BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the author of several books and many articles on higher education, including most recently The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. He serves on the advisory board for Academe. The…
BY HANK REICHMAN Faculty members in other states may be excused for expressing some jealousy of California’s economic and political success since Jerry Brown was elected governor nearly eight years ago. While Republican-led states like Kansas, Iowa, or Wisconsin continue to suffer slow growth and calamitous budget shortfalls and cuts, under Brown and a Democratic…
Last week I posted an item on California Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed 2016-17 state budget, which falls short on higher education funding. In that post I relied heavily on the findings of the nonpartisan California Budget and Policy Center‘s “First Look” at the proposed budget. Now the Center has published another comment on the proposal,…
Yesterday I posted a piece on California Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget, with specific reference to higher education. Today UCLA History professor Michael Meranze posted his response to the Brown proposal on the Remaking the University blog that he runs with UC Santa Barbara English professor Christopher Newfield. Michael’s take is similar to mine, but…
I have long contended that California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown is the only true fiscal conservative in American politics. In many ways Brown is a liberal, and an often admirable one, but for decades perhaps his most distinctive characteristic has been his hesitancy to spend money. It would not be out of line to call…