Cal State Rebuffed on Educational Doctorates

The California State University system lost considerable ground Monday to the University of California in the heated turf war over who should offer doctoral degrees in educational administration.

In a staff report presented at a meeting in Los Angeles, the California Postsecondary Education Commission, an influential advisory board to the governor and the Legislature, concluded that 14 accredited doctoral programs in the field of education offered by the UC system and the state’s private universities are sufficient to meet the state’s needs in the foreseeable future.

Although the governor and the Legislature will have the final word on Cal State’s plan to broaden its offerings, the commission’s analyses on most university matters are weighed heavily and rarely, if ever, are disregarded by lawmakers in Sacramento.

Officials at UC, who have been lobbying hard against Cal State’s proposal for months, said they are delighted with the commission’s findings. In a letter to the commission, the Assn. of California Independent Colleges and Universities also applauded the commission’s conclusions.

Cal State administrators and trustees, however, are far from pleased and vowed to continue fighting for the authority to expand the university’s offerings, despite much private speculation among state policy makers in recent days that the issue is all but dead.

‘Much Too Global’

Claudia H. Hampton, who sits on both the commission and Cal State’s Board of Trustees, called the commission’s findings “flawed” and its conclusions “much too global.”

Since the fall of 1985, Cal State has been waging a statewide campaign to begin offering doctoral degrees, a role reserved for UC under the Legislature’s 1960 Master Plan for Education.

Under the plan, designed to limit competition for funds and duplication of offerings, the 19-campus Cal State system has been restricted primarily to undergraduate education, while the nine-campus UC system has been allowed to provide undergraduate, graduate and professional training in addition to conducting most of the state’s scientific and scholarly research.

The master plan is being reviewed, as it has been periodically over the last 20 years, by a number of independent and legislative panels.

On the grounds that California needs to focus much more sharply on the quality of leadership in education, particularly in elementary and secondary schools, Cal State proposed offering a doctorate in education that would train administrators in the practical aspects of leadership.

Limited Access

Most traditional education programs, such as those at UC, have focused largely on the training of scholars in the field of education rather than on improving the administrative skills of principals and superintendents, said Anthony J. Moye, Cal State’s associate vice chancellor for educational programs and resources.

In a letter to the commission last week, John M. Smart, Cal State’s deputy provost, also argued that public school educators in many parts of the state, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley and in much of the northern part of the state, have no access to inexpensive doctoral programs in a reasonable commuting distance.

In surveying the offerings of other states and the views of educators in California, however, the Postsecondary Education Commission disagreed with most of Cal State’s arguments. The commission’s 82-page report, “The Doctorate in Education: Issues of Supply and Demand in California,” concluded that Cal State’s plan to establish “additional public-supported and traditionally organized doctoral programs in educational administration is unwarranted at the present time.”

The one area in which demand for doctorates in education may exceed the supply is in the training of community college administrators. While refraining from suggesting that such a task should be turned over to Cal State, the commission’s executive director, William H. Pickens, said Monday that the commission might consider making recommendations for increased offerings in the field.

Pickens also indicated that the commission would probably recommend a broad review of the state’s existing educational doctoral programs to see how they might be changed to better serve elementary and secondary school administrators and their institutions.

For the most part, Pickens said, education doctorates are considered even by those who get them as simply “a credential and a hassle,” not something that is “essential to be an effective leader.”

This is a “very troubled area” that clearly needs to be reviewed in a “very serious way,” Pickens said.

Final recommendations on what the state should do about reform in graduate education programs will be offered by the commission’s staff at the its March meeting, Pickens said.