CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
A flawed college plan
Monday, March 15, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

THE GOVERNOR's proposal to cut freshman enrollments at the University of California and the California State University systems by 10 percent this fall, and instead send an estimated 8,000 students to community colleges, threatens a public university system that has played a dominant role in California's evolution.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says the state can no longer afford to subsidize UC and CSU to admit the same number of students as it has in the past. But this proposal has less to do with affordability and more to do with Schwarzenegger's priorities. He made the decision to return $4 billion in vehicle license fees -- much of it no doubt going to graduates of UC and CSU who have benefited many times over from the state's investment in them. If even one-tenth of that amount had been retained by the state, it would have covered the $46 million that allegedly will be saved by funneling some of the state's brightest students to community colleges.

Schwarzenegger's plan will undermine the state's Master Plan for Higher Education, which has served the state so well for nearly a half-century. The Master Plan committed the state to admit the top 12 1/2 percent of the high school graduating class to UC campuses, and the top 33 percent to CSU. "The problem is that if we drop below 12 1/2 percent . . . we will have broken a social contract that California has had with young people for 40 years,'' says UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl.

The proposal might have been acceptable if it had emerged after broad and open discussions with university, business and intellectual leaders of the state. But, unfortunately, there has been no such discussion.