- in the 19th century, the US stopped being poor and backward by leading in universal basic education. Now that progress requires universal higher education, it is disinvesting in that.
- US educational levels are going down, not up. Younger people are becoming less well educated than older. (The same is true in research, which suffers as public universities suffer.)
- The US is now below average in attainment (with California tanked into the bottom 10)
- the public sector has now joined the private sector in cutting jobs, insuring rising unemployment
- the US has no obvious mechanisms to reverse the decline. Knucklehead cure-alls like "work more" are the opposite of what we need to improve educational outcomes: US students already lose way too much time "in school" on paid outside jobs.
- the stakes are huge: there "will be lifetime damage to many students’ prospects — and a large, gratuitous waste of human potential."
Krugman's solutions are another stimulus and a general awakening to our perversity. I favor both of these. But this doesn't reckon with the people who will oppose another stimulus - every single House Republican, all of whom voted against the first one, and every Sacramento Republican, who have a lock on the Legislature. It doesn't reckon with people whose careers depend on maintaining perversity - single-issue politicians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose public policy vision consists of cutting taxes. Arnold has done enormous damage to UC. Nothing is going to change until the university community - including UCOP and the Regents - are willing to hold him accountable for the effects of his ideology and his acts.
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