1,200 charter schools" (page 31).
and each year, the state of California spends less than $20,000 per public school student in grades K-12, as stated by the Governor's Budget Summary 2019-20 (see: Figure K-12-02 on page 33). according to the state's Legislative Analyst's Office, California spends around $80,000 per state prison inmate annually. this makes for a discrepancy of over $60,000 in spending per inmate vs. per student!
this year's state budget has allocated $60 billion for K-12 spending and $15 billion for corrections and rehabilitation (2019-2020 State Budget, Enacted). that said, it is challenging to decipher exactly how much California spends on corrections while including expenditures like contracts with private companies.
so, according to official reports released from the state of California, the state's annual budget for K-12 education is higher than that of the annual budget for corrections. however, the state spends more per inmate than it does on each K-12 student.
adult education vs. adult incarceration
what about education for adults? the U.S. Census Bureau estimates 82 percent of Californians age 25 and older have earned a high school diploma. therefore, California falls just below the national level of 87 percent high school graduates:
meanwhile, just over 32 percent of Californians age 25 and older have earned a Bachelor's degree or higher. for this, California ranks just above the national level of about 30 percent.
the University of California system is the state's largest employer, with an estimated 198,300 employees statewide. the UC netted a total of $8.6 billion dollars in revenue for 2017 according to the University of California Annual Financial Report 17/18 (page 102). specifically, student fees and tuition made up about $4.5 billion of that revenue (page 6).
interestingly, the UC system schools reported a 15 percent acceptance rate for 2018 (of all who apply only 15 percent are admitted). that means applying students have around a 1 in 7 chance of being admitted to a UC school.
at the same time, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) claims to be the "largest owner of State-owned facilities in California State government, with over 41 million square feet of State-owned space, covering over 27,000 acres and leases totaling over 2 million square feet."
the CDCR and UC system are two massive public state entities; they are big spenders and they are massive employers. still, evidence shows that California (both publicly and privately) has spent more time and money building facilities for incarceration rather than education. and while the spread of the UC system is far and wide, it is still not very accessible to the average Californian.
taking a quick inventory, there are:
114 community colleges across California +
23 CSU's +
9 UC's +
170 private colleges =
316 adult education facilities in California total
3 immigrant jails +
4 military jails +
11 federal prisons +
19 private prisons +
42 CDCR facilities +
43 CDCR fire conservation camps +
238 city and county jails =
360 adult detention facilities in California total
the cost of higher ed
according to a 2018 report from credit firm Experian, on average Californians with student loan debt owe some $35,658. the California State University (CSU) system reports that currently its students are required to pay, on average, total tuition and campus fees of $7,216 per year of undergraduate study. meanwhile, the University of California (UC) system reports average cost for attendance to be about $35,300 per year of undergraduate study for students living on campus (California residents' rate).
but the cost of a state education was not always so high for Californians. during his time in office, Governor Ronald Reagan overhauled the previous statewide higher-ed tuition policy and set the foundation for the costly rates that exist today.
perhaps in an effort to mitigate the increasing costs of a state school education, California's 2019 budget has now allowed for students to attend two years at community colleges tuition-free. access to quality schools should not be reserved for the wealthiest people in a society. education should not be reserved for the elite classes. if, in future years, research begins to show a lack of correlation between higher education degrees and quality of life, maybe then people will realize that the exorbitant costs of undergraduate study are undercutting the value of the education itself.
conclusion
California's education system and corrections system alike are gigantic. they spend exorbitant amounts of money, and they influence the lives of millions of Californians every day.
ideally, getting a quality education for K-12 followed by a quality higher education would not leave Californians with any debt. however, this is clearly not the reality. and while some California lawmakers have caught on to the unfairness of restricting access to quality education by pushing for tuition-free community college, it appears there is still a long way to go in organizing for this kind of education reform.
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