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September 26, 2009, 11:00 AM ET
UC-Berkeley Leaders Call for Federal-State University System
On the heels of protests that roiled the University of California system, Robert J. Birgenaeu and Frank D. Yeary, the chancellor and vice chancellor of the Berkeley campus, write in The Washington Post that the time has come for a national "federal-state university system." Under their proposal, "a limited number of our great public research and teaching universities [would] receive basic operating support from the federal government and their respective state governments."
Comments
1. gavinmoodie - September 28, 2009 at 06:07 am
Australia started down this road in 1958. Since 1975 the federal government has provided about 95% of government funding for all public universities.
2. jaysanderson - September 28, 2009 at 10:52 am
That way, when your own state government cannot support your substantial expenses, the people of other (efficiently run) states can subsidize your institution. That's very generous of you, Berkeley.
3. madamesmartypants - September 28, 2009 at 11:21 am
My understanding is that state support has been on the decline for all state universities. So really, what Berkeley is proposing may be inevitable--unless we want them to go private.
4. _perplexed_ - September 28, 2009 at 11:48 am
Selecting these great public universities will be pure politics: Will politicians in any state support such a program unless their flagship campus is included? That "limited number" gets rather large right from the start-- and what will Berkeley say if (horror of horrors) UCLA and UCSD are placed first and second in the California que?
5. garlanjc - September 28, 2009 at 01:27 pm
To me, the important contribution of the Birgeneau-Yeary essay is that it recognizes that the current financial model underlying the nation's public campuses has failed, and that redressing the failure calls for radical change. Their op-ed is the subject of a commentary on my blogsite www.savingalmamater.com (See "Should the Feds Rescue UC-Berkeley? Sorry, No.")
6. truescholar601 - September 28, 2009 at 01:30 pm
Why don't they just adopt a for-profit model? Many institutions are doing that and it can be done without actually being "for-profit"...
7. boiler - September 28, 2009 at 02:06 pm
What a great idea! Elite schools like Berkeley, which have big endowments and massive research income, get big new federal subsidies, while other public universities, whose funding problems are much more severe, get nothing! Who could be opposed?
Seriously, this proposal reflects the failure of institutions like Berkeley to think seriously about the challenges facing public education in difficult economic times. They want to run a school like Harvard or Yale, with the budget to match, and when funds run out, their solution is to find more money. The alternative would be to do what good public institutions are doing all over the country -- to develop excellent instructional and research programs without the pampered star faculty and lavish facilities that are the heart of the Ivy model. It can be done -- even Berkeley did it, once upon a time -- but it requires a willingness to think very differently about how a university should work.
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