UC Berkeley is seeing fee increases of over 30%, enrollment cuts for in-state students, layoffs, furloughs, and increased class sizes. Many critics see a dangerous trend in these changes, one that is turning the public university system into a more private and exclusive one.
This privatization, as they call it, leads to commodification of higher education, inequality in access to the university, funding disparities among departments, and a union-hostile environment. Students, faculty, and workers are now coming together in a struggle to save California's public higher-education system.