The past few weeks have seen news story after news story about state budgets in trouble and the bad ramifications for higher education.  The University of Illinois is holding a $436 million IOU from the state, which is making it challenging to meet payroll. On Jan. 6, interim president Stanley Ikenberry notified staff that nonunion employees making over $30,000 a year would be furloughed four days of pay and  top administrators would take a 10-day pay cut. Michigan's governor is bracing residents for 25 percent cuts to state public universities in the next fiscal year.

New York's picture is bleak as well, with the state facing a $6.8 billion deficit for the current year and the governor proposing midyear cuts of $90 million for SUNY, $53 million for CUNY and $15.7 million for the community colleges.

But California still leads the pack for devastation.  It's so bad that Gov. Schwarzenegger  is even rethinking the state's investment in the prison system. He is proposing "a constitutional guarantee that California will never spend more money on prisons than on higher education."

In the current issue of the Professional Staff Congress Clarion, California Federation of Teachers communications head Fred Glass has provided an excellent overview of how California went from having one of the finest public university systems in the nation, to one that turns away hundreds of thousands of students.   It's a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation. And our unions there are fighting to change the ending.