Monty Python Had Its Silly Walks; Now - When It Comes to UC Funding - We Get Silly Columns

Silliness

Normally, "conservatives" are devoted to the market.  Market prices should rule.  Government should not regulate market prices.  Etc., Etc.  Gov. Brown goes on about how employment at public universities should be a "calling."  I don't recall in any faculty recruitment effort that I was ever involved in, that we attracted job candidates by saying we pay less but it's a "calling."  However, Brown would probably not describe himself as conservative.  A centrist, maybe, and one who is fiscally responsible, but not a conservative.

But what are we to make of "conservative" columnists who just in the case of UC swallow the governor's "calling" approach and abandon the market place?  When it comes to funding UC, the normally sensible token conservative at the San Francisco Chronicle provides an example of this interesting and paradoxical phenomenon. Check it out at:
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/saunders/article/Tuition-hikes-at-the-University-of-Compensation-5909989.php

And by the way, Brown's public-private distinction gets a bit fuzzy when you look at the funding of "private" research universities and compare them to UC.  Like UC, they are heavily dependent on public support through tax exemptions, tax deductions for charitable contributions, federal research funding of grants, public funding of various scholarship programs, etc.  As we have long pointed out, state dollars account for roughly one-out-of ten dollars that go to support the UC budget.  It wasn't always that way back in the days when Jerry Brown's dad was governor, but now it is.