Reply #85: My guess is that financial aid will be preserved for students who can't afford ... [View All]

[frazzled]

the tuition. But there are a lot of middle and upper-middle-class kids at Berkeley whose families could afford that tuition. Having them pay will allow the students who can't to continue to attend. A Berkeley education is worth as much as a Harvard or Yale degree, so I think people will pony up.

I am not condoning the slashing of education funds (there's a good chart in today's NYT about the California system over the last decade or so) as a way to balance the state's budget crisis. But it is a crisis. What are they going to slash? Firefighters? Police? It's rough. They are going to have to reform their whole system, which prevents tax hikes through referenda and allows millionaires to pay little property tax. Maybe they're getting the idea that if you want to spend (on things like a great university system), you have to tax. Time for a liberal!