The University of California system just spent $193 million on a cliffside Ritz-Carlton while in-state students fork over $50,000 a year to attend—and 2,500 miles away, rural Alabama kids who can't read are getting by on a fraction of that sum.
The contrast lays bare what the education establishment actually values. It isn't the classroom. It isn't the student. It's the portfolio.
According to the New York Post, UC Investments—the university system's investment arm—purchased the 261-room Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay for $193 million. The resort, which boasts 93 fireplaces, a full-service spa, and rooms running up to $3,000 a night, is intended strictly as an investment, not for academic use. The purchase feeds a UC Investments portfolio valued at more than $300 billion that funds retirement benefits and pensions for roughly 40,000 university retirees.
Meanwhile, California families face six-figure bills for a four-year public degree. In-state students pay more than $50,000 annually when housing and food costs are factored in; out-of-state students can exceed $300,000 over four years. UC representatives declined to comment on the hotel purchase.
The hotel comes with baggage. Its previous owner reportedly owed as much as $2.1 million in overdue hotel occupancy taxes. In 2019, the resort was hit with a $1.6 million fine for blocking public access to a nearby beach. And UC chief investment officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher had previously expressed interest in investing in affordable workforce housing—before his office bought a luxury resort instead.
Now look at what a targeted investment in actual education looks like. AL.com reported that the University of Alabama is launching Project LIFT—Literacy Improvement through Focused Tutoring—a five-year effort to bring intensive reading support to 75 primarily rural elementary schools across the state. The project totals roughly $11.2 million, including $9.9 million from the U.S. Department of Education and additional cost-share contributions. Gregory Benner, the project's principal investigator, called it the largest grant ever awarded to the university's college of education.
Project LIFT targets students who still struggle to read after existing instruction and interventions—including students with disabilities and intensive literacy needs. Students get 25- to 30-minute lessons three to four days a week, either individually or in groups of up to three. The program uses the science of reading: breaking words into sounds, blending, and building toward fluency rather than guessing at words.
"The heart of Project LIFT is reaching rural Alabama students whose reading needs remain intensive even after core instruction and intervention," Benner said. "These are the children schools are still working hard to reach, and they deserve a real path to becoming readers."
At least half of the 75 schools will be in rural districts—Choctaw County, Conecuh County, Lowndes County, and Marengo County among the consortium partners. Benner noted that rural families face limited access to programs and long travel distances for specialized help.
So let's do the math. The UC system dropped more than 17 times the total cost of Project LIFT on a single luxury hotel. That hotel will serve zero students. It exists to fund pensions for a system that already charges working families $200,000 for a public degree. Alabama's entire effort to teach rural kids to read scrapes together $11.2 million and has to justify every penny.
The question isn't whether universities can afford to help students. It's whether they choose to. The money is there. The priorities are just somewhere else.
