Jerry Brown: Higher Ed Should Be Like Chipotle

Inside Higher Ed

Jerry Brown: Higher Ed Should Be Like Chipotle

May 25, 2018

California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, is in his last year in office, and he got in some swipes at higher education during a speech Wednesday at the California Chamber of Commerce. “What I like about Chipotle is the limited menu. You stand in the line, get either brown rice or white rice, black beans or pinto beans. You put a little cheese, a little this, a little that, and you’re out of there. I think that’s a model some of our universities need to follow,” Brown said, according to an account in The Sacramento Bee. He said that if universities would adopt a “limited-menu concept, everyone would graduate on time.”

Brown said that the abundance of course offerings hurts graduation rates. “They have so damn many courses because all these professors want to teach one of their pet little projects, but then you get thousands and thousands of courses, and then the basic courses aren’t available. It takes kids six years instead of four years,” he said.