California cuts

into the muscle of its colleges and universities. The cuts to higher education in California over the past two years exceed the entire higher education budgets of some states. Or so I've been told. True or not, the cuts are devastating. Continuing Education at California universities is often self-supporting, so they might be spared some initial carving. But if they make any money, you can be sure the university will take whatever it can, leaving less for innovation, planning, benchmarking, new initiatives.

Editorial: Short-term cuts, long-term worry for California colleges‎

The budget that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have wrangled over will cut $2 billion for community colleges and four-year universities on top of cuts last year. If this were a two-year problem, the institutions could still emerge relatively unscathed. But the long-term outlook is equally bleak. And the economy alone isn't to blame; it's a matter of priorities. In 1980, 17 percent of the state budget went to higher education. By 2007, that had fallen to 10 percent — the same as prisons and parole.