USING COMMON SENSE ARNOLD'S UNIVERSITY COMPACT IS PROMISING.

Byline: JILL STEWART  Capitol Punishment

OF the many complaints by Democrats about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget ideas, the most telling was the bitterness by some toward side deals he hammered out with leaders from higher education, who agreed to temporary budget cutbacks and increased student fees.

Facing a roughly $15 billion deficit, Schwarzenegger worked out a so- called compact, just as three governors have before him, in hopes of extricating higher education from the budget fight. But the governor's deal to cut $660 million from universities goes beyond previous compacts. It requires new accountability from the two university systems that spend taxpayers' money but resist reform.

Currently, the California State University system churns out some of the most miseducated teachers anywhere. The Schwarzenegger compact requires CSU to work with the University of California system to prepare math and science majors for teaching careers.

Producing teachers who can handle math and science has been discussed ad nauseum for 20 years. Now, it's suddenly being addressed in the compact.

The compact also requires new systemwide accountability. For example, both CSU and UC agreed to monitor the number of years students take to graduate, and take steps to end the absurd practice in which students linger on for five or six years to get a four-year degree.

This ``time inflation,'' caused in part by the universities' own failure to provide for orderly completion of required courses, causes lingering undergraduates to take up space and creates all sorts of unnecessary extra costs. What a mess.

The governor also addressed the long overdue need to raise university tuition to bring it in line with reality. University tuition is so heavily subsidized by California's taxpayers that even with the proposed fee hikes, the price to students will still be far below the national average.

A proposed fee increase of 14 percent next year means UC students will pay only $6,230. Elsewhere in the nation, similar public universities charge an average of $7,420, even though California's universities have higher labor and overhead costs than most states. California kids will still be heavily subsidized. They will still pay $1,200 less than tuition paid at top public universities nationally.

Most previous higher education compacts agreed to by governors have been approved by the Legislature. So how to explain the caterwauling we heard from several legislative Democrats all week?

Seeing Assembly members Wilma Chan, Jackie Goldberg, Marco Firebaugh, Dario Frommer and others decry the compact left me amused. Some of these folks have spent inordinate effort dreaming up ways to tax Californians, yet have done little to bring accountability or reform to costly state services like the UC and CSU systems.

Goldberg railed against the compact as a dark document intended to break promises made to California students, declaring, ``no backroom deal by three guys in suits is going to undo that deal.''

Do you remember those Democrats who secretly met last year, and furtively discussed the possibility of stringing out the California fiscal crisis in order to persuade fed-up citizens to welcome new taxes? The scheming by those Assembly Democrats, whom I call ``The Squawkbox Seven,'' was overheard throughout the Capitol because they didn't realize an intercom was turned on, broadcasting their discussion into hundreds of offices.

When you hear Goldberg harumph about meetings in back rooms, it's worth noting that she ran the meeting of the Squawkbox Seven.

On May 11, Goldberg demanded to know how Schwarzenegger's plan to limit college fee increases to an average of 10 percent per year helps families whose incomes don't go up.

It's not complicated. If families know annual increases will be stable and can't skyrocket, they can plan ahead, save and belt-tighten. That's how families, even of limited means, approach a budget.

But for years now, planning ahead and behaving like grown-ups has not been a working concept in Sacramento. And this, I think, is really what Schwarzenegger is up against as he wades into his first budget battle. Somehow, the governor has to persuade dozens of legislators who are accustomed to wallowing in illogic to begin using common sense.

As Schwarzenegger is about to learn, even if you've got the leaders of two of the best university systems in the nation standing with you, common sense remains a priceless ability that cannot be taught.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger shakes hands Tuesday with students from a school in Stockton, Calif.

Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press