Our Chancellor was quoted in the May 31 issue of Chemical & Engineering News magazine of the American Chemical Society:
“To illustrate the growing divide between what the government provides and what the public wants and thinks it should pay for, Linda Katehi, chancellor of the University of California, Davis, described the financial situation occurring in California. The state’s budget crisis, she said, is devastating the ability of the public research university to train scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, and other professionals.
““California’s choices over the last three decades reflect an increasingly privatized concept of government,” Katehi said. Under this concept, the public “views government services as a private choice, as if one could review potential government programs the way one would check off options on a cable television plan” and pay for only the desired services, she explained. “Lost in this privatized version of government is the sense of communal belonging, of obligation in any social entity larger than the self, and of any responsibility to future generations.”
“Katehi said that California’s money problems can happen in other states and that “we would be wise to heed the lessons of California’s fiscal crisis and its adverse effects on public education.” She said that if more public education funds are not forthcoming, she sees the state universities raising tuition and accepting more out-of-state students, whose higher tuition fees help defray expenses. Although government grants might assist some economically disadvantaged students, she said, the impact will be greatest on lower and middle-income families, which will no longer be able to pay for a public college education.”
The full article is available from on-campus computers (or via other subscriber login process) at the following link:
http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/88/i22/html/8822gov2.html