Give Optimism a Fighting Chance

Kenichi Ohmae, the Tokyo-based guru (“The End of the Nation State”) whose high-priced policy advice is sought by cabinets and corporations all over the world, is fond of telling this story about developing but ambitious Malaysia: In Kuala Lumpur last year, when the country’s defense minister was handed a new Cabinet post, his supporters cheered wildly. The post was the education ministry. The appointment meant that Seri Najib Razak would probably someday become prime minister. In Malaysia, where public education consumes almost one-third of the national budget and much of the nation’s attention, it’s almost impossible to become PM without having been minister of education.

Not quite the case in America these days, of course; think of the politicians who keep trying to do away altogether with our Department of Education. As a culture we have descended a considerable distance from the days when our public education system was the envy of the world, and in California any kid graduating from high school knew there was a seat waiting in a good publicly funded state college. No more. Malaysia may be headed in one direction--up--but it looks as if we may be headed in the other.

At least, to be charitable, we are aware that it’s happening to us. Two new studies are telling California and, by extension, America, exactly how we’re coming up short. They report that the recent recession, decreased state funding and increased fees have combined to deny close to a quarter of a million California kids a spot at a community college, Cal State or UC campus. Brace yourself. They predict that in 10 years, if present demographic and budget trends continue, the state’s educationally disenfranchised will grow to nearly half a million kids.

Worse yet, according to an authoritative Rand study, “The Future of Public Undergraduate Education in California,” there is no politically feasible way to double the state higher ed budget, the amount the study calculates will be required to absorb all the new college applicants. Michael A. Shires, the report’s author, takes a hard look at all the students coming up the ladder and then, reviewing the (too few) resources to fund spots for them all, flatly concludes: “The [near-universal] access goal is certainly not achievable.”

Ah, but now for the Malaysian, I mean the San Josean, perspective. In “Shared Responsibility: Strategies to Enhance Quality and Opportunity in California Higher Education,” the San Jose-based California Higher Education Policy Center does not quarrel with Rand’s numbers but takes them in a different direction. Where Rand seems to me to be daunted by the inescapability of its higher-ed calculus, this die-hard group won’t take no for an answer: It proposes that the state do everything it conceivably can to avoid closing doors to so many young people. Its bold program proposes many new efficiencies from all involved--students, professors and administrators in both public and private colleges and universities. The plan would exploit dollar-saving new educational technology, including distance learning, and forswear the costly building of any more state campuses and instead better utilize existing, though in some places renovated, sites. It would beseech private institutions to make unused space available to public education students; it would warn parents and students to expect modestly higher fees; and it would ask the faculty, as visionary California State University Chancellor Barry Munitz has for years, to accept that many of the old ways of doing business will no longer suffice.

The policy center, it seems, throws everything but the kitchen sink at the problem. But isn’t this a lot better than throwing in the towel? As Joni Finney, associate director of the San Jose-based policy center, told me, “We say: Don’t give up yet.”

What California needs now is powerful leadership. Weren’t the politicians quick to jump on the fear of crime and get that three-strikes-and-you’re-out initiative on the ballot? Why not some comparable effort for the education of our children? Too many of them will end up employable only as burger flippers if both the K-12 system is failing them and access to higher ed is shrinking. Argues UCLA Vice Chancellor Ted Mitchell, former dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education: “In a really weird way, the value and necessity of higher education becomes disproportionately high as K-12 has become disproportionately problematic.”

If we want the “three-strikes” law--and why shouldn’t bad guys be kept off the streets--why wouldn’t we want a no-strikes law? That is: Be good, work hard in school, get good grades and go to a good college. You know, no strikes and you’re in.

The state should immediately and urgently convene a new commission, argues Rand, on the famous California master plan that guaranteed all the state’s children a chance in life. I agree. But let’s not go into it waving the white flag. Too much is at stake. Like our future.