Last Stand at UC

/

I’ve been inclined to agree with Joe Mathews that University of California students who vent their wrath at the university and the Regents have picked the wrong targets. The retreat from funding public higher education has been sounded from the state Capitol. It is the combination of the state’s broken governing system and the political weakness and incompetence of the state’s higher education leaders that has made colleges and their students into the biggest losers in California’s budget squeeze. As Joe points out, tents on the quad and protests at Regents meetings speak to the wrong audience and the wrong problem.

But that’s not the whole story. Watching UC chancellors respond to the Occupy protests, I’ve come to see that the students are not entirely wrong. Something’s rotten inside the university too.

Read More

State of the Dimming Dream→

/

The San Francisco Chronicle asked me to write about whether California’s ongoing crisis has changed state government as we know it. My answer, in this Sunday Insight article, has been released from behind the Chron’s pay wall. Check it out.