UNFAVORABLE CORRELATION OF FORCES. Via Newmark's Door, an Economic Principals column illustrating what happens when state stinginess accompanies faction fighting, this time in the economics department at UCLA (motto: On! Wisconsin!)

Something is clearly wrong at UCLA. Some of the problem must have to do with the university's administration -- but not all. "Because of the way private university endowments are managed, they have grown substantially," says Gary Hansen, the current chairman. State budget appropriations haven't kept pace.

He's right, of course. Being a good economics department in a public university has gotten harder. The California system in particular has seen compensation become a political football. But Berkeley and San Diego economics haven't lost half their roster (though Berkeley's department, in particular, is besieged by offers.) And some outsiders maintain that the situation at UCLA is not so much a distressing sign of the growing disparity between public and private universities' funding than it is the kind of supernova that occasionally occurs in small organizations when big egos clash.

Do we really need more confirmation that there is a flight to quality in higher education? And that there are gains from trade between students and faculty? And there's excess demand for places at "selective" universities? That said, there still appears to be an excess supply of faction fighters.

"UCLA is a mess, no matter what the people you've talked to have to say about it," says one competitor. "It's not very much due to their public status, either, but to a cataclysmic split in the department. One group of true-believers blocks every appointment that the other group wants to make and vice versa. I've heard this time after time from the people there that we've interviewed. Still another example of people who think they're geniuses acting like pinheads."

Nothing quite like collective wisdom to make people dumb.