Even in good times, however, there has been some erosion of support for even the elite University of California, and at the community college level, invested constituencies have less prestige and less power - and thus don't lobby as effectively to avoid funding crises. It remains to be seen what happens, but if California hopes to remain the world's leader in low cost collegiate education, folks need to think ahead: combine demands for state budget reform (some are talking about constitutational changes to the budgetary process) with innovations in funding of the state's schools. I'd be surprised if a more explicit foundation-style approach to funding research institutions couldn't be established (especially at the prestige schools, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD, for example); and the community colleges need to start charging more - even if that alienates the disadvantaged communities looking for a last chance at a college degree. We're not in 1960 any more.
That said, a lot in this Los Angeles Times article from last week is a bit pessimistic. A boom cycle will help the colleges in time. How the state takes advantage of it will depend on political leadership. Check, "California's Higher Education System Could Face Decline":
California's master plan for higher education, the product of an era of seemingly limitless opportunity, was nearly 30 years old when Nicolette Lafranchi was born in 1988. By the time she turned 20 last year, the plan was working well for her, just as it had for tens of millions of students before her.Read the whole thing, here.
That's less true now.
In the wake of massive cuts in California's three-tiered system of public colleges and universities, Lafranchi discovered that she can no longer transfer from Santa Rosa Junior College to San Francisco State University in December, as she had planned, because midyear admissions were eliminated.
Nor is that necessarily her biggest problem. A fall statistics class she needs is full. Without it, she faces the possibility of forfeiting her health insurance, which requires her to carry at least 12 college credits. A scholarship she had been receiving was eliminated.
"It's a lot at one time," she said. "You know, it's kind of sad. You think it's the state of California and we're the next generation, we have to take over from the baby boomers, but we're going to be a group of uneducated people.
"It's not kind of -- it is sad."
California's higher education system, created to offer the opportunity for advancement to any resident, rich or poor, has seen hard times before. But the deep cuts imposed by the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this year are raising the question of whether the University of California, the California State University system and the nation's largest community college network can maintain their reputations for quality, or whether a public higher educational system that has been lauded as the world's finest may be in serious decline.
"This notion of the California dream, the idea that every adult could go to college, we've been hacking away at that during every recession for the past 25 years, and this year may well be it," said Patrick M. Callan, president of the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Education. "We're coming out of this really tarnished."
The governor and legislative leaders acknowledge that the cuts will be devastating, but say they have no choice.
Already, campuses from Humboldt to San Diego are raising fees, shedding courses, slashing enrollment, and compelling faculty and staff to take unpaid furlough days. Class sizes are up, library hours are down, and long-held dreams for new programs and schools are on hold.
It's a far cry from the master plan's sweeping ambitions.
The state's college and university systems, which educate 2.3 million students annually, have roots in California's early days, but their modern history begins in 1960, when the educational plan was approved. It called for all state residents to have access to a tuition-free, public higher education, and outlined the mission of the three levels of colleges.
The higher education system has been credited with helping to shape and nurture California's economy and draw striving migrants from around the world.
"It had a magnet effect here for people who had ambitions for their children, that they could come to a place with good and virtually free public education all the way through college," said Richard White, an American history professor at Stanford University.
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