What if the the University of California system lost state funding?

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

The University of California-Berkeley's law and business schools were once largely supported by the state. Now they're just "state-assisted." In the future, they may be merely state-located.

Faced with a huge state deficit, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer recently suggested the unthinkable: abandoning the entire UC system, a move that would eventually save California an estimated $7 billion a year.

While Lockyer says the concept is simply intended to "generate discussion," it haunts a system already suffering from a steady erosion of funding.

Increasingly, UC campuses reach deep into the private sector for support. And they are not alone: Across the nation, major public universities are shifting away from taxpayer financing. University of Michigan President James J. Duderstadt calls his campus a "privately supported public university."

While UC-Berkeley's Haas Business School and Boalt Law School are public in name, almost three-quarters of their funds already come from tuition and private contributions. UC's undergraduate campuses still rely on the state for much of their budgets - but the subsidy has plummeted 35 percent since 1990.

It's time to separate education from state.