A New Approach to Higher Education

Here's a new idea on higher education. Tell me what you think?

The first President of California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo had a novel idea at the outset of the university's life: Make technical education open to everyone—no entrance requirements, no essays, no recommendations, no mandatory background courses, no qualifying examinations. It was sink or swim. There was a lot of sinking, The result was a university with an early reputation as a place for losers and potential failures and as a consequence a tough place to recruit top faculty.

So the school changed its noble course and came to adopt more conventional entrance requirements. It has since become one of the top architectural and engineering schools on the West Coast with a strong engineering department. But after teaching a seminar at Cal Poly last Fall and thinking about its history, I began to wonder why we couldn't again create a free institution of higher learning in California open to all legal residents of all ages who were high school graduates.

Do you think a university free of fees, tuition, and boarding costs might attract some of the most imaginative, creative, and original thinkers among our kids and grandkids? Do you think that given the fact that the University of California now costs around $7,000 per year in fees and that even community colleges are running around $3000 per school year, that it would attract a lot of talented kids who simply cannot afford to get to one of our other schools? I certainly do.

California Free University

Here is how I perceive the California Free University might work. I estimate the cost of creating and maintaining a full-fledged university providing 100 percent free tuition as well as board and room at around $95,000 per student per school year. An initial student body of some 125 students growing to a 500 student enrollment would probably require a budget of around $12 million in the first year, growing to $48,000,000 at full strength.

How would we provide that? A 1¢ dedicated tax from gasoline sales would today yield $53 million. Since nearly everyone who drives in California could potentially benefit from the new school, it seems the most equitable means of financing the cost.

Moreover, given the way the price of gasoline changes up and down each week, who would notice when that 1¢ were added? It would soon be forgotten-as are the reasons to justify the other 32¢ per gallon we now pay in state taxes on a gallon of gas. Any surplus could be set aside to create an endowment fund for the university's rainy days.

Do you think more than 500 high school graduates would seek entrance to a 100% free university? If so, we would suggest conducting a lottery drawing two months before the start of each school year to determine the student body. Once in and learning for free, my bet is that the CFU would lose a lot of students who would not be able to keep up, but those that could would make a stunning contribution to all of our futures.