San Francisco
It didn't take very long for David Crane, the newest regent of the University of California, to cause controversy.
Mr. Crane, a Democrat, is a guy many fellow Democrats love to hate. As a top adviser to then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, he advocated against government intervention in private business and called public-employee pensions "special privileges."
And during his second meeting as a board member at the fiscally struggling University of California, Mr. Crane gave his new colleagues a stark warning. "We ain't seen nothing yet," he said. In five years, "you're going to say, these were the good old days."
The comments angered some observers, including a few other regents, who believe the university system needs to more aggressively make its case for public support. Christopher Newfield, an English professor on the Santa Barbara campus and a prominent faculty critic of system leaders, called the statement "relentlessly negative."
"The rhetorical effect was to make any suggestion of restored state funding impossible, unrealistic, not tough-minded, and simply not playing in the big leagues," Mr. Newfield wrote on his blog, Remaking the University.
Mr. Crane's bluntness was par for the course. A supporter once told the newspaper Capitol Weekly that Mr. Crane, 57, was "willing to argue with a wall." In 2006, he was kicked off the state teacher retirement board by Democratic lawmakers after he argued, presciently, that California's official retirement-fund projections were too optimistic.
He acknowledges that facing resistance only made him dig in his heels. "Once I got the cold shoulder, I started firing in," Mr. Crane says.
His appointment as a regent could end the way his service on the retirement board did. Democratic state senators who say Mr. Crane is anti-union have held up his confirmation, a rare move, and university workers have held protests against him. Under state rules, Mr. Crane can remain on the board up to a year without being confirmed.
(He does have the apparent backing of Gov. Jerry Brown, who, since taking office in January, has chosen not to withdraw the nomination his predecessor made.)
In person, Mr. Crane comes across as a disaffected insider: bright, engaging, and relentlessly critical of state lawmakers, particularly Democrats, whom he calls "hypocrites" because they decry cuts in higher education but have approved pension increases that he believes crippled the state budget. He says he wants to be confirmed, but he doesn't seem to care too much one way or the other.
Even when nominally discussing higher education, Mr. Crane gets worked up over pension liabilities. The state now spends $7-billion each year on public pensions and retiree health care, which is not nearly enough, he says. To keep pace with those growing liabilities, the state should be spending closer to $20-billion per year, he says.
"I don't see how these guys say to themselves that someday there will be more money for UC," he says.
Whether Mr. Crane's argument that the University of California should prepare now for a long-term future of rapidly declining state support prevails could determine how aggressively the prestigious system moves to reshape itself.
But when asked how the university should prepare itself, Mr. Crane defers, saying he hasn't had enough time to get into the details. A high-fee, high-aid model could be a good start, he says. He says he would like to raise revenues without relying so heavily on tuition—a difficult task—and is looking into the lessons of public universities in Michigan and Virginia.
"I'm like Paul Revere saying, 'The British are coming,' but I don't know what to do necessarily when the British get here," he says.
