Quote of the day, on California's higher education system

A phenomenon without a doubt, and without a peer:

California is arguably the heaviest-hitting state in any league of higher education. To find something comparable, you would have to aggregate the combined performance of the entire Northeastern United States. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York together have produced precisely as many Shanghai top 50 institutions as California. And they have done so with the head start of an extra century or more of development, with the resources of a combined population base close to twice California's and, of course, with vast amounts of private-pocket financing.

The combined endowments of the 10 top-50 institutions on the East Coast top $80 billion. The West Coast's 10 top-ranked universities have a combined endowment of just over $21 billion, or about one-fourth of what their East Coast counterparts have amassed. Moreover, Stanford alone accounts for more than half of the endowment money held by the West Coast's top universities.

In other words, in terms of bang for the buck, the efficiency of California's university performance is staggering. Only a few state institutions in the Northeastern United States make it into the Shanghai top 50. All the others are plushly upholstered private institutions.

So, whatever happened to California, which finds itself in such a mess today?