The recently issued rankings of the world's universities by the Times of London Higher Education supplement ranks five University of California campuses as among the 100 best universities in the world. No other state has more than one university in this highly influential international ranking, while 42 states – and many countries – have none.

Of private universities in the western United States, only Stanford and Cal Tech make this list. UCLA and Berkeley rank as the second and third best public universities in the nation. In separate ratings of subject areas, UCLA and Berkeley make the top 20 in the world in life sciences and biomedicine, social sciences, arts and humanities, and technology. Yet due to state funding cuts, almost all of their faculties are on part-time layoffs.

There was a time not long ago when such a scenario would have been hard to imagine. It is UC's stellar reputation, after all, achieved over generations, and in times both good and bad, that has allowed it to capture the external funding that supports most of its activities.

It is this reputation that draws some of the best talent and sharpest minds on the globe to our campuses, offering students a world-class education and our industries a rich source of talent and leadership. The UC system, created by and for the people of our state, may well be California's greatest asset in a globalized economy. Examples abound.

The No. 1-ranked medical center in the western United States is a UC hospital, providing cutting-edge research and superior health care. UC's contributions to diversity and excellence are reflected in the fact that no other university in the United States trains as many Asian and Latino Ph.D.s as UCLA. California's world-renowned, multibillion-dollar wine industry is directly attributable to the viticulture program at UC Davis.

It is hard to imagine a great high-tech industry without UC researchers and students. It is more than ironic that in this time of intensified international competition for innovation to rescue both our economy and our environment, the state should drastically cut funding to this reservoir of outstanding intellectual capital, including a crippling 20 percent reduction this year alone, with drastic cuts predicted for 2010, and no relief in sight.

Great universities are the product of generations who sacrificed to invest in the future, based on a belief that we owe future generations the same, or better, opportunities than we have had. But they are also vulnerable institutions, because many of the people – scholars and students alike – who make them great are sought after by other universities, which now offer much better resources, conditions and support.

This year, the university has virtually stopped recruiting young scholars to fill research and teaching vacancies, directly threatening its ability to stay at the forefront of research and knowledge. In recent years the University of California has been asked to step up to the challenge of helping to inspire and prepare California's K-12 students, especially those in low-performing schools, to pursue a college dream. But it is slashing these efforts in the face of declining resources, and it can no longer promise students that a seat will be waiting for them if it must continue to cut away at the core of its personnel.

More students than ever are seeking a UC education, but fewer spaces will be available to accommodate them; our campus had to cut 10 percent of its classes this year.

This depressing spectacle of economic crisis, legislative deadlock, devastating cutbacks to people in need across the state and vetoes of the budget by a minority have paralyzed California's leaders. When the state was much less rich it invested in creating this remarkable system. With greater wealth today, we are abdicating our stewardship of this tremendous asset that was bequeathed to us by a much more generous and forward-thinking public.

We have heard nothing from the governor and surprisingly little from our own UC president about the dangerous effects of these cuts. UC has chosen instead to shield the public from the unraveling of a great university, hiding the consequences and forcing faculty on part-time pay to teach larger classes full-time.

As a state, we must determine how committed we are to keeping the resource of world-class universities. Will our leaders allow the UC system to wither as they did our public schools, or let the strongest UC campuses become the privatized domain of the wealthy? Would the people of California really prefer to forgo an oil severance tax – which every other oil-producing state charges – or a restored vehicle license fee, than to preserve this great asset for their children? Perhaps we need to ask them.

In this emergency, we need to transcend short-term political thinking and face the fact that we're burning the furniture. We must tax something somewhere to sustain higher education and other vital functions of state government, or we will be paying for it with a deeply diminished future.

Education professors Patricia Gándara and Gary Orfield are co-directors of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.