Anyway, I've dealt more with the education crisis in the last couple of days than I have in a long time. I caught the second half of yesterday's LBCC panel with Tom Hayden, "Master Plan for Higher Education." I made it over there after classes, so I mostly heard LBCC President Eloy Oakley speak. Nevertheless, Tom Hayden did answer a few questions before he left, and my colleague Craig Hendricks spoke as well. The Master Plan's worn out, basically. Under current structural constraints, the state can't meet the expected need for educated workers, and the funding model across the three tiers of the Master Plan is loaded with outrageous inequities. In good times, state leaders and residents don't mind (as much) the skewed funding to the UC and CSU systems, but when things fall apart economically the crush to the community colleges -- more students with less state funding -- is essentially obscene. But the unions and outside radical agitators refuse to acknowledge the bare naked truth that the system's collapsed. Everyone wants more money. For the left, it's tax corporations and end the "loopholes." The fact is, of course, that state revenues are sustained by a tiny sliver of wealthy taxpayers and big business. The state needs major structural reforms, even a constitutional convention with the mandate to repeal the locked-in spending initiatives going back to Proposition 98. Leftists offer stupid class warfare slogans while excoriating conservative as racist illegal-immigrant bashers. But someone's got to pay. And I don't see anyone really even discussing the possibility of downsizing commitments. Now's the time to say we can only do so much, during a deep recession. When the economy comes back -- which it will -- then folks will have resources to ease the state into a more viable structural revenue model. And that depends on a political leadership that's friendly to the free market and sensitive to creating job growth with low taxes.
More on this tomorrow ...
* I'm not sure about the "millions" protesting nationwide, but I'll give ABC News the benefit of the doubt until I have more information.
3 comments:
Not only was Che a mass murderer, but he was also in charge of ordering book burnings, so it absolutely irks me when students, who demand a better/more affordable education and free speech, wear T-shirts with his face and idolize him. They need to start getting their facts straight.
At some point these people will find that there is nobody left to pay for their educations. Both businesses and the wealthy will just take their money and leave.
All the trite sloganeering and class warfare will gain them nothing. Maybe they might even figure out the difference between a "good" and a "right," but I am not betting on it.
Nice Post !
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:)
college degree
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