A California Education

Peggy Orenstein in the Times:

Nothing is more integral to that aura of possibility than the Golden State’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which guaranteed that residents could attend college virtually free. The top 12.5 percent of high-school graduates were funneled into the University of California system, which included the finest public institutions in the world. The top third were eligible for California State campuses. And for anyone who was “capable of profiting from the instruction offered,” the doors of community colleges were wide open. Free! Imagine the chutzpah, the pie-in-the-sky optimism of such a plan! Class and race would no longer be an obstacle to mobility: this state would be a model of diversity, fluidity — a true melting pot.

I’m now married to a beneficiary of that vision. My husband, Steven, a native Angeleno, is the son of a factory worker and a supermarket checkout clerk — Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II and did not themselves attend college. Four years at a grand total of about $4,000 (including rent and ramen) changed his life: it didn’t ensure his success, but it provided the opportunity for it.

Flash-forward three decades. The state’s budget crisis led to cuts of $800 million from the U.C. system in 2009; $500 million from C.S.U.; and $700 million from community colleges. In December, the state regents increased U.C. student fees by 32 percent. That means, once you factor in books, room and board, that a year at Berkeley, the system’s flagship school, will top $30,000 next fall — hardly most people’s idea of gratis.