Like so many recent law school graduates, Seth Benkle searched vainly for a job after graduating from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento in 2010, increasingly stressed about his $160,000 in student loans, interest accruing.

Forget books, exams and professors. The campus buzz at Stockton’s University of the Pacific is about the hottest new idea in off-campus housing: Lofts at the University Plaza Waterfront Hotel.

Andrew Nelson was raised in the horse-dotted hinterlands of Sacramento, served in the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan and Iraq, attended community college in Rocklin and is set to attend a prestigious four-year university in hopes of becoming a teacher and education administrator.

I find myself getting hot under the collar every time I read another story or report on the pitiful state of public education in California.

As legislators duke it out in the Capitol and college regents slash services and raise fees, Adam Thongsavat is viewing education in California a bit differently. Namely, the UC Davis senior has been watching the growing line of students waiting for free food.

While institutions of higher learning across the state are reeling from budget cuts, tuition hikes, course reductions and faculty and student unrest, Chancellor Linda Katehi has calmly put together a business plan for expansion and prosperity at UC Davis.

The headlines are the same in nearly every state: massive cuts in higher education budgets, faculty and staff layoffs, tuition hikes and students locked out of a college education because of rising costs. Our nation’s economic distress is taking a huge toll on our colleges, universities and future work force.

It’s been said a down economy is a boon for Masters of Business Administration programs. The fact that the region has kept the healthy crop of MBA schools it had in 2007, before the economy turned, and even added one would suggest the maxim holds true. But it’s no free ride.

The University of the Pacific arrived from San Jose in 1924, planting a brick-and-ivy educational institution in the heart of the San Joaquin agricultural community. Since then, it’s grown to become the second-largest private employer in the county. But, school officials say, the university can still do more in the business community.

Ask virtually anyone in the business community what Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration must do to repair our state’s broken economy, and over and again the answer is the same: improve education.