The California Higher Ed. Funding Amendment

I sort of like it. It makes the right kind of statement. Here is the official summary. And here is Gov. Schwarzenegger's rationale:

California universities are known around the world as the crown jewel of California’s education system. Until recent years, California’s priorities were clear: the state dedicated approximately 10 percent of its General Fund to higher education and just three percent on prisons. Today, California spends more than 10 percent on prisons and seven percent on higher education.

It was delivered today in his last state of the state address. Of course, Mark Yudof, the President of the University of California system, likes it and sent around this analysis, including this chart. 

The issue of prison spending to higher education funding was an interesting one to me, so I decided to check out what other states are spending. I found this excellent data from Pew which PBS put into a map (see page 15-16 & 31 in the Pew Report). Notice there is a discrepancy between what Pew says about California and what the Governor says, but I assume that is easily explained (if someone wants to do the research to prove either way, please let me know). But, I wanted to view the data differently though for all states, so below you can see the result. 

This is a heatmap of the ratio of $1 spent on higher education to prison spending. You can see the range is from some states like Minnesota spending around $0.20 on prisons for every dollar spent on higher education to Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut which spend over a $1.00 on prisons for every higher education dollar (if you want to see the exact numbers, see page 16 and 31 of the report). 

But, as if that is not concerning enough, it is the growth in overall prison spending that might be the most concerning (p.15): 

In 1987, states collectively spent $33 billion of their general funds on higher education. By 2007, they were spending $72.88 billion, an increase of 121 percent. Adjusted to 2007 dollars, the increase was 21 percent. Over the same timeframe, inflation-adjusted corrections spending rose 127 percent, from $10.6 billion ($19.4 billion in 2007 dollars) to more than $44 billion. 

So, I sort of like California's idea here. Surely this will make legislator's jobs more difficult, but so be it. That's what constitutions are for and using the constitution in this manner strikes me as appropriate (although I know there will be some who disagree). All this "tough on crime" political speak has got us in a situation where to be hard on crime it requires legislators to be soft on schools. I applaud California's efforts to draw the line and hope more states look into their funding priorities in a similar manner.