The High Road

That California hangs together at all represents a triumph over both human nature and geography. So many people spread across such a vast and diverse territory, and motivated by so many competing interests, cannot help but strain the body politic. From the beginning, as much attention has been paid to what divides Californians as to the ties that hold them together.

North vs. South. Coast vs. valleys. Urban vs. rural. The possibilities for civil war seem endless. There are, however, some strands of connective tissue. There is the Pacific Ocean. There is climate. There are freeways and waterworks. There also is public education--in particular, the complementary systems of universities and two- and four-year colleges that decorate the state from San Diego to Humboldt.

These campuses represent, in its most concrete form, what the golden poets inevitably call “The California Dream.” They are, as much as anything, what make California California. This is a fact sometimes lost on the current political leadership, as anyone who has watched “fees” inflate into sums that look an awful lot like tuition can attest.

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It is something I grew up with: an awareness from early on that I was going to college, somewhere. It didn’t matter if the cattle market went south, dragging family fortunes with it. It didn’t matter if we were upper middle class or lower middle class or middle middle class. It didn’t matter if too much daydreaming in algebra undermined my SAT scores.

California, by design, had a system--a Master Plan, it was so grandly called--for me to receive a quality higher education. It would be practically free for the taking--free, that is, if the investments of a couple generations of taxpayers, my grandparents included, were overlooked. And so I wound up at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And so my brothers and sisters were scattered from Chico State, to Fresno State, to San Diego State. It was all part of being a Californian.

A business executive, in an interview with researchers for a nonpartisan think tank, recently described the sense of a sacred covenant once shared by Californians:

“In the fifties and sixties,” the unidentified CEO told the California Higher Education Policy Center, “California had the greatest education system that had ever existed anywhere on the face of the earth. You had the high-quality public elementary and secondary schools, high-quality universities, and costs were nominal; all the student had to do was to stay alive. In broader social terms, it was highly desirable in that it provided for upward mobility for those who chose to make the effort.

“Today, I will pay more tuition for my children to go to the third grade in private school than I paid for college and law school combined. I personally don’t care because I am rich and I can afford it. But I got a chance to be rich because education was available at virtually no cost. My parents didn’t have the money, and I didn’t play baseball. But what about the family that is situated today the way mine was in the fifties? You create a lack of promise that has widespread implications; it creates a have and have-not society, which is the last thing we want.”

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The last thing we want is sort of what Californians got in the early 1990s. Certain politicians, scared senseless by recession and better skilled at dividing rather than bringing together, simply misread the state. Fees were driven up higher and higher, and the case was made that California taxpayers no longer wanted to underwrite college for the middle and lower classes. For the first time, the state began spending more on prisons than campuses. Oh happy day.

Against this backdrop comes a newly released poll by the Higher Education Policy Center. Among other things, the poll found Californians by a margin of 2 to 1 oppose anything that would diminish universal access to public colleges and universities. If need be, a majority of those surveyed--surprise of surprises--would rather pay higher taxes than turn away students through the tools of higher tuition or tighter admission policies.

“People still see these universities and colleges as a kind of social contract,” Patrick M. Callan, the center’s executive director, said Monday in an interview here. It is timely news. Demographers describe a coming “tidal wave” of college-ready high school graduates, the children of native baby boomers and immigrants alike. Some policy planners foresee a bulge of 500,000 additional students.

Oddly enough, there has been precious little public discussion over what to do about this. When the debate does begin, may it start with a simple stipulation: These new students want and deserve the same opportunities my generation enjoyed. That part of the dream is not dead.