How Do You Ruin California?

Answer: By turning it into a prison state!

My paternal grandfather dropped out of school after the 8th grade but his eldest son, my father, got the equivalent of a PhD. In our family, getting a higher education was a primary goal. Although we had very little money, my father insisted his five daughters go to college. This meant, when I was growing up, we never had a new car, I wore second hand clothes and we ate out in a restaurant on average once per year. When I first enrolled at UCSD in 1967, with my father paying my tuition, it was one of the best and most affordable colleges in the U.S. At that time higher education in California received 16.8% of the general fund while corrections received 4%. How times have changed! The latest state budget has only 9.7% going to higher education while the allocation for corrections has risen to 7.3%. Study after study show that healthier, longer lives (and lower health care costs) are directly correlated to education. If fewer and fewer Californians can afford college, more and more of them will end up in prison or dead prematurely. This is a sorry state indeed! Sphere: Related Content