The California Faculty Association just released a report titled “California at the Edge of a Cliff: The Failure to Invest in Public Higher Education is Crushing the Economy and Crippling Our Kids’ Future.” It is similar to reports CUCFA distributed last spring — full of data illustrating the neglect of higher education in California. For example:
“In 1980 California appropriated $12.86 from state tax funds for the operations of higher education for every $1000 of state personal income. This ranked California’s investment effort 11th among the states. By FY2008 this had dropped $7.71 per $1000 of state personal income, a decline of 40.0%. California ranked 21st among the states by 2008.”
The full report is available at:
http://www.calfac.org/calattheedge.html
The Sacramento Bee has an article in today’s issue about the report. The Bee article is available at:
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1530649.html
A brief excerpt from the Bee article:
“Lillian Taiz, president of the CFA and a history teacher, believes this decline didn’t just come out of nowhere. There have been a number of tipping points, but term limits for legislators, she believes, has led particularly to ‘the worst of short-term thinking in a world that demands long-term vision.’ The result is that we’ve seen a slow erosion of education as the engine of progress and opportunity in California. That idea of upward mobility, however, is deeply rooted in American thought and practice. Thomas Jefferson, in launching the University of Virginia, sought to nurture the talents of all classes: ‘We hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated.'”