IMPORTANT! On Friday September 20th, students across the world will be marching and rallying in support of stopping carbon emissions and addressing the climate crisis, as part of the youth-led Global Climate Strike. UC Berkeley students are planning a walk-out beginning at 9 am, a rally at 11 am in Sproul Plaza, and other related events. We encourage faculty to support our students in whatever way you find meaningful.
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While Chancellor Christ continues to promulgate her view that “free college is a dangerous idea,” last week her administration gaily announced its acquisition of software and support services to promote “financial wellness programs” for students, staff and faculty. The services, purchased from a private company called Igrad.com, are little more than generic budgeting tools, similar to any one of a dozen Iphone apps like “Mint” or “YouNeedABudget.” But their silliness is not the real problem. Imagine being one of our homeless, food-insecure or massively loan-encumbered students receiving a message from Student Affairs that begins, “Finances can be stressful for students, distracting them from focusing on academic and extra-curricular work” and then clicking on a budgeting link encouraging you to save today for home ownership, vacations and early retirement. So much for sensitivity to our diverse student body.
Igrad.com is a private company based in San Diego whose annual revenue is a mere $5 million, but whose client list includes the notoriously exploitative and scandal-plagued for-profit institution, University of Phoenix. That one dollar of UCB funds should go to Igrad.com rather than to addressing our students’ immediate needs for food and shelter is a moral crime. State reinvestment in public higher education to reduce or eliminate tuition would go a long way to reducing so-called financial stress, or what we used to call poverty. Apart from fighting for tuition roll-backs, if the campus was serious about reducing the financial struggles of our students, it would work harder to reduce the total cost of attendance. The steady rise in non-tuition costs means that, despite financial aid, those from lower-income households not only may be hungry, poorly sheltered or working too many hours while attending UCB, but also routinely end up with proportionately higher levels of debt than their peers.
“Wellness programs” promoting “financial literacy” that depoliticize the effects of privatization and line the pockets of private industry are a miserable and Orwellian substitute for affordable higher education. They are also a discredit to the campus’ senior managers, themselves paid far too handsomely.
Wendy Brown and James Vernon from the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association