reduced subsidies for universities and a middle-class entitlement mentality

From Peter Robinson in the WSJ...

During the "Strike and Day of Action to Defend Education"...tens of thousands of students, teachers, professors and administrators marched in California and some 30 other states to protest cuts in education spending.

Robinson then quotes David Patterson, a librarian at Cañada College: "I'm hoping that students . . . feel connected to Montgomery, to Selma...to the sit-ins, to Freedom Riders, to the farmworkers' struggle [of the 1960s and '70s]...Now that's an education: To see your fight against oppression connected to a long line of others' fights."

The demonstrations did offer a certain sort of instruction, though not of the kind Mr. Patterson and his fellow protesters had in mind. They demonstrated the entitlement mentality and self-absorption that has come to dominate much of higher education...

Despite the budget cuts, California will this year devote $3 billion to the U.C. system. That's about $13,000 per student—more than the $10,000 per student that Illinois devotes to the University of Illinois and better than double the $6,000 per student that New York devotes to the SUNY system....

The protests did offer students a certain kind of instruction. They taught them to replace the idealism of youth with the crassest self-pleading.