California tuition hikes: reduce subsidies to college students to fund crazy pensions for state union workers

From the editorialists of the WSJ, commenting on another angle...

of something I discussed a few days ago...

Hundreds of University of California students rallied against a 32% tuition hike last week....With just a little research, the students could have discovered that compensation packages won from the state by unions were a big reason for the hike.

Last year, the state cut funding to the 10-campus system to $2.6 billion from $3.25 billion. To make up for the reduction in state funding, the UC Board of Regents increased tuition to $10,300, about triple 1999's cost....

In 1999, the Democratic legislature ran a reckless gamble that makes Wall Street's bankers look cautious. At the top of a bull market, they assumed their investment returns would grow at a 8.25% rate in perpetuity—equivalent to assuming that the Dow would reach 25,000 by 2009—and enacted a huge pension boon for public-safety and industrial unions...

In the last decade, government worker pension costs (not including health care) have risen to $3 billion from $150 million, a 2,000% jump...

This year alone $3 billion was diverted from other programs to fund pensions, including more than $800 million from the UC system. It is becoming clear that in the most strapped liberal states there's a pecking order: Unions get the lifeboats, and everyone else gets thrown over the side. Sorry, kids.

Get ready for more....