Description: Though the Governor portrays his 2010-11 budget proposal as protecting education, his plan would affect areas of education quite differently—significantly reducing funding for child care and K-12 education while augmenting funding for most higher education programs. We recommend the Legislature build a more balanced education budget. For higher education, we recommend providing new funding for community colleges through a $14 per unit fee increase; reducing the proposed augmentations for the state’s universities while still restoring their per-student funding rates to 2007-08 levels; and rejecting the Governor's proposed cuts to financial aid programs. Our recommendations on other parts of the education budget are contained in a companion publication: The 2010-11 Budget: Proposition 98 and K-12 Education.

(Short video introducing this report)