Twenty-eight years ago, I was HP's representative on the Public Policy Advisory Board for the University of California at Davis program on Public Policy and Administration. This program had been underway for some years, and since HP had a presence in the Sacramento Valley with our Roseville Division, and I was the Corporate Engineering Director, the Davis folk thought they'd be able to 'sell' their graduates easier to HP if we sat on this board.
It was in part an august body. Clark Kerr and Roger Heyns, both ex-Presidents of the entire University of California system, were in the twelve person group. So were bankers and realtors from Sacramento.
Partway into the meeting, someone from town piped up to say, "This program doesn't have many students; if we'd make it a Business School, we'd double enrollments." Others said,,"Yeah, verily, and we could send our own kids here, and hire them later, instead of sending 'em 'all the way to Berkeley'."
A groundswell emerged, until Clark Kerr stood up and said, "Let me remind you how the U C system was constructed. The junior colleges, the state colleges and the undergraduate U C university campuses are all designed with broad programs so that all of California's students can have access, even if living at home. But the graduate program is designed for excellence. We want every graduate program to be one of the ten best in the country, and that can only happen if we restrict our own programs to one or two for each discipline within the ten campus system (now fourteen). So, there are two great physics programs -- one at Berkeley and one at San Diego. There are two great Business Schools, one at Berkeley and one at UCLA. There are great biotech departments ar San Diego and at UC Irvine. And here at Davis, we have one of the top three departments in the nation for oenology (wine making), veterinary school, and public policy. The reason we are tied with Harvard and Columbia for Public Policy, only slightly behind Brookings, is that we are fifteen miles from the sixth largest government in the world, and the largest government in the world that isn't bothered by sovereign issues (like maintaining an army, and issuing currency). This is a wonderfully unique asset. If we make it a Business School, we'll be the 114th such school in America, and it will be twenty years to make the top Fifty. We'll never make the Top Ten. But in Public Policy, Davis is #2, and Berkeley is #8. No one can never catch you."
I looked around the room. Some folk were looking at their shoes with dedication; others had their arms folded, and a few seemed to have glazed eyeballs. Finally, someone muttered, "Hummn. Hadn't thought about it that way." The motion died.
In the restroom later, someone came up to me and said, "He sure is a wise old man. Wow, was that impressive!"
Three months later, I missed the next meeting, as did Kerr. Minutes came out a few weeks later, noting that the motion to rename the school a Business School passed with a strong majority.
Rankings for UC Davis today -- 40th in the nation, gleefully reported on their website as in the TOP 9% of America's 440 MBA programs. They were 54th after twenty years.
Ranking for Public Policy at Berkeley is #1, ahead of Harvard's Kennedy School. Davis is unranked in the Top Forty.
Davis is #2, behind Cornell, in both Vet and Wine Making. How the hell can upstate New York have better wine research than Davis? And, oh by the way, no university has seen fit to specialize in State rather than National public policy. Yes, Californai has fewer people than Germany, England, France, or Italy, but it has four times as much Venture Capital investment money as all four of those countries put together, and more start-ups than all put together, and more Gross "National" exports than all but Germany (viva those big Mercedes, BMWs, and Audis).
And California, by the way, has the most usurious property tax structure of any state in America, unmatched by any country I am aware of -- giving enormous benefit to yesteryear's winners and penalizing today's newcomers. -- with the indefensible Proposition 13, which by the way gutted entirely the program that Kerr espoused about 'free education' for California youth.
Would this have been worth having an independent research group study, comment, and illumine?
We are all losers with this tragic decision by a few short-sighted realtors and bankers. Whew, where did that vent come from?
