June 6, 2012

California Looks to Fill 2 Tough Jobs in Higher Education

Wanted: 2 Top Leaders in California 1

Rich Pedroncelli, AP Images

Departing chancellors: Charles B. Reed (center) retires from the Cal State system as soon as a successor is found. Jack Scott (left) leaves the California Community Colleges this summer. (Behind them is Mark Yudof, who leads the U. of California system. He is 67 and may retire in the next few years.)

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close Wanted: 2 Top Leaders in California 1

Rich Pedroncelli, AP Images

Departing chancellors: Charles B. Reed (center) retires from the Cal State system as soon as a successor is found. Jack Scott (left) leaves the California Community Colleges this summer. (Behind them is Mark Yudof, who leads the U. of California system. He is 67 and may retire in the next few years.)

By Goldie Blumenstyk

The politics are byzantine. The union issues, brutal. The students' educational needs, enormous. And the financial outlook, given California's ever-growing budget deficit, is dismal at best.

But for the two people brazen enough, and perhaps a tad crazy enough, to become the next chancellors of the California State University system and of the California Community Colleges—systems that together educate three of every 20 Americans enrolled in higher education—the opportunity