They should start following some of these `poverty-stricken’ students to their cars to see what they drive.

There are a lot of whiners in California who don’t get it yet.  Which is why I think this crisis has a way to go yet.

I’m sure some people have a lot of money and get a cheap education.  Fortunately their taxes are low.

Smart, poor students, however, who cares about them?

Speaking as a displaced lifetime resident of CA, I can assure Mr Wilkins that the University of California “cares” about smart, poor students, and even some not so smart poor students.  My children, who were smart and could afford the tuition, were discouraged from attending UC by UC.  SC wanted them in college here and it was cheaper even as out of state students.  They, and we, now live, work, and pay taxes here.  Perhaps CA “cares” too much for its financial well being.  California promised more public welfare than it could afford to deliver.  As a result the cost of those promises is now on the backs of those who still have money to pay taxes, and they are leaving as fast as they can.  One hopes the nation will take heed of California’s woes.

When I attended Cal in the early ‘70’s (A.B. ‘75, M.A. ‘79), total fees (we didn’t pay “tuition” in those days) came to $232.50 per academic quarter.  I shared apartments with friends, ate a fair amount of $.25 per box Kraft Macaroni and Cheese—and with the occasional night out at the Top Dog and the University Film Archive I was able essentially to support myself through school while working full time in the summer at a bit over minimum wage and with occasional part-time jobs during the school year.  The commitment of the UC system was to serve the top 20% of California high school graduates.  And Cal was then as it continues to be one of the finest universities, public or private, in the world.  These days in-state tuition and fees approach $10K a year, plus room and board: obviously way over the line in terms of what a student could earn in a summer of mowing lawns or as a camp counselor.  I haven’t lived in California for twenty-five years now, but from afar it has been just heartbreaking to watch it all fall apart, as the folly of Jarvis Gann has reaped its harvest and as the state legislature has squandered all its seed-corn in an avalanche of wasteful entitlement programs.  At this point the Water Project is deteriorating, the highways are overcrowded and crumbling, the public school sytem just about the worst in the nation.  The state university system has imploded, and the U.C. Regents are circling the wagons for what will, over the next quarter of a century, be certainly a story of decline.  At this point I don’t think there’s a political structure in the state that has the capability to address the foundational issues.  But if you drive around L.A. at 7 p.m. on a Friday evening you see the parking lots outside of nice restaurants filled with $60,000 SUV’s and high-end Japanese and German sedans, the houses (even post-bubble) are still selling at quite a premium over just about every other place in the country except maybe mid-town Manhattan and Back Bay Boston—and if California were an independent nation it would still be one of the richest in the world.  What they need probably is a new constitutional convention and a major do-over.  But whether they’ll ever get what they need is pretty much an open question.

Bruce Robison

Bruce, the only political dynamic of change in California right now is the slow but inevitable take-over of the strings of government by what will soon be the majority hispanic population. That change has already taken place in the megalopolis of Los Angeles, and they seem overall to be the better for it. It will be interesting to see what they do when they have the reins of the state government in their hands.

Interesting how the article quotes no tuition figures. 

Tuition in the California State University System is currently $4,650 per year.  That’s before financial aid.  Half of our students need remediation in math and English that they should have learned in high school.

I know from having worked there that a great many (not all) of these students are lazy, rude and entitled.