Abandoning California's commitment to education - Tim Rutten, LA Times

Of all the damage that has been done in recent years by Sacramento's habitual flight from fiscal responsibility -- particularly during the disastrous Schwarzenegger years -- none has been more injurious or perverse than the budgetary mistreatment of the state's universities and community colleges. Starved for adequate funds, what was once California's greatest guarantor of social mobility based on merit has become, in fact, a force for the growing inequality that threatens this state's future. Today, just 36.3% of California's high school graduates go on to college, compared with better than 40% nationally. Among the country's 20 largest states, we now rank 18th in the percentage of 12th graders who go directly to college and 17th in the number who ever seek higher education. The well-documented decline of California's primary and secondary schools has played a role in that; only 20 states spend less per pupil than we do, and we rank next to last in student-teacher ratios.