The Wall Street Journal's survey of corporate recruiters had good news for big public universities. Even at a time when many such institutions face budget cuts, companies looking to hire prefer graduates of big schools such as Penn State, Texas A&M, and the University of Illinois.
The bad news? Only one California school -- UCLA -- made the top 25 on the Journal's list.
Barring some problem with the survey's methodology, the best explanation is that other state universities are more willing to parnter directly with professors and students at the universities. Such partnerships often come under criticism in the academic world as examples of corporatization or privatization. Hostility to the corporate world on California campuses may explain why other universities do better.
Whatever the reason, the ranking is jarring because University of California schools rank so high in more traditional surveys of academic reputation and quality of student body. At a time when the unemployment rate in the state is above 12 percent, this survey, at the very least, is an occasion to ask some hard questions of the state's higher education leaders.
