What Do You Think of That?

The December poll of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has been released.  It deals with a variety of issues not directly connected to UC and its tuition/funding budget proposal such as general attitudes about where California is going, health care, and inequality.  However, there are some questions about public higher ed finance.  Not surprisingly, folks don't like tuition increases and they don't like tax increases but, on the other hand, they think higher ed is underfunded.  (On the tax side, there is support for "sin" taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages and - maybe - extension of the Prop 30 tax increases.)  Opinion polls tend to have contradictory results and are (very) sensitive to how questions are framed.

It's unclear whether the people who do the PPIC poll had an inkling of what the UC/Regents tuition/funding budget proposal would be.  But they would have known that both UC and CSU would need to come up with 2015-16 budget proposals at their November meetings.  It might be noted that the UC proposal was not tied to any particular tax increase.  To the extent the Regents raised the tax issue, it was in the context of not getting a fair share of Prop 30 revenues (rather than seeking new tax revenues from voters or the legislature).

Anyhow, the basic results on higher ed funding are summarized in the two charts below.  The full report from PPIC is http://ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_1214MBS.pdf.

 

 Click on images to enlarge.