Jerry Brown Thinks California Colleges Should Be More Like Chipotle

California Gov. Jerry Brown, who has already attempted to alter the state’s expansive higher education system, says California universities should be more like Chipotle.

“What I like about Chipotle is the limited menu. You stand in the line, get either brown rice or white rice, black beans or pinto beans,” Brown said to the California Chamber of Commerce host breakfast (per The Sacramento Bee), his last appearance there during his last time as governor. “You put a little cheese, a little this, a little that, and you’re out of there. I think that’s a model some of our universities need to follow.”

Brown has previously encouraged California universities to improve their graduate rates, so he makes sense that he believes limiting student’s course choices, like the limited Chipotle menu, will help everyone graduate on time.

“They have so damn many courses because all these professors want to teach one of their pet little projects, but then you get thousands and thousands of courses, and then the basic courses aren’t available. It takes kids six years instead of four years,” Brown said, according to The Bee.

“I know that’s not politically correct, or intellectually correct, because there’s so much to learn,” he added. “But you don’t learn it all in college. You learn most of it after you leave. So, get a good basic education in whatever field you try to do it in and get out of there.”

Brown has also tried to speed up a college education and reduce university expenses with ideas like three-year degree tracks at the University of California and expanded online classes at CSU, but after launching a pilot program, both yielded discouraging results.

On the contrary, universities believe their struggles are due to lacking of funding, and are lobbying this year for hundreds of millions of dollars more than Brown offered in his budget proposal.

But Brown believes that universities should instead “live within their means,” and declined to say whether he would consider the funding increases that lawmakers put in their budget plans for UC this week.

“Brown’s higher education focus this year has been a proposed restructuring of community college funding, based in part on student performance, and his plans for a new online community college,” The Bee reported.