I read with interest your editorial response to my submission last week pledging that, as governor, I’d commit to fully funding the UC, CSU and community college systems.
Thank you – you’re asking the right questions. Politicians, particularly candidates for higher office, make a lot of promises. You as voters want to know where the money would come from to fulfill the pledges I laid out in my previous op-ed.
Rather than legislating from the campaign trail about a hypothetical budget 18 months from now and naming specific reductions in the future, I would argue that such tradeoffs are not necessary in the first place.
We can accomplish more with the resources we currently have. How? By creating efficiencies in California’s corrections system by focusing on rehabilitation, by reducing our statewide health care bills through the provision of a universal public option and by better preparing high school students to excel in college.
Yes, this will require shifting some priorities, but this is what elections are about – choosing a leader who best represents your priorities.
Right now, in this formative stage in the campaign, I’m reaching out to advocacy groups, student groups and university leaders. I’m asking them for policy advice on what their definition of a fully supported higher education system in California looks like.
We’re in the process of working with the three segments to determine what exactly “full funding” means. Are we talking about restoring capacity at a prior year’s level? If so, which year? Or should we guarantee some sort of expansion of capacity, and if so, by how much?
We’re also working with student groups to determine their needs more specifically than just avoiding enrollment caps and controlling fee increases.
These are open questions, and frankly, I want your input. What does full capacity mean to you? Here are my principles:
1. Every student who wants to go to college should have the opportunity — affordability should never be a hurdle. This includes full provision of Cal Grants.
2. Drastic, unexpected fee increases are the wrong way to respond to deficits created by state defunding of higher education.
3. We need to strengthen high school preparedness and the transfer pathways that feed into four-year degrees.
4. California needs innovative incentives to encourage degrees and certificates in math, science, engineering and technology to prepare our workforce for the 21st century economy.
Although those are my principles, and I will not stray from them, I also want to get a real discussion going. In the coming weeks, we’ll be soliciting your input through policy wikis on my website, GavinNewsom.com. These are open-forum discussions to provide a venue for you Californians to help us shape our policy. If we want to change California, we need to change the system. This takes more than new ideas – it takes a new way of collaborating and organizing around principles.
So I invite you to participate as we work together to bring a new direction to higher education in California.
