With its 10 campuses, nearly 200,000 staff and $20 billion annual budget, the University of California system is emblematic of the state government that pays a portion of UC’s bills: enormous, unruly, overly expensive, steeped in politics, dominated by unions and other special-interest groups and plagued with controversy.
California voters in 2010 turned the reins of government over to Jerry Brown, who has — despite his whimsical rhetoric — governed as the ultimate status-quo politician, protecting the state bureaucracy from reform.
Likewise, the UC regents have decided to choose a status-quo candidate as president, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Regent Sherry Lansing said in a statement that some might find Napolitano to be an “unconventional choice,” but that’s incorrect. Napolitano is as conventional a choice as you could make to run a large bureaucracy, even if she has no serious academic experience.
Based on her tenure in the federal government, she will be an advocate for higher spending, expanded unionization and more of everything that has undermined the university system.
Just when the UC system needed someone who might implement competitive reforms and focus on cost-cutting, the regents turn to a Washington insider more apt to keep federal funds flowing and student aid primed than to stretch the large budget already in place.
The University of California has been embroiled in many scandals in recent years. In one case, administrators enriched themselves, their friends and lovers, even as they were hiking tuition rates for students.
Via: California Political Review
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