The rankings were based on 10 factors relating to how many graduates started successful companies and to how much help they got from their schools and alumni networks.

Stanford being tops in the world comes as no surprise, given how much it is linked to the emergence of Silicon Valley as the world’s technology center. From the students who launched Google to the hundreds of other science, finance and business whizzes who attended the Palo Alto school, the university, its Graduate School of Business and its Center for Entrepreneurial Studies have served as an enormous economic engine.

USD’s and USC’s presence on the list might seem surprising to those unfamiliar with their histories.

The University of San Diego, like Stanford, also benefits from geography. The La Jolla/Torrey Pines area seven miles from its campus is one of the world’s leading centers of the interconnected fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology and life sciences, along with San Francisco and Boston. The university’s business school has won raves from Business Week and U.S. News and World Report for its “custom” MBA program that provides students who know what fields they want to enter or who are already with a company with coursework that precisely aligns with their needs.

The University of Southern California, located in Inglewood, doesn’t have such a geographic nexus with a tech center, and the prominence of the university’s football team has long cast a shadow over USC’s very ambitious academics programs. But USC’s Marshall School of Business has won vast praise for its Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, which puts a heavy emphasis on having aspiring entrepreneurs develop extensive relationships with successful entrepreneurs, both those from USC and other academic backgrounds. It’s won kudos from Princeton Review, Entrepreneur Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and Business Week.

Three other U.S. MBA programs — all from Massachusetts — made Financial Times’ Top 10. MIT was second, Harvard was fifth and little-known Babson College — which offers only business degrees at its Wellesley campus and has successfully focused on entrepreneurship since its 1919 founding — finished eighth.

Without a job, and apparently not getting one from the embattled Obama administration, he just got hired by USC to be “a professor of practice.” Having been mayor for eight years, one would think he wouldn’t need any more practice.

He also “will be a principal in the newly formed USC Villaraigosa Initiative for Restoring the California Dream, designed to focus on governance, public-private partnerships and social innovation. He’ll also lecture to graduate and undergraduate classes on public-sector management,” according to the Daily News.

It’s a bafflement how someone who helped destroy the California Dream will be able to help restore it.

This is the second political coup for USC. Last year it nabbed the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, thanks to hefty donations from Der Terminator (of California prosperity).

The USC Villaraigosa Initiative for Restoring the California Dream and the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy should join together for a symposium, “Tony and Arnold’s Excellent Adventure Destroying L.A. and CA.”

By John Seiler

Last week, über-moderate, Herr Post-Partisan Depression, ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger funded a new think tank in his dishonor at USC. As if he hadn’t done enough in his seven years as governor to wreck the state.

According to the statement on Arnold’s site, the think tank will be:

“Focused on bipartisan solutions to local and global issues….The USC Schwarzenegger Institute will focus on the responsibility of leaders to transcend partisanship to implement policies that most benefit the people they serve.”

The statement quoted Arnold:

“This institute is dedicated to promoting a new era of post-partisanship, where solutions are the result of intelligent and civil discussion between people with deeply held principles who understand the need to work through their disagreements to achieve real solutions. Knowing USC’s reputation as one of the nation’s leading policy schools, I could think of no better home for this institute.”

My sources at USC have obtained for me the courses to be offered at the USC Schwarzenegger Institute:

Econ. 372: How to spend your state into bankruptcy.

Business 313: How to destroy businesses with tax increases.

Psychology 243: How to cheat on your wife and hide it from her for a decade.

Ecology 234: How to con people into believing the global warming hoax.

Politics 432: How to get elected on promises of balancing the budget and not increasing taxes, then do the opposite once elected.

Communications 132: How to convince people you’re a moderate-post-partisan Republican, when you’re really a liberal Democrat.

Health 243: How to build your bodybuilding career by repeatedly injecting steroids into your body.

Film 379: How to build your personal wealth to $700 million starring in cheesy sci-fi flicks.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — The new USC study pointing to a much-slower rate of population growth in California has been greeted by demographers and urban planners as good news, in that it supposedly gives our state’s leaders a little breathing room to better plan for the future. The rate of growth has slowed to about 1 percent a year, the result of fewer immigrants coming here and many Californians heading to other states.

“The cooling pace means the state, city and county governments and other entities will have more time to prepare for a bigger population than they did in years past, allowing for more effective planning,” according to the Los Angeles Times, paraphrasing the study’s authors. “That could ensure that new roads and parks, for example, are put in areas where they are most needed and where growth is likely to be sustained, they said.”

That’s an absurdly optimistic spin. California’s elected officials have been doing as little planning as possible, unless one counts planning to spend tens of billions of dollars the state doesn’t have on a high-speed rail line that will partially replicate what the airlines already do. Our leaders are battling new water-storage facilities and punishing farmers with absurd water-use restrictions. They impose roadblocks to building new highway systems, and land-use regulations make it nearly impossible to build the homes and businesses necessary to meet the needs of a growing population. You can hardly call that planning.

Declining growth

The state is still growing, but this decline in the rate of growth is a symbolic turning point: The California Dream is over. People don’t want to come here even though this is, with little question, the most beautiful state in the union. Americans – even those who like to mock our state – ought to think about what this means for our nation.

California has always been a magnet – a land that has attracted people from across the nation and the world. It’s a place that was known for its entrepreneurial spirit and open culture. But it has been turned into a regulatory and tax nightmare, a place where those who already have money can live in their coastal palaces and enjoy the splendor of the landscapes, but where it’s unnecessarily difficult to move one’s way up the economic ladder. The USC study doesn’t reveal anything new as much as it confirms established trends.

Four million more people have left California for other states in the past two decades than have come here from other states, according to demographer Joel Kotkin. The population growth has been coming mainly from immigrants and in-state births, but now the USC study shows that immigrants are going elsewhere. A cynic might say that California’s liberal elites have ended the state’s contentious battles over illegal immigration by destroying opportunities here.

Kotkin, an old-time liberal, sees troubling trends. “Basically, if you don’t own a piece of Facebook or Google, and you haven’t robbed a bank and don’t have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak,” he said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. “The new regime wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles.” He says the state is run for the benefit of the very rich, the very poor and public employees.

Unhealthy society

This is not a healthy society. And the demographic changes point to an aging population. Far from reducing the burdens on the state government, this will increase them. State officials are not building to meet future needs, but they have been squandering future dollars on excessive pay and pension packages for public employees. Look for a battle between spending to provide services for lower-income Californians and retirement benefits for the most powerful special interest group in the state, public employees.

There’s no chance the state’s most serious fiscal issues will be solved or even addressed soon. Earlier this month, Democratic Assembly leaders announced that they have no time to deal with the governor’s modest pension reform plan. They do have time to deal with hundreds of other bills, most of which range from the silly to the crazy. What’s the chance they will handle any of the other issues restricting California’s economy?

Gov. Jerry Brown points to economic growth in Silicon Valley as evidence of the success of his policies, but that area is an anomaly. The rest of the state is struggling. The anti-business, anti-growth policies pursued by Brown’s party will not make the situation better. People fleeing California are small-business owners, young families and tax-producers. They also tend to be more Republican, which means that, as the exodus grows, so, too, will grow the state’s tax and political problems. There will be fewer taxpayers and less political competition.

California’s leaders want a slower-growing population. Many Californians, even more conservative ones, will be happy that there will be fewer people and less development. But it’s disturbing that California’s official policy has been to punish people who want to pursue their dreams here. The state’s draconian land-use policies involve limiting growth, thus inflating the cost of property near the coast and pushing less-affluent people inland and to other states.

“What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s,” Kotkin said, pointing to the “smart-growth” policies that dominate development decisions across California.

California remains a beautiful place, but it no longer is the destination for entrepreneurs, free spirits and dreamers. These are the fruits of modern-day progressive policies. This should be the cause of much sadness.

By Wayne Lusvardi

When will California’s population “pop” at 50 million persons?  Two recent studies conducted by the Population Dynamics Research Group at the University of Souther California and the Public Policy Institute of California differ widely in their conclusions.

The main conclusions of the two studies differ as to the timing that new roads, electric grids, sewers and telecommunications infrastructure may be needed.

USC: “The population slowdown may bring reprieve to a fiscally strapped state under pressure to keep up with infrastructure needs.”

PPIC: “Growth will put pressure on infrastructure.”

PPIC forecasted California would reach 50 million people by 2032. That’s 20 years from now. Its numbers were based on California Department of Finance data from 2007 and updated in 2010.

USC’s forecast is for California’s population to reach 50 million by 2046. That’s 34 years from now. The USC forecast is the first to use data from the 2010 U.S. Census.

The USC forecast sees California reaching 50 million people 14 years later than PPIC.  This would put less time pressure on planners and decision makers to finance and build out public improvements needed to serve a population of 13 million million people.  That is about four mega-cities the size of the city of Los Angeles.

Where Would They Live?

The PPIC forecast sees the growth being spread out mostly in the inland areas of the state. That’s different from the central planning policies of the state Legislature in tandem with regional planning agencies that want to steer that growth mainly toward “urban infill” locations in already highly populated areas to alleviate “urban sprawl.”  These agencies include the Association of Bay Area Governments in northern California and the Southern California Association of Governments.

Central planners foresee putting one-half to two-thirds of this new population in apartments and condominiums around existing population centers. Historically, California growth has been about two-thirds from single family homes in the suburbs and inland counties.

The USC study does not contain a forecast of the locations where population growth would be the greatest. However, the USC study indicates that most new growth would be from “California born” residents rather than those “foreign born” or “born in other states.”

As suburbs and inland areas are where there are a greater proportion of families, this presumes that growth would be in suburbs and inland areas.  Once again, this would run against the mandates of central planners and SB 375, the “anti-urban sprawl” bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008.  Diverting population growth to “infill” areas of highly populated cities will put greater pressure on water supplies than allowing population to spread to suburbs and inland areas.

Fewer Immigrants?

Concurrently with the release of the USC study, the Pew Hispanic Center issued a report concluding that foreign immigration has come to a standstill, and may even be reversing  The USC study likewise sees the major reason for slower population growth as a leveling off of foreign immigration.

The PEW study claimed that about 900,000 fewer immigrants have come to the U.S. since 2008 than were expected. That is about 225,000 fewer immigrants per year in the.   In the last 40 years, about 12 million people came here, reflecting about 300,000 per year. Half of those foreign born coming to the U.S. were illegal.

But Where Would They Get Water?

The 14 more years to build major infrastructure forecasted by USC would not apply to California’s water situation. California has only about one-half year of water storage in its combined state and federal water systems, compared to about four to 10 years of water storage along the Colorado River water system. Since 2000, environmentalists have diverted five “waterless” water bonds — Propositions 12, 13, 40, 50 and 84 — totaling $18.7 billion mainly for open space acquisitions and environmental studies.  That would be enough to build about four to eight major water reservoirs.

Where California’s future population is going to get its water is still in question.