Historic Dynamics Shaping the Higher Education Budget in California

The California state budget for higher education has gone through a number of iterations over the years, from the early days when both university systems were funded almost entirely from state general funds to the current day. The behavioral and fiscal attributes of the current process bear many traces of this history. This brief and the histograms that follow describe some of that history, focused on the strands we believe are most helpful to understanding current dynamics:

• Changes in the allocation criteria for the two university systems (including changes in
  funding formulae and performance criteria over the years)
• Changes at the state level both in the sources of general fund revenues and in patterns
  of state spending by functional areas; and
• Changes in understanding the underpinnings of quality in higher education, and the
  relationship between spending and performance.