Lack of Local Governance Cited at UCI Conference : 2-Year Colleges’ Decline Raises Concern

About 25 former college and university presidents from throughout the nation, meeting at UC Irvine to form an organization to critique U.S. higher education, expressed concern Wednesday about the condition of California’s community colleges.

Nationwide, the new group--which so far has no formal name--is concerned about weak governing boards for two-year colleges, according to various former college presidents who spoke at a noon press conference.

Narrowing the focus to California’s community colleges, Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, said the state’s two-year institutions had slipped badly in the past decade.

“The community college system in California used to be the best in the United States, the model,” said Kerr. “That is no longer true. There has been a very great deterioration. I would cite Proposition 13 as a main reason for that.”

Power to Sacramento

Kerr said the 1978 state constitutional amendment, which put a lid on property taxes and greatly restricted local governments’ use of them, switched the real power over two-year colleges from local boards to Sacramento.

“The Legislature became the (community colleges’) Board of Regents,” he said. “They tried to establish regulations for the 107 community colleges when the best strength of community colleges was that they responded to what the local communities wanted.”

Kerr said a secondary factor in the decline of community colleges is that they went overboard on courses geared to neither transfer students nor vocational training. Those included such things as “teaching people to swim or having a pistol range,” said Kerr.

The two-day gathering at UC Irvine, which concluded Wednesday, was made possible by a $25,000 grant to UCI from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago.

Every 6 Months

UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason introduced the participants at Wednesday’s press conference and said they would be scheduling other sessions at UCI every six months.

“They’ll be making presentations on issues,” Peltason said. “They’ll give advice to governors, other colleagues and perhaps to (U.S.) secretaries of education.”

The former college presidents picked three major fields of study at the inaugural UCI meeting, said Harold Enarson, former president of Ohio State University. They are: proposed reforms in undergraduate education, minority and other disadvantaged students, and governing boards of higher education.

William Priest, chancellor emeritus of the Dallas County (Tex.) Community College District, said the group is concerned about governing boards of community colleges, including those in California.

“The tendency to lose the big picture in (community college) governance is a genuine threat,” Priest said. “The tendency to be single-issue oriented, perhaps less global than one might be for long-term positive impact, is happening in a number of places in California and elsewhere, and this represents a different direction than I think has historically been true.”

Fulfill Local Needs

Priest, however, said emphatically that he doesn’t favor having California community colleges governed by a single statewide board, similar to the UC Board of Regents. Priest said local control can best shape community colleges to fulfill local needs.

Before becoming head of the Dallas community college system, Priest was an administrator at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa from 1948 to 1954.

Others who took part in the formation of the new organization included Willard Boyd, former president of the University of Iowa; William Friday, former president of the University of North Carolina; Jack Oswald, former president of Penn State University, and Glenn Terrell, former president of Washington State University.