Colleges at the Precipice

Nearly 40 years ago, California Gov. Pat Brown developed the master plan for California’s world-renowned higher education system. Its vision was one of free, quality schooling as the key to the state’s social vitality and economic prosperity. That was then, when plum jobs could still be won even with a high school education. Now, with advanced education a necessity for good pay, business leaders are rightly alarmed by the declining proportion of Californians who go to college--from 60% in the early 1980s to 55% today.

That’s why a recent report arguing that California’s colleges “stand on the verge of a crisis” is a welcome wake-up call. The report by a panel of corporate executives and state leaders--the California Citizens Commission on Higher Education--presents important recommendations for reform. The first is stabilizing the system’s funding. California’s “boom and bust” approach, in which legislators boost funding in good years and slash it in bad ones, damages the system. The report correctly argues that it’s in good years like these that the state needs to save for hard ones ahead.

Another core problem is the failure of higher education to help K-12 teachers narrow the widening performance gap between suburban and private schools on the one hand and relatively poorly funded urban schools on the other. It can be lessened, the report suggests, through reforms in the Cal State system, which trains the majority of California’s K-12 teachers. The report praises successful programs like Cal State L.A.’s innovative charter college of education. Liberated from many union and bureaucratic restrictions, the college experiments with new ways of helping teachers and administrators in public schools attract private funding, while also increasing student attendance and parental participation.

The report’s most daring suggestion calls for removal of faculty representatives from the 17-member board that coordinates the state’s higher education planning. That would certainly end the faculty infighting that hampers reform, but the recommendation that the board instead be composed of only political appointees is no better. As the report acknowledges, California’s higher education policy is already far too susceptible to political pressure.

The report describes itself as a “blueprint for change,” but blueprint is far too emphatic a word. It should be viewed as a first step to revisiting the master plan, which has been weakened by time and bureaucracy. Bolstering the master plan would go a long way toward continuing the economic competitiveness and social force of higher education in California.