Should we "privatize" parts of the University of California, as some have suggested? The mere mention of the idea is enough to start a war. In fact, I've learned never to use the term to describe the goals for my law school, Berkeley's Boalt Hall, because, frankly, it confuses more than illuminates.
But we do need to think about substantive structural changes in the way we do business. To understand how I view the future here at Boalt Hall, it is important to distinguish between our mission, our governance and our financing.
I am not interested in privatizing Boalt Hall's mission. The university's overall mission is to provide public access to world-class excellence at a bargain price. Unlike the UC undergraduate programs, we've never offered "mass" education -- we're too small for that -- but affordability has always been a top goal.
Yet the state is increasingly unwilling or unable to pay for excellence, so escalating tuition, partially offsetting neglectful appropriations, threatens to make the bargain a cherished memory.
Tuition for California residents at Boalt Hall, where I became dean last July, is about $22,000. That is roughly two-thirds of what Stanford and Harvard law schools charge, and double what Boalt charged just four years ago. Ten years ago, Boalt cost only a third of the top privates, and I regularly see alumni who, a generation ago, got three years of a world-class legal education for a total of $750.
So if we aren't mass, and the bargain is at risk, what is "public" about our mission? First, a great public law school must be inclusive to produce leaders for all communities and sectors. Higher tuitions forced by state cuts must be countered with strong financial aid policies and loan forgiveness for public interest graduates.
Second, we have an obligation to harness our excellence in teaching and research so that we can help tackle the toughest, most critical problems facing California, the nation and the world. The best lawyers are problem-solvers, and the best public law schools should be leveraging their intellectual capital to make a difference not just in the private sphere but in the public arena as well. Contributions that trickle by chance from a private university can, if we keep our eyes on the prize, flood forth from a great public one.
That's our public mission, and I don't intend to jeopardize it.
