Compact Fees, Up; No Compact: Fees Up Even More

On Wednesday morning in finance comitttee, Regent Garamendi stirred things up a little. He called on the Regents to shift from defenese to offense, and triggered something in Regent Blum. We had this beautiful thing, he said, called the Compact for Higher Education. And the governor has reneged.

What is this Regentally-lamented Compact that we now no longer have? You can read the details in the Futures Report: the Compact forms our Scenario One. This much is true: the Governor reneged, the first minute it was in his interest to do so, which we cynics had claimed all along: the Compact sharply limited UC's state funding growth at a time when it needed big growth to get back to zero after the 2002-05 cuts, and yet the governor could walk away in a second and cut state funds, which is what he did. It created in the Regents a false sense of security, and helped them to the place they are now, which is in a full crisis and yet without ideas for an exit.

Even worse was its effect on fees. It locked in 7-10% annual increases in the good years. What happens now when the good years have run out?
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