On a mild, overcast day in October 2007, aUniversity of California graduate lobbed a rhetorical bomb at his alma mater: What if the public university went private?
"Suppose," mused state Treasurer Bill Lockyer in a widely distributed report on California's fiscal future, that "the state eliminated all its direct general fund support from the UC system,allowing it to set its own budget and raise revenues to replace the state's share."
Lockyer's supposition, which he was quick to point out he wasn't advocating, sparked an uproar among academic leaders and editorial writers, then slipped back into the Capitol's sea of partisan squabbling and budget crises.
But the issue has never really stopped making waves. As California's iconic Master Plan for Higher Education marks its 50th anniversary this year, and the state struggles to balance its books, variations of Lockyer's "privatization" question are being posed more frequently.
"Should higher education be treated as a public