Brown's Berkeley Cuts Imperil California Dream That Fueled Silicon Valley

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Brown's Berkeley Cuts Imperil California Dream That Fueled Silicon Valley

By Oliver Staley - Jan 13, 2011 11:19 AM ET

California’s culture of innovation, which propelled the growth of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, was built on a public higher-education system that spawned 56 Nobel Prize winners and is home to one campus that produces 1,000 engineers a year.

Now, as governments in China and India boost funding for expansion of their universities, Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed 16 percent cut in the higher-education budget jeopardizes the flow of talent that powers Google Inc., Apple Inc. and the rest of California’s knowledge-based economy. The elite University of California system may no longer be able to guarantee admission to the top 12.5 percent of the state’s high-school seniors. Annual tuition for residents, which was less than $4,500 a decade ago, is scheduled to rise to at least $11,124 in the next school year.

From the University of California, Berkeley, the highest- ranked public university in the U.S., to San Jose State, which each year graduates more than 1,000 engineering students, the 33 public universities act as incubators for new companies and a ladder of economic mobility for 650,000 students. As the state struggles to overcome a $25.4 billion deficit, the $1.4 billion cuts in higher education imperil the ability to create the next generation of jobs and the tax base to meet government costs, said Robert Ackerman, founder and managing director of Palo Alto, California-based Allegis Capital.

[AngryAmish]

1. So you support taxing the hell out of Jimmy the garbageman to pay university administrators hundreds

of thousands of dollars.

OK.

[EFerrari]

2. Bingo. n/t

[DBoon]

4. so you support crippling the higher education system this country needs?

and turning us into an uneducated pool of low paid labor to satisfy anger about a handful of administrator's salaries?

There are things more expensive than taxes, and one of them is economic stagnation.

You don't get a university system that attracts Nobel laureates for cheap

[EFerrari]

6. You don't get one by funding admin and not education, either.

Cal has been systematically degraded since Raygun, hollowed out by the marriage of admin and corporate interests. Actual teaching is a very low priority there any more.

[AngryAmish]

12. Prove it.

Compare the price of this system v. educational outcomes of the people who are admitted. Compare the price in 1965 to the price now. Is the education better? What are the metrics?

Also, prove the connection between more money for higher education and economic success. And, please, remember correlation is not causation.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Educated elites are dangerous I know

Bangalore and Xin Xuang is where state of the art research is happening now, not Berkeley.

What do you think that will happen in the medium to long term?

[kittykitty]

3. When I did my MA in 1962 tuition was $75.00 a semester!!!!

I started in 1961, did 3 semesters @ $75 per semester. An NSDL loan pretty much paid my living expenses.
R.I.P. higher education.

[gratuitous]

5. The natural and inevitable consequence of taxophobia

California used to have a state university system that was the envy of the nation. I knew people who moved there to establish a six month residency to take advantage of in-state tuition and got a quality education for very low cost. Many of them stayed in California to work, pay taxes, and enrich the places they lived. Some moved back, some moved on. But overall, it was a terrific deal. Real up-by-the-bootstraps stuff as people could seize control of their own lives and destinies with access to higher education.

Now? Well, we can still kvetch about how it used to be, so we got that going for us.

[cherokeeprogressive]

7. If that flow of talent powers Google and Apple, let them contribute.

[Luminous Animal]

9. Another voice for destroying public education.

[madrchsod]

10. california taxpayers have given135billion dollars since 2001....

opps! that`s an old figure . today it`s 144 billion. take that money and invest it into the public good...that`s around 720 billion dollars over the last 10 years

[Confusious]

11. Take the money from who and give to who?

I assume you're talking about taking the money from the college and doing something else with it.

Sorry, solutions for the public good are not going to flow from that.

As a matter of fact, you're helping the race to the bottom.