California has good universities!

From the Academic rankings of world universities:

1. Harvard University (private)

2. Stanford University (private)

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (private)

4. University of California, Berkeley (public)

5. University of Cambridge (British)

6. California Institute of Technology (private)

7. Princeton University (private)

8. Columbia University (private)

9. University of Chicago (private)

10. University of Oxford (British)

11. Yale University (private)

12. University of California, Los Angeles (public)

13. Cornell University (private)

14. University of Pennsylvania (private)

15. University of California, San Diego (public)

16. University of Washington (public)

17. University of California, San Francisco (public)

18. The Johns Hopkins University (private)

19. University of Wisconsin - Madison (public)

20. University College London (British)

Some interesting patterns immediately jump out.  Of the top 20 schools,  17 are American, which is pretty impressive given the share of the world population held by the United States.  Of the 17 American schools, six of them are public (which is amazing given how many resources the private schools have).  Of the public schools, 4 of them are in California.

So why are we discussing the need to privatize California higher education, which combines extremely high quality with relatively low tuition?  I mean seriously, is there no other public university system in the nation that we can focus on?  Or is it merely that reformers want to destroy the example of well done public education?

The whole argument strikes me as insane.