CALIFORNIA: GROWING UP AND DOWN : After 27 Years, State Master Plan for Higher Education Gets a Mixed Report Card

How can more Californians attend college and reap the benefits of a quality education? That’s the basic question posed by “The Master Plan Renewed”--a 40-page report issued last month by the state’s Commission for the Review of the Master Plan. A diverse group of 16 citizens spent two years systematically studying education beyond high school in California.

The master plan to be renewed is the landmark document of 1960 that shaped the current structure of higher education in California. The plan has served the state well, but three developments since 1960 have profoundly affected California and changed its educational needs:

California is no longer an overwhelmingly white, homogeneous society; citizens increasingly need lifelong learning, and the tide of economic competition is no longer running in California’s favor.

Educational institutions must help solve these major social and economic challenges; those institutions themselves illustrate the complexity and size of post-secondary education in the state:

About 500 colleges and universities offer degrees and certificates of every sort, including nine campuses of the University of California, 19 campuses of the California State University, 106 community colleges and more than 350 non-state-supported colleges and universities. They enroll about 2 million students and grant nearly 180,000 degrees annually. They spend about $15 billion each year on instruction, research and public services.

The commission’s report concludes that California enjoys “an extraordinary educational system”--in fact, the world’s largest and most diverse--and the basic structure of the system receives commission support, including existing missions of the public universities and the California Community Colleges.

The report ratifies existing admission standards and favors continuation of low student fees, compared with most other states. It recommends adequate funding for higher education in the face of cuts threatened by state spending limits.

Among the most important of 33 recommendations are these:

--The state should take steps to assure that all institutions are closely linked so that students can proceed easily from one level of education to the next.

--Every reasonable effort should be made to assure that all Californians of every income level and ethnic group--with special emphasis on underrepresented blacks, Latinos and American Indians--have maximum opportunity to fulfill educational potential and aspiration.

--More entering freshmen should be diverted into the community colleges and away from the University of California--and improved transfer of students from two-year to four-year institutions should be a “central” priority.

--The state should grant much more authority to the community colleges’ statewide board of governors for setting standards and financing these schools.

--The state should pay more attention to the vitality of private colleges and universities, which award most of the doctorates and a large proportion of the professional degrees--especially by expanding student financial aid grants rather than relying excessively on loans.

--Public institutions should phase out remedial instruction or strictly separate it from credit courses.

--Higher-education institutions should put more priority on improving the preparation of schoolteachers and give more assistance in helping resolve problems of the schools.

--Institutions should be held accountable for offering clear expectations for student learning and for determining if these expectations are being met.

“The Master Plan Renewed,” as its title suggests, is not a comprehensive plan but a set of recommendations to modify certain traditions and practices. Unlike the 1960 master plan, which focused on future problems and described what the future would be like if changes were not made, this new report deals almost exclusively with current conditions and current relationships of institutions to one another and to the state. As such, it leaves some important planning issues unanswered.

Among them is the question of how the state can avert shortages of qualified faculty in many academic fields, particularly when 14,000 of today’s faculty members will retire from the two public university systems by the year 2000. Another is how more women and minorities can be induced to enter what remains a relatively low-paying profession. These considerations are tied to the question of how the state should prepare for increased enrollment projected within the next decade.

Other major issues also need attention, including deteriorating physical plants, appropriateness of research projects and needs of “non-traditional” students.

Now, other groups must take additional steps to make plans and begin to implement the state commitment. A key role will be played over the next year by the Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of the Master Plan, chaired by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara). Meanwhile, colleges and universities can begin immediately to put into practice many of the report’s ideas if governing boards, administrators and faculty members exercise the needed leadership.

In addition, the California Post-secondary Education Commission--the state’s permanent agency for planning and coordinating higher education and for interpreting the master plan--will work to foster changes along lines recommended by the new report, to preserve the “extraordinary educational system” and to meet the critical needs of a changing California.