interviews
It's Not About Free College
by Valerie Johnson
May 22, 2019
This interview with Valerie Johnson was conducted and condensed by frank news.
Valerie Johnson, Student Senate leader, receives the Dr. Cheryl Marshall Endowed Scholarship for Leadership & Service from Marshall, former president of Crafton Hills College.
My name is Valerie Johnson. I am a second year student at Crafton Hills College in the San Bernardino Community College District. I started community college right out of high school, so I'm a traditional student. I am a child of two public educators. Both my parents went to college, so they were like, "Yeah, go to college." But a lot of it now is very different than when they went, so there wasn't a lot they could help me with as far as figuring out college. But they were very supportive.
I got involved in advocacy and student leadership upon entering community college. I knew that I wanted to make the most of my time during my educational journey, so I joined student government. That's when I realized that a lot of students are really struggling, and a lot of the struggles I had been facing were common.
I was able to benefit from the board of governors fee waiver, now called the California College Promise Grant, not to be confused with the other college promise. That was something that really allowed me to focus on the costs I was facing outside of tuition – which is the main cost for so many community college students. Because I was able to receive that fee waiver, I was able to focus on school, and focus on being involved and making the most of my college experience, instead of trying to work multiple jobs...which I did anyways. But that fee waiver was really beneficial for me, as it is for so many students, and it was really important to my educational journey.
I also received Pell Grant. I am a low income student. It has been tough a lot of my higher educational journey to balance. I don't know that I would have been able to do it without the gift aid that I received. But at one point I worked three jobs. Eventually I was able to scale back down to two. Now I work one, which I am really grateful for.
My story is not uncommon, and so many students have a tougher journey than I do. I have been able to stay on track and I'm getting out in two years, which is really rare. I attribute it to some stellar guidance I got through the counseling at my school, and also being able to do school full time, which so many students aren't able to because of the outside costs of tuition, which is why we need to reform financial aid a lot.
This problem is twofold. There's the cost of tuition – which is paralyzing, or eliminates a lot of people from the higher education conversation entirely, and then there's the cost of living, of hunger, of food scarcity, of homelessness and houselessness. When you say 'restructuring financial aid,' what do you mean exactly?
One of the many issues I have spoken to students about, and experienced myself, is the work, school, life, family balance. No one has time to work the 60 hours a week required to support themselves and their dependents, and then take a full-time course load on top of that. Let alone do well enough to maintain eligibility for financial aid and excel in their coursework.
Oour state legislature has decided that investing in higher education isn't as important as it used to be. One factor that has negatively impacted students has been the way the legislature has decided to look at college as a tuition system, and not an all-encompassing fee system. They oftentimes look at, and talk about, and prioritize, and make policies around college thinking that the tuition is a student's main, and sometimes only cost.
It's really tuition and outside fees that students are facing.
Because our legislators aren't looking at the full picture, students are getting left behind and they're falling through the cracks. They're not getting the aid they need to continue their educational journey and reach their educational goals. Because of that we're seeing students complete at lower rates, and we're seeing students unable to achieve their educational goals because of a lack of financial support.
We're asking students to do one thing, but we're providing them with the resources to do almost none of it.
To finish in two years and to do a successful transfer when facing financial struggles, it's lucky. I'm lucky that I had great counselors; I'm lucky that my parents were able to help me somewhat so that I could stay on track. I have privilege that some students don't. And I think that that is the only reason I was able to complete my educational goals thus far. So many policy makers are out of touch with the California Community College system as it is now, and with the typical California student. And that is resulting in policy that is not what students need.
Do you find yourself in a debate with people about whether or not college should be free, period?
I’m a white, female student, I come from a lower, middle-class background – the American dream used to be achievable for someone like me. But now with the way that college is, it's not. A lot of people talk down to you, think you're misinformed, and you just want free handouts. It’s typically folks who are older than us, and typically folks who had very different college experiences than us.
To them I would say, it's not about free college. It's about a reinvestment in our students by the state and by our country.
Wherever those funds come from. Because paying for college is a relatively new thing. A while back it was important for students to receive a higher education and public schools were publicly funded. Just like every student deserves and should be entitled to a PK through 12 education, those students should also be entitled to a higher education should they wish to pursue one. That notion was not supported by the legislature, and they decided to roll back support for higher education, and that roll back resulted in students carrying that burden on their backs.
Some of these institutions have massive endowments, they could have free college if they wanted, they just don't. It makes higher education seem like a less important thing when our state and our country doesn't invest in it. Because money equals importance.
What you invest in relates to what you think is important, so if higher education is going to be talked about with the importance that it is, then it needs to be backed up by the funding.
Everyone's like "oh you need a college degree to succeed in this time and era" but sometimes it’s impossible for some students. The system is set up for some students to fail. And that's due to a lack of investment from our state. California colleges used to be free. The fact that they're not now means that our state has decided to fund them less than they have in the past, and that's a failure for students.
Can you talk about the funding committee you’re a part of?
The name of the committee is the Students Centered Funding Formula Oversight Committee. I serve as the vice-chair of the committee, and the only student representative on the committee, representing over 2.1 million students in the system. The funding formula was promoted and introduced by former Governor Brown. In the past funding for colleges has solely been tied to how many students attend that college. If you have X amount of students, you get X amount of funding and that's that.
The newer formula aims to address some of the inequities students have been facing, and address completion rates. The new funding formula breaks up the way community colleges are funded into three separate levels. The large bulk of the funding is still attributed to the number of full-time equivalent students, they call it FTES. What has been added now is two other sections that have funding tied to them.
One of the sections is in regards to serving our minority students and students who faced challenges and may require some extra support. Those students look like foster students, or students who are extremely low-income, students who have experienced homelessness, black and brown students, students who basically are considered minority students, and students who might need a bit more help in order for them to continue and advance their educational journey and reach their educational goals. By tying funding to that, it incentivizes campuses and colleges to address those students and support them like they need.
Because, like I said earlier, when you tie funding to something it is because you care about it and it's a priority to you.
Tying funding to serving our most vulnerable students is a huge step in the right direction because it forces colleges to acknowledge some of the shortcomings of their work to serve those students, and actively work to bridge those gaps.
The last section is in regards to completion. One problem that was, and still is rampant in the community colleges, is schools will work very hard to get students in the door. They will provide all the support at the beginning or before the semester in order to make sure the student knows what's going on, orientation, or whatever. They get their butts in those seats.
Once those butts are in those seats, we see that the support stops. Because that's where the funding is tied. Once you get the butt in the seat, the funding is there and it's yours and you can have it. So that's what colleges have been working so hard to do.
This new metric is tied to completion so that there's a point system. An associate's degree awarded to a student would be tied to funding for the school. This is also in regards to certificates, traditional associate's degrees, tied to transfer rates. By tying funding to this, again we're saying, "We don't want you to stop supporting students once you get their butt in the seat. We want you to make sure that those students are supported the whole way through."
I know this sounds harsh, but if we as students aren't worth anything to the college after they get our butts in the door, then they're going to abandon us because its financially best for them to go and look for the next student.
But if it’s financially responsible for them to see me all the way through, then that's what they're going to do. If colleges are actively looking to increase their completion rates because they know that its tied to funding, I think we'll see higher completion rates. Because that results in more funding for the colleges. That's that last metric.
So your metrics look like: big bulk, butts in seats. Smaller bulk, serving our most needy students, and our students who require the most support. Last bulk, completion and rates of completion. The funding formula oversight committee is charged with providing recommendations to the legislator for the implementation of the formula. There has been a lot of response in regards to the formula, and that response has been varied. We've had many different inputs from many different constituents and stakeholder groups. That feedback helps us determine recommendations that we provide to the legislator.
We are tasked with, basically, making sure the formula works like it's supposed to, and providing recommendations to the legislator on how they can tweak it to be the most effective.
interviews
In Conversation with INESI
by INESI
February 22, 2019
This interview with Dr. Marla Perez-Lugo and Dr. Cecilio Ortiz Garcia, was conducted and condensed by frank news. Both are faculty at INESI. INESI is the National Institute of Energy and Island Sustainability. It is a multidisciplinary and multi-campus institute of the University of Puerto Rico (INESI) that seeks to insert the university community more effectively into the public energy policy of the country and in the resolution of energy and sustainability problems using as a basis for empirical research and academic knowledge.
Let’s talk about the work you’re doing at INESI.
Dr. Pérez: INESI is the National Institute for Energy and Island Sustainability. It was created in 2014 when we realized that the university was being excluded from the process of developing a new energy policy for Puerto Rico. It was very interesting to us because we have one of the biggest programs in electrical engineering in the nation, and we have expertise in many areas that could contribute to the understanding of what energy issues in Puerto Rico are all about.
We understand them as social technical issues, in the sense that yes, they have a technical component that involves technological development and the physical infrastructure, but also energy issues have a cultural component, and a political component.
We started INESI in trying to insert the University of Puerto Rico into that conversation. We have about 90 affiliates across the 11 campuses of the UPR system. Those affiliates represent more than 23 academic disciplines including psychology, law, electrical engineering, sociology, philosophy, art, natural sciences, and economists. One of our concerns was that most of the resources being included in the conversation were all concentrated in the metropolitan area of San Juan. For us, that was a metaphor for the concentration and the density of decision making in energy policy in general.
What we tried to do was de-concentrate the knowledge being used in decision making by including resources from the other campuses of the UPR system. Since then, we have a standard set approach, to not only the UPR, but also members and sectors of society that are being excluded from those processes. Community based organizations, grass roots movements.
We created the energy stakeholder forum. That includes about 30 organizations across the islands, that at the beginning of this maybe didn't perceive themselves as energy stakeholders. But Maria had a very important function in showing how energy is embedded in all aspects of life.
Dr. Garcia: I want to emphasize that number one, INESI as an institute, is a platform that seeks to interconnect all of the resources Dr. Pérez was mentioning across the 11 campuses of the UPR. It is also a knowledge organization. Before the institute, the way the university was organized, actually created an unequal space for the utilization of resources or knowledge in academia, to impact energy issues in Puerto Rico. By highlighting only the work associated with the technological aspects of energy, like electrical engineering, physics, and maybe economics or law, those become the only areas that can contribute to the transformation of energy issues in Puerto Rico. INESI makes a contribution in terms of energy democracy in Puerto Rico by reframing energy issues in terms of them being not only technical, but like the professor said, socio-technical. We are re-organizing knowledge.
We foster knowledge from outside academia to be mixed with scientific knowledge in order to gain an interdisciplinary view of energy.
Part of the reason this group exists is because you felt left out of the conversation by the government. Has there been a response from the government to your work?
Dr. Pérez: [laughter].
Has that relationship changed?
Dr. Garcia: That's an excellent question.
Dr. Pérez: After Maria, it has gotten worse. When Maria struck, and the electric system collapsed, it would make sense that we were the ones who had a lot to contribute to the rebuilding process, because we knew the system very well.
Dr. Garcia: That was a faulty logic.
Dr. Pérez: Yes, faulty logic. We approached our president, we approached our governor, we approached FEMA, we approached everybody. Systematically the resources in the UPR has been left out from the rebuilding process. What we’ve come to find out is that actors from the outside have been hired. They have been contributing more to the rebuilding process than the people who know the system best, and the people who are going to live with the consequences of that process. We have met universities from the States that have been contracted by our governor's office to do work for hundreds of thousands of dollars that have already been done by UPR resources.
As my colleague here says, it's a manufactured ignorance phenomenon, in which for many reasons, the local government is manufacturing ignorance in terms of the resources and knowledge Puerto Rico has, when talking to outside actors.
Why do you think that is?
Dr. Garcia: It's not that linear. It requires switching frameworks when you talk about governmental resources, or even institutional resources to extreme operating environments after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. It's rather difficult to draw a direct line between the intentional misrepresentation of resources that one has, or does not have, for a particular resource. You are talking about different levels of decision making converging in a particular way, that make it expedient, for certain actors on the ground like the government of Puerto Rico, to behave in a certain way. One of the behaviors we are alleging is happening, is a behavior of not being transparent, with the type of resources you might have available for you to get out of this hole.
When I say, "this hole," you have to look at Maria in the context of Puerto Rico when Maria hit. Puerto Rico was already under certain legislation, and under the fiscal control board series of attacks on our society, and on behalf of US bond holders that are looking to get repaid for their investment. You have a multiplicity of actors, that virtually established a regime where it becomes logical for the Puerto Rican government to act how it acts.
Dr. Pérez:
Our constitution recognizes higher education as a societal investment. That has been an ideological fight between the constitution and the more conservative, or pro-statehood administrations. When the fiscal control board came to power, the first thing they did was to claim power over the UPR, and claim that there was too much money going into the UPR system. So the budget for the UPR has been severely cut. In fact we have experienced a budget cut of more than 50%, and some of the campuses are singled out for closing in the incoming years.
The budget cuts are increasing, and increasing, and increasing, and the tuition cost for the students are increasing as well, but not enough to cover all the UPR expenses. When you have 95% of the research being conducted in Puerto Rico, conducted in the UPR system, you are killing research, and you are killing the resources that have the knowledge to actually contribute to the betterment of Puerto Rican society.
Dr. Garcia: That's an excellent point. Hurricane Maria brought the administration to a fork in the road. "How am I going to use my research? Well I have to manufacture reality, for outsiders in order for me to be aligned with what I've been using as my policy towards the university." It’s a policy of killing. It's a policy of closing. It's a policy of minimizing.
Dr. Pérez: Exactly.
Dr. Garcia: I cannot be highlighting those same resources out in the open, because I left myself open for questions about, "Well wait a second, aren't you killing the University of Puerto Rico?" It gets really complicated. It's in a complex policy environment. And all Maria did was serve as a catalyst for all of these different pathways, the visions of Puerto Rico's reality, to come up to the surface.
What is your mission moving forward?
Dr. Pérez: We connected with municipal governments. Instead of going to the state government, we connected with municipal governments, mostly in the mountain regions that were communities that were basically identified as low reconnection priority. After the collapse of the electrical system, it was said by authorities that communities in the mountains were less likely to be reconnected because it was not cost effective. So we drew our attention to that region. While working with mountain communities, we started assembling an electric oasis, a solar oasis. So people in the town square could recharge small electronics, and store medication in small fridges.
We realized there were more than 20 universities from the States coming to Puerto Rico to do several things. To do humanitarian work. Using the disaster as the classroom in a study abroad course, or doing quick response research, rapid grants, from foundations and other funding sources. We realized that those initiatives, although very well intentioned, were disorganized. They lacked coordination. And because there was nobody looking at the big picture, most of the universities were concentrating their efforts in less than 10 municipalities. We have 78 of them. That is a problem for several reasons. From the humanitarian standpoint, if you saturate some areas with aid, but then neglect other areas, that means not everybody is able to receive the aid you’re bringing from the outside. From the scientific perspective, if you base your science in very few, and selected case studies, your science will be faulty.
We started contacting all these universities, and realized that there were teams from the same universities on the ground that didn't know about each other. We started connecting them. We started organizing virtual workshops to give them the context, and to give them the most updated information about the state of the electrical system, because we mainly focused on electricity and sustainability. After that we focused on allowing them to talk to each other, so they could start collaborating instead of competing for spaces, money, etc. Then we invited them all to Puerto Rico for a three day workshop last June to reflect on their experiences, and identify what was wrong and what was right. What can we learn and extrapolate for future occurrences? In the climate change era, these things are going to occur more often now, and in more severe ways.
What do you think the future looks like?
Dr. Garcia: Unfortunately there's many steps, and they are all going to have to be taken at the same time. There is no recipe book for doing this. But the main thing that stands out, with regards to Puerto Rico being an example for both disaster environments and interventions by federal agencies, by universities, by multiple units of government, is that we have a long way to go in learning how to organize ourselves to do better.
We have to build relations in places we know are prone to these events, so that we do not fall prey to the manufactured ignorance we've been talking to you about.
More directly for universities, even though were are not set up to be first responders, our experience with Maria has shown us that we are. We end up being first responders. We have a responsibility to look at ourselves, to get together and at least discuss what our role is as universities, in post disaster situations. This goes from how we organize our resources, to how we organize our scientific and non-scientific knowledge, and how we provide spaces of collaboration between different discipline.
Is the goal of your stakeholders forum to raise awareness but also to raise a sense of responsibility in this mission?
Dr. Garcia: Absolutely. If I was going to rank them, the stakeholder forum has been our most effective tool in fighting manufactured ignorance. Not only has it served as a sounding board, and a bulletin board for many, many, many groups who have not historically haven't been included in energy decision making, it has also allowed for an honest dialogue and an open dialogue to exist between university resources and civil society. That is very, very powerful. Especially as we aspire to higher levels of energy democracy in Puerto Rico.
We hope the stakeholder forum internally in Puerto Rico keeps on making big strides towards energy democracy in the islands. And we want to experience that with the RISE platform that can bring a better understanding of what energy democracy involves, not only inside the island, but with other localities around the globe.
To reinforce the point – global warming and climate change are global phenomenons. The relationship between human beings and those phenomenons are local. And as local phenomena, we cannot change that, or expect that one recipe is going to fix every local experience. So it's up to us, universities around the world, to embrace this fact, and to develop new relationships between ourselves and our own communities, and share those experiences between other universities and other communities. That exchange, not only of data, and of science, but also of human relationships, and communication, is the only way that we can develop true local resolutions to what are becoming very, very, wicked problems around us. And if INESI can help in attaining that, then we have been successful.