As an investment, educating, retaining, and attracting talented students in California would seem like a fundamentally positive way to raise the tax revenue in the state. Those university students will often work and start businesses where they are educated. We've seen recent articles with charts on individual ROI for college education cost vs additional future income - that should translate to long term increased state revenue.<p>I think the mistake of the article is to focus to much on budget costs, and too little on where value generation could be - not just as an abstract social good, but as a way to prioritize and or structure funding which yields a very real return on investment.