"Whether you're an oppressive foreign dictatorship or an American state in the process of committing fiscal suicide, you know you're losing the public relations battle when encounters between armor-clad riot police with truncheons and college students are broadcast on TV. That's the sad situation California found itself in last week, after the University of California Board of Regents announced a staggering 32 percent midsemester tuition hike. Students responded by demonstrating, chanting, and occupying administration buildings. Things got unruly, law enforcement was called, and within hours it was every spin doctor's nightmare, replayed endlessly on YouTube and cable news."
As is often the case, California is leading a national trend. Higher education is becoming less affordable across the country every year. If states and universities don't make major structural changes in the way they operate, anger and frustration could start to boil over nationwide.
The UC tuition crisis is a symptom of the larger collapse of governance in the Golden State. It takes two thirds of both houses in the state General Assembly to raise taxes, while new spending programs can be created by public referendum. Tax dollars are too hard to raise and too easy to spend, leaving the state lurching from one budget crisis to the next. The young men and women rushing to the barricades on UC campuses are Ronald Reagan's children, victims of a failed antigovernment movement that managed to turn people against taxes while leaving their appetite for public services unchecked.