On his blog, the LAT's Michael Hiltzik offers up his column on "privatization" efforts at the UC system's law and business schools. And elaborates:
One observation that didn't make it into the column because of space constraints came from Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA Law School, who observed that the real problem with state funding of UC is its volatility: In good times, the state gives UC lots of money, and in bad times it takes it away. (My apologies to Prof. Bainbridge, who stresses that he was speaking for himself, not UC or UCLA.) Well, he can say that again: UC's share of the general fund careens about like a roller-coaster. A graph of the journey was provided to legislators by the university in 1999 (see page 22), and that was before the tech crash.