Challenges Facing UC

Any report on higher education from David Breneman deserves consideration because he is a serious scholar and a person of goodwill, and much of what he has to say in his Feb. 5 Commentary piece about the educational challenges facing California merits attention. But several of his observations and recommendations should not go uncontested.

Breneman is right in pointing out that our superb university system has long been one of California’s major advantages. He is right in alerting the people of California to the grave consequences of letting that system drift into mediocrity, just as he is right in suggesting that more can and should be done. He is wrong in suggesting that nothing has been done. He is disastrously wrong in offering as an answer to higher education’s problems a proposal to dismantle selectively UC’s research mission under the guise of reform. This “solution” could destroy the very treasure Breneman seeks to preserve.

Anybody who accuses higher education in California of conducting business as usual is not conversant with all that has been going on in this state. The University of California, working with the California Postsecondary Education Commission and the other higher education segments, is already doing a number of the things Breneman recommends in his report. UC has long urged greater utilization of the state’s independent colleges and universities, for example; in fact our own enrollment projections depend on it. We have consistently supported increasing Cal Grant awards to a level that would make such an option possible. I am pleased such a proposal is a now part of the governor’s proposed budget of 1995-96.

We have also engaged in sustained long-range academic planning to prune unnecessary programs and strengthen those which California’s students will need in the future. A current example is UCLA’s major restructuring of five professional schools, an initiative that protects academic quality while addressing a nearly 20% cut in state support over the past four years.

We work routinely and regularly with the California State University, the Community Colleges, California’s independent institutions, and K-12 schools to expand educational opportunity so there will be room for what we know will be growing numbers of students. We are exploring non-state sources for support for higher education; in fact private giving has reached record highs in the past several years. Faculty are teaching more, and more students than ever before in our history are getting an outstanding education, including more opportunities to benefit from distance learning and other educational technologies.

But what we have not done and will not do is to alter the essential character of the University of California. If we suspend graduate admissions at five UC campuses, as Breneman proposes, the effect will be a drastic curtailment of research and the loss of significant fraction of the approximately $374 million those campuses bring into California from federal and other extramural grants every year, not to mention loss of the new knowledge our economy urgently needs.

The kind of education students--graduate and undergraduate--receive in a research university is different from the educational experience at a liberal arts college or a state university. It is not the only sort of education that is valuable, and it is not the kind of education everybody wants, but for those who do want and can profit from it, education in a research-oriented university is irreplaceable. Ironically, UC undergraduates would be among the principal losers under Breneman’s proposal, because if it were enacted some of our best faculty would undoubtedly go elsewhere.

J.W. PELTASON, President

University of California

Oakland