Budget Crisis for State Colleges

I have read UC Davis Prof. Ruth Rosen’s article “Thrashing of the Public University” (Commentary, June 7) with some discomfort.

The author castigates legislators and administrators for cutting the education budget, because these people consider a university as a regular business, when a university, according to the author, “cannot be treated like a business.”

The author seems to miss the main point. If university administrators, presidents, chancellors make as much money as some business executives, a university ceases to be a university and becomes a business.

Let us face reality. When the president of the University of California system receives an annual salary of more than $300,000, and he retires with millions in pension money, please don’t tell me that the UC is not a business.

These excesses are extremely damaging: They create a climate of opinion which influences people to lose respect for the California university system, and the legislators, sensitive to the mood of the people, attempt to cut down the education budget.

There is no question that the California university system is the best system in the world, but when there are some destructive forces at work, it is better not to complain about legislators, but rather to eradicate these forces in order to keep the system sound and healthy.

ANGELO A. DE GENNARO

Los Angeles