Berkley, Calif. ? Corey Goodman and Carla Shatz had a grand vision for the University of California here: to build the greatest neuroscience program in the world, to figure out how brains work, and to cure disease.

But there was no money to build their neuroscience center or equip high-tech laboratories.

Today, Shatz is pursuing similar research at Harvard Medical School, and Goodman is chief executive of a biotechnology company that develops drugs to treat neurological disease.

“I was told, ‘Corey, help us raise money for X, Y and Z, and then we’ll get around to yours,'” said Goodman, who took a leave of absence in 2001 to start Renovis and resigned his tenured position last year. “I didn’t want to wait five years for my turn to come up. When I see something is good for society and good for research, I want to go for it.”

Goodman is just one of the prestigious researchers who have abandoned the university in recent years in part because UC Berkeley cannot afford to build enough labs, upgrade technology or even keep the floors shiny.

As voters consider Proposition 1D, the $10.4 billion bond measure to benefit California’s schools, colleges and universities, UC Berkeley’s is a cautionary tale about what happens when the state fails to invest enough money to keep its foundation healthy, let alone accommodate growth.

As it strains to keep up with technological innovation, protect against earthquakes and safeguard its reputation while absorbing a decade of enrollment growth, UC Berkeley could be a stand in for the state that created it.

The oldest school in the University of California system, Berkeley is ranked as the leading public university in America by U.S. News & World Report.

But it sits atop the Hayward Fault and has spent more than $300 million in the past 20 years retrofitting aging buildings to meet stiff seismic standards. It needs twice that and another decade to complete the job.

The campus has nearly $600 million in deferred maintenance costs and struggles to keep roofs patched, pipes sound, heating and ventilation systems working. It no longer washes windows, waxes floors, replaces worn carpets or paints interior walls.

Plastic sheeting is tacked above sensitive equipment in some physics labs as protection from dripping pipes. The music department chairwoman raided research funds two years ago to paint dingy hallways so donors wouldn’t turn away. Only 30 percent of the university’s classrooms are equipped with updated teaching technology.

The School of Public Health’s main building cannot be seismically retrofitted and is slated for demolition. There is no money to build a replacement, said Dean Stephen Shortell.

Nervous administrators hope that other distinguished faculty won’t turn their backs on the Bay Area. And they worry about how long their university’s stellar reputation can last in the face of state budget constraints and wealthy Ivy League competitors.

“We are in a war for our intellectual talent right now with major institutions that are far better funded than we are,” said A. Richard Newton, dean of Berkeley’s College of Engineering. “We as a society just have to decide: Is this something that we’re prepared to invest in or not?”

One of the fiercest battles is over renowned bioengineer Luke P. Lee, an expert in the field of bio-nanotechnology who is on a leave of absence.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has made Lee a full professor for system-nanobiology, crowing in a press release that he is “one of the world’s leading experts in the area of micro fluidics and ‘Lab-on-a-Chip’ technology.”

Lee did not respond to requests for comment. But Berkeley administrators said the Zurich-based institute made the bioengineer a “staggering” offer of facilities and financial support – something they could never meet. They remain hopeful that Berkeley’s cachet can woo him back.

Although Berkeley is a state institution, it receives less than 30 percent of its annual expenditures from the state’s general fund, down from about 50 percent in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through the years, the university has grown, but state funding has not kept up. A combination of federal grants and contracts, tuition and philanthropy accounts for the rest of its funding.

According to the UC capital budget, the 32,347-student university needs more capital investment than any other campus in the 10-school system. But it often receives less.