College Cuts Imperil Dream That Fueled Silicon Valley

California’s culture of innovation, which propelled the growth of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, was built on a public higher-education system that spawned 56 Nobel Prize winners and is home to one campus that produces 1,000 engineers a year.

Now, as governments in China and India boost funding for expansion of their universities, Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed 16 percent cut in the higher-education budget jeopardizes the flow of talent that powers Google Inc., Apple Inc. and the rest of California’s knowledge-based economy. The elite University of California system may no longer be able to guarantee admission to the top 12.5 percent of the state’s high-school seniors. Annual tuition for residents, which was less than $4,500 a decade ago, is scheduled to rise to at least $11,124 in the next school year.