In response to Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget cuts across the board, University of California bureaucrats are threatening to turn away applicants despite the system’s pledge to accept every qualified California student.
This is just the old Washington Monument play: when an agency is threatened with budget cuts, it responds by threatening to cut the agency’s most popular service in a way that will get people emotional. The hope is that weak politicians will back down rather than firing the administrators and replacing them with competent managers who know how to make sensible cuts.
And well, given that Govenor Schwarzenegger is in a bit of an apologetic mood, the UC people just might beat the girly man with this trick.