Elite Universities Spending on Federal Political Action, 2023-2024 (Open Secrets)

Contributor            To Dems      To Repubs University of California $10,745,074 $313,569 Stanford University $3,687,300 $159,768 Harvard University $2,828,550 $202,101 Johns Hopkins University $2,465,360 $131,415 Columbia University $2,053,121 $95,261 University of Washington $2,302,341 $34,299 University of Michigan $2,227,868 $76,302 University of Wisconsin $1,877,299 $94,443 University of Pennsylvania $1,836,139 $55,099 Emory University $1,699,270 $45,728 Yale University $1,784,524 $48,051 MIT $1,603,687 $66,848 University of Texas            $1,587,068 $223,559 California State University        $1,583,386 $54,289 University Of Maryland $1,366,021 $58,397 City University of New York $1,251,393 $78,500 Duke University $1,389,024 $59,009 University of Minnesota $1,396,156 $84,309 New York University $1,362,514 $66,195 Tufts University $878,251 $8,170

Austerity in California

Ben Unglesbee at Higher Ed Dive this week wrote about the coming budget cuts to the University of California System and the Cal State University System. Something that EdSource, a California-based media outlet, has been reporting on for months.

Those devastating cuts, amounting to $650 million, are part of a long and important history of US higher education and austerity, beginning with Ronald Reagan when he was Governor of California. Those ideas, at least in part, continued under other administrations, as they reduced higher education for working-class citizens, especially African Americans, while giving greater opportunities to foreigners, including elite noncitizens. 

These policies and other regressive actions drove millions of folks out of California. And those policies have spread to other states, making higher education less accessible and less responsive to working-class Americans.  It's no wonder that so many have become cynical about the higher education system.  

For now, the UC System can absorb these funding losses, but the Cal State System and the people who are served by that system, will not be as resilient. On a small scale, this is another symptom of the decline of US democracy and the slow decline of the American Empire, something few folks in higher education will admit, or even discuss.  

Related links:

University of California Academic Workers Strike For Economic Justice

State Universities and the College Meltdown

A People's History of Higher Education in the US 

Higher Education and the American Empire