University Budget Crisis Solved!
Introducing 'Cal-State At San Cape Girardeau'

It's no secret that California is struggling with a political system that is gridlocked by special interest groups and whose citizens enjoy a host of entitlements that other states -- such as Missouri -- can only dream about.

Oh sure, California is having a problem paying for all those entitlements and its government is facing a $20 billion shortfall in revenue, but who cares? California's GDP is so humungous that even with that state government's budget apparently being managed by Pluto when he's not busy having his picture taken at DisneyLand, it still ranks in the top 10 economies in the world and is responsible for about 1/8 of the entire U.S. GDP.

They'll eventually get it fixed. Maybe.

I recently read a story about California college students protesting having to pay more for their education because subsidies for higher education were going to be reduced due to the state's huge deficit.

A lot of students were upset. People don't like their entitlements being monkey-ed with.

While reading about this situation, I noticed that even with budget cuts California STILL subsidizes its public Universities nearly $13,000 a year per student. In comparison, SEMO typically gets about a third of that from the state of Missouri.

That's when a brilliant thought occurred to me.

California is such a ginormous, bureaucratic clusterpuppy, what if SEMO covertly became part of the California State higher education system? We wouldn't do it forever, since eventually someone in the Golden State might actually notice. But I bet we could pull off the ruse for a year or two, just long enough to siphon off some additional funding for SEMO.

Really, California has so many public university campuses -- 33 between the Cal State and University of California systems -- that I don't think anyone would notice campus number 34. To make us sound even more Californian we could call ourselves California State University at San Cape Girardeau.

To help increase our scheme's air of authenticity, the University would probably need to create a dummy website -- CalStateSanCapeGirardeau.edu -- with doctored photos of our current campus with all the California accoutrements -- palm trees, mountains, beaches and celebrities.

But, I feel our ace-in-the-hole is the fact that SEMO already has a kind of connection to the California public university system.

SEMO's president from 1979 to 1989 was the almost universally beloved Dr. Bill Stacy. He left SEMO to become the founding president for California State University at San Marcos where he served for eight years.

If some California state auditor starts sniffing around, asking questions like "where exactly are these 10,000 students who attend Cal State -- San Cape Girardeau?" we will just drop Dr. Stacy's name and say it's close to San Marcos. The auditor will probably assume it is some kind of satellite campus.

At thirteen grand per student, just one year of being a part of the CalState higher ed system would bring in nearly $130 million in extra revenue to SEMO. That would not only compensate for our own state slashing subsidies to higher education, we could even afford to build TWO more River Campuses along with a few more fountains.

We might even be able to buy a palm tree or two.