zlacker

>>pessim+(OP)
This idea is not really new - the California Master Plan for Education essentially promised a free higher education to everyone in California. In 1960. [1]

As these things go, the plan was eroded over time, with the (in)famous Proposition 13 of 1978 dealing a big blow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...

>>xmddmx+Bo
They implemented a great component of those ideas. Seems like cause for at least some celebration, right? :)

>>ajju+Rp
I'm an educator, and a social democrat (approximately) so "yes"?

What saddens me is that grand (and simple) plan "free education for all" gets watered down and chipped away to "free education for those who have money or connections" and later attempts to shore it up offten amount to "free education for $special_group". While I don't deny $special_group should get free education, what gets me is all the special-pleading going on.

In OOM programming terms, it's like we had a universal principle which was easy to implement, and this has now been replaced by a bunch of switch/case statements...

>>xmddmx+ar
I understand and empathize, but you also realize that college in the 60's and in the 2020's are completely different beasts no, right? The genie is out of the lamp, but we literally don't have the room to stuff it back in. CA's population has tripled in 60 years, and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). There are more students competing for university today than there were people in 60's california.

Thankfully not all of them are trying to apply specifically to UCLA or even in state, but the numbers are staggering.

>>johnny+ft
> CA's population has tripled in 60 years

and so has the tax base and # of teachers. This is a non-issue. Society scales.

> and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good).

Not necessarily : see my comment below.

>>xmddmx+by
Even if teachers have (which I'm not convinced of to begin with), Universities and land haven't. Its no secret that we've had an overpopulation crisis for the past few decades as is, so We haven't fully solved that issue as of now.

And I'm equally unsure if taxes have tripled, between increasing poverty on the bottom and more and more tax evasion on top.

>>johnny+3B
Assuming you’re using “overpopulation” to refer to California’s housing shortage, this is not a “too many people” issue or a “not enough land issue”, but rather a “land isn’t being used efficiently” issue. Efficiently housing and moving large numbers of people is by and large a solved problem, with plenty of examples to learn from (see: any megacity in Asia).

California hasn’t solved the issue because some percentage of residents or other interest groups don’t want to solve the issue and have had the political means to block attempts at resolution.