‘Handcuffed Higher Education’ and State Limits on Spending

Your editorial was most appropriate and timely. The dramatic enrollment increases which have been sustained by CSU and UC are vivid reminders of the need for greater flexibility in our state’s budgeting process.

However, your suggestion that Humboldt State and Sonoma State are “less-than-spectacular Cal State campuses” is simply untrue, as anyone familiar with the fine programs at both of these universities can attest.

A recently published book entitled “How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University” singles out three California campuses: Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, Humboldt State and Sonoma State. The book’s author, Martin Nemko, says that for the right student, Humboldt is “a better choice than even its eminent statemates, Berkeley and UCLA.” Of Sonoma State, he says quite simply: “. . . You can get an outstanding education at Sonoma State.”

The 19 campuses of the CSU have a common bond in accepting the upper one-third of our state’s high school graduates, but each of them also has a unique responsibility to meet the special educational needs of the communities they serve. Both Humboldt and Sonoma are meeting the needs of their service areas, while at the same time attracting a large percentage of their student body from every corner of our state.

It is hardly necessary, as you suggest in your editorial, to look at what can be done to put them “on the map.” The outstanding graduates who are leaving those campuses and making their mark in business, government, education and the arts are already doing just that.

PETER V. UEBERROTH

New York