DEGREES: UC Officials Assail Cal State Plan to Offer Doctorates : Cal State’s Doctoral Plan Assailed by UC Officials

Firing the first rounds in a new turf war within the state’s higher education system, the president of the University of California and several UC regents on Thursday sharply criticized a recently announced plan by California State University to begin offering doctoral degrees.

UC President David P. Gardner, speaking at a regents’ meeting at UCLA, called the Cal State plan “a radical departure from (the state university’s) . . . assigned role” under the California Master Plan for Higher Education.

Designed to limit competition among the state’s colleges and universities, the California Master Plan, adopted in 1960, calls for the nine-campus UC system to offer graduate and professional degrees, as well as to provide the locus for the state’s major scientific and scholarly research. Under the plan, the 11-campus Cal State system is to focus almost solely on undergraduate education.

UC Regent Edward Carter, chairman of Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc. and one of the earliest proponents of the master plan, said at Thursday’s meeting that he “could not agree more” that the Legislature should block Cal State’s move to begin offering doctoral degrees.

“Nothing could be more damaging,” to California’s system of higher education, Carter said. “It would create competition for research (dollars). The state simply cannot afford it.”

Carter’s sentiments were echoed by a number of other regents.

Cal State Chancellor W. Anne Reynolds was in San Francisco Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Reynolds said Wednesday in announcing the Cal State plan that, given the shortage of teachers and engineers, the “demand is clearly there” for Cal State to begin offering doctoral degrees in at least some subjects.

Gardner, however, questioned that assumption. He suggested that added doctoral programs would be designed primarily to produce scholars rather than practitioners in education and engineering.

UC Study Planned

Gardner said his staff will initiate its own study of the situation in preparation for a review of the Master Plan of Higher Education that is being conducted by a commission established last year by the Legislature.

“Should further study suggest there is an unmet need for doctoral degrees, the university is prepared to address that need,” Gardner added in a statement.

Moreover, Gardner indicated his displeasure that Reynolds announced the plan before consulting with him.

“I have to wonder why,” he told reporters. “It is not characteristic of our relationship.”

A spokesman for the Cal State system said Thursday that in fact discussions between the staffs of the two universities “have occurred over several months.” He added that he expects further, more detailed discussions in the coming months.

Some members of the UC board also speculated that a desire to usurp UC’s role was behind another decision by Cal State trustees on Wednesday to raise admission standards to their campuses.

Carter said he had “no doubt” the two actions were related.

The tougher admissions policy calls for Cal State applicants to take a full college preparatory program in high school, similar to the program required of UC applicants.

Admissions Standards

Under the master plan, students who are in the top 12% of their graduating classes are admissible to UC, while students in the top third of their classes are admissible to Cal State. Although UC has long specified course requirements for admission, Cal State began only last year to specify the courses that high school applicants must complete to be admissible to that system.

Many minority educators have objected to the increased admission standards at Cal State on the grounds that it would exclude blacks and Latinos from the Cal State system.

Meanwhile, UC officials patted themselves on the back Thursday for increasing their enrollment of minorities.

According to a report presented to the regents by the UC administration, four campuses--UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and UC Berkeley--have freshman classes in which ethnic minorities account for nearly 50% of enrollment. Although the bulk of those students are Asian-Americans, who as a group have even better academic records than do white students, enrollment of all minority groups is on the rise.

‘Reached Parity’

UCLA reached a milestone this fall in recruiting minority students. This year, for the first time, UCLA has “reached parity” for newly enrolled black and Latino students. That is, the percentage of blacks and Latino students in UCLA’s freshman class now equals the statewide high school graduation rate for those two groups.

According to the study, blacks made up 9.9% of those freshmen students admitted this fall at UCLA, Chicanos or Mexican-Americans were 11.7%, and other Latinos 5.4%.

At UCLA, minority students as a whole made up 49.2% of those admitted to the freshman class. At Irvine the figure was 43.4%, San Diego reported 33.1%, Berkeley 43%, Riverside 36.3%, Santa Barbara 20.2%, Davis 30.8% and Santa Cruz 24%.

Overall in the UC system, 73% of those minority students who were admitted actually enrolled. That compares to 32% of all admitted students. Final enrollment figures for each ethnic group are to be released in February.

Although UC has had success in recruiting minority students, the system has had difficulty in retaining them. The graduation rate for white students at UCLA, for example, was 60% between 1978 and 1983, compared to 59% for Asians, 37% for blacks and 40% for Latinos.