21st Century Scholar

Last week, 21st Century Scholar featured a week-long series of posts about California’s Master Plan written by five esteemed figures in the arena of higher education. We thank our five guest scholars (John Slaughter, Barry Munitz, Donald E. Heller, Nancy Shulock, and Julia I. Lopez) for lending their expertise to our discussion. In wrap-up, Bill Tierney offers his thoughts below.

Master Plan Ideas

By Bill Tierney

I greatly appreciate my colleagues’ recommendations for rethinking the Master Plan last week.  Although I might not agree with every single point, one obvious theme in common is that we believe the Master Plan as it is currently written is done – kaput – finished.  The UC system has a committee (surprise!) that is considering modifications to the Master Plan, and there are a great deal of other committees and working groups that are underway.  These sorts of conversations are useful, but we also need thinking that moves us away from the norms that have been established.  It is far too easy for us to revert to business as usual.

Imagine, for example, if the Governor announced today that he was firing his fiscal advisors because they had miscalculated.  The state is not in debt, and actually we will have a balanced budget this year and next.  Is there any question about whether everyone in the UC/CSU and Community College Systems wouldn’t breathe a collective sigh of relief – and then go back to business as usual?  This is what unites faculty, administrators and regents.  It is much easier not to change than to change (just look at the fate of the health care bill).

But we need to change.  Dramatically.

Here are two other quick thoughts for the Master Plan Stew:

In addition to outreach, the UC system has two critical functions – teaching and research.  We think little of research, however, and it is the most expensive part of an institution.  It’s cheaper to run a community college than a research university.

But the state vitally needs a research infrastructure.  25% of the patents in the United States have been created in California – but we only have 11% of the population. That’s a pretty darn good ratio.  Do you think that has anything to do with our superb research universities?  Of course it does.  But do we need every current UC institution to remain a research university?  What would we lose if we made Merced, Santa Cruz and Riverside into ‘honors’ campuses that focused on teaching rather than research for top-tier students?  I’m not saying we should do this, but we should consider it.

And we’re not.

I’ve written previously that the transfer function from community colleges to universities is a mess.  It doesn’t work, people – so let’s stop trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.  Let’s make every community college part of a university.  Students don’t ‘transfer’ anymore; they simply move from the 2-year branch to the four-year institution to which the community college is affiliated.  Maybe students even take their first two years of courses at the 2-year branch.  We’d save millions, more students would graduate, and learning might improve.  I’m not saying we should do this either, but we should consider it.

And we’re not.

We will consider these sorts of things here, however.  Stay tuned.

Our fifth installment of The Master Plan is written by Julia I. Lopez who serves as president of the College Access Foundation of California. On Monday, 21st Century Scholar contributor, Bill Tierney, wraps things up with a final post.

The Master Plan at 50: Merging a Vision with Reality

Julia I. Lopez

President, College Access Foundation of California

For 50 years, California’s Master Plan for Higher Education has served as a vital policy framework that connects our higher education needs to our continued prosperity.  But a closer look shows that the Master Plan is no longer the driving force that it once was; instead, it has fallen victim to years of indecision and neglect.

Like most landmark institutions, the Master Plan should be preserved but updated to meet the needs of California in the 21^st century.  This means reexamining how the system functions, and refocusing its priorities to ensure that student success is high on the list.

The need for a college-educated population has been well established.  Over the next decade, two-thirds of all jobs created in California will require some form of post-secondary credential.  The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that by 2025, the state’s employers will require an additional one million college graduates over what our colleges and universities will likely produce if current trends continue.  They stress that California is unlikely to reach that goal without major changes in the way its higher education system currently functions.

Just six in 10 students graduate from our four-year institutions in six years – and just three in 10 who attend community colleges transfer to a four-year university or get their certificate or associate’s degree.  Certainly, students bear primary responsibility for their own success.  But California’s higher education institutions must also respond to the realities of the state and families’ budgets.  They are in the best position to devise systems and strategies to improve the chances of students persisting and graduating.

Some of our public systems are renewing efforts to take on this challenge, even with fewer resources.  The California State University system has just announced a goal to raise graduation rates by 8 percent by the end of 2016, and the Chancellor of California’s Community Colleges has made improving transfer rates to 4-year institutions one of his top priorities.  These are promising steps that begin to add much-needed specifics to the broad goals of the Master Plan.

As a major private source of scholarship dollars in the state, College Access Foundation of California spends close to $10 million every year for scholarships to approximately 4,000 low-income California students, most of whom are the first in their family to attend college.

We began following thousands of scholarship recipients to learn more about how our dollars can help more students graduate.  More than eight out of every 10 students who received our support last year enrolled in California’s public colleges and universities, demonstrating their deep trust in the state’s higher education system.

We are inspired by these young people who embody the vision and ideals of California’s Master Plan.  But it is up to all of us to ensure that the state’s higher education system can continue to deliver on their aspirations.

About the author: Julia I. Lopez began serving as the President and CEO of College Access Foundation of California in November 2008. Before joining College Access Foundation, Julia served as Senior Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation. In her earlier work for Rockefeller, she served as the Director of the foundation’s Working Communities program, addressing urban poverty and education in the United States.

Our Master Plan series continues with Professor Nancy Shulock of the California State University at Sacramento where she is Executive Director of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy. Her specialties are public policy, higher education policy, public budgeting, and public management.

The Master Plan

by Nancy Shulock

Executive Director, Institute for Higher education Leadership and Policy

Professor, California State University, Sacramento

I worry that the effort to review the Master Plan will not yield the results that California so sorely needs.  We face a huge problem of declining educational attainment in the state.  Our younger generations are less-well educated than our older ones. As older Californians retire, the shortage of workers with college credentials grows ever larger.  Our ranking among states in the percent of the population with college degrees is falling rapidly because we are not educating our younger generations as well as other states are.

We need a review that yields a set of statewide educational goals and targets and identifies the policies and investments needed to accomplish those goals.  This kind of planning produces what other states are calling “a public agenda” for higher education.  It guides efforts to enhance a state’s social and economic well-being.  The Master Plan that we have is a fine declaration of enduring values and principles but it does not provide guidance for moving forward in a dynamic environment.  The Master Plan that we have is a blueprint for the maintenance of three sets of institutions.  It does not provide the foundation for addressing statewide concerns that depend deeply on inter-institutional actions or even on new kinds of institutions not envisioned in the Master Plan’s configuration.

The shortcoming of this static approach in today’s world may be best illustrated with reference to one of the enduring Master Plan principles – “access.”  The Master Plan calls for universal access and specifies who gains access into which set of institutions.  When the Master Plan was adopted in 1960, guaranteeing access was enough.  Only a small, elite portion of high school graduates went to college.  As they were generally well-prepared by well-funded schools, it could safely be assumed that by providing access, California provided for success.  Today, the vast majority of high school graduates attend college and many are seriously under-prepared.  Appropriately, the national conversation has changed from who gets in to who successfully gets out.  Increasing student success is now the rightful preoccupation of postsecondary education across the country.  I fear that by framing this latest effort as another review of the Master Plan, we will continue to focus on principles and institutions and who gets access, rather than on actions, statewide needs, and who succeeds.  If we are going to meet California’s needs for an educated populace, we need a public agenda with specific goals and strategies, not only a statement of values and principles, however laudable they may be.

About the author: Nancy Shulock is Executive Director for the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy and a Professor at the California State University Sacramento (CSUS). She served for 17 years as an academic administrator at CSUS responsible for planning and budgeting.

Today we welcome John Brooks Slaughter who continues our discussion of California’s Master Plan. Dr. Slaughter’s career began as an electrical engineer. He formerly headed the National Science Foundation as its first African-American director. He is president emeritus at Occidental College, and a former chancellor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

A Master Plan for Students

by John Brooks Slaughter

Professor of Education and Engineering, University of Southern California

Nearly seventeen years ago I wrote an op-ed piece which called for fundamental changes in the  1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education.  That landmark legislation had led to years of unprecedented growth in quality and prestige of the three sectors of California higher education and assured an opportunity for all qualified students to have access to higher education.

Even more than was true in 1993, the economic, social and political landscapes of the present call for a new public policy framework for making higher education affordable and accessible for today’s students.   These realities require that we think of students first in setting funding priorities, putting their interests first and making need-based financial aid the top priority in the state’s higher education budget.   This inevitably means that tuition and fee policies in all three sectors will have to be changed to require those students who have the financial wherewithal to pay for an education to do so in order that funds can be made available to assist those with demonstrated need.

The issues of access and affordability are even more crucial today than before because of the dynamic demographic changes (and the reactions to them) that have occurred in the past two decades.  Anti-affirmative action legislation and the fervor over illegal immigration have had significant impacts on higher education in California.  It is imperative that political leaders implement rational funding policies and recognize the need to assist our institutions in their efforts to educate present and future students in order to meet the pressing needs of the state for a well-educated citizenry.

About the author: John Brooks Slaughter is Professor of Education and Engineering at the University of Southern California. He served as director of the National Science Foundation, is president emeritus at Occidental College, and a former chancellor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Yesterday we began our week-long exploration of California’s Master Plan with a post by Donald E. Heller (Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education and Professor of Education and Senior Scientist, College of Education, The Pennsylvania State University). Today, Barry Munitz, chancellor, California State University (1991–1998), continues the conversation below.

A New Master Plan

by Barry Munitz

Chancellor, California State University (1991–1998)

President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust (1998-2006)

Let us assume for a moment that California is going to consider a new Master Plan. Are we going to have an operative new master plan or a document which calls itself by that name, but has no actionable reality? To me, the single most important question is whether a revision of the Master Plan approaches higher education from a base of pragmatic reality.

When I went to work for Clark Kerr in the 1960s, the original Master Plan really said nothing about resources. Basically Kerr’s assumption was that all public policy individuals of influence would find sufficient resources if the content was sensible and the priorities clearly urgent. In the first subsequent review of that document, there was simply a short page related to finances: a little paragraph, which said fundamentally “Someone should look at this new Proposition 13, it could have some impact on the ability to support these objectives”. That was the only comment made, during the first Master Plan review, that was directly related to money. Then, with each passing year, resources obviously became more and more important. The next tenure review, and well as the Joint Committee for Review of the Master Plan for Higher Education (that led to a restructuring of the community colleges) focused more and more on the limited ability to deliver on the original goals.

A master planning process should stipulate what the basic objectives are for higher education in the state, and a range of likely resources required for accomplishing each of those standards. A master planning team, thinking about new contractual relationships between constituencies, would have to consider these questions:

• What are the performance standards reasonable for California in the 21^st century and what are the linked outcomes?
• How do you move away from a system that has been basically input driven for many, many years, to one that focuses far more on expected output for education and for employment?
• How do we consider each of the educational components/segments? There are four now, if we include the large number of private colleges and universities, but looking forward we probably have to add a fifth category which considers the online and for-profit institutions.
• What does the public have a right to expect for each relative level of their investment?

Most of all, we do not need a 150 page telephone book to answer these questions. No one would read it or pay attention to it, and if we cannot present our basic ideas in a crisp and concise form, easy to understand and refine, then we do not deserve consideration.

From a political, governance process perspective, the systems probably have to retain the same legal status. It is too dramatic a change to assume otherwise; but the state cannot survive economically unless it addresses some fundamental political issues, including the referendum process, term limits, redistricting, and open primaries. If we start with those political hurdles, and then proceed to basic economic challenges such as Proposition 13, Proposition 98, and the governor’s new suggestion regarding a rebalance between higher education and corrections, then we have some opportunity—although enormously challenging—to redesign the playing field—while still maintaining the original Master Plan core values.

Finally, I would specifically suggest a voluntary, regional, intersegmental cooperative configuration to reshape the Master Plan. Such a configuration would address the issue of automatic transfer, and even improve articulation, but would require the standardization issues ranging from common course numbering to the sequence of curricular patterns and mutually respected content. How might one undertake such a redesign? If you start with a map of the state of California, and identify the essential base of higher education regional structures for the two senior public systems, and then lay over them the community colleges and the private institutions, and even add K-12 districts, then one can quickly ascertain relative density, sparse areas of service, and be a sign of relative responsibilities. There is a chance, if the heads of those institutions were able to work together, and everyone contributed to the effort, that we could reach a new agreement on these very critical issues, and move forward with courage, with conviction, and with consistent economic support.

About the author: Barry Munitz has been a senior administrator at the University of Illinois and the University of Houston, a business executive at Maxxam, Inc., chancellor of the California State University system, and president and chief executive officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Welcome to 21st Century Scholar’s first week of themed blogging in 2010. This week Bill Tierney invites guest scholars (John Slaughter, Barry Munitz, Donald E. Heller, Nancy Shulock, and Julia I. Lopez) to share their thoughts on the Master Plan with us. Below you’ll find our first installment by Donald E. Heller.

The Master Plan on Life Support: Time to Pull the Plug?

by Donald E. Heller

Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education

Professor of Education and Senior Scientist, College of Education, The Pennsylvania State University

One can only imagine how many rotations Clark Kerr has made in his grave, watching how California is treating its once-great higher education system.  In Volume One of his memoir, The Gold and the Blue, Kerr described the Master Plan for Higher Education this way:

It was Thomas Jefferson’s vision of equality of opportunity for all and of service to all combined with contributions to the development of what Jefferson had called an “aristocracy of talent.”  It was Benjamin Franklin’s vision of the value of all “useful knowledge” and all useful skills.  It was also a vision of “a nation of educated people.”  It was a characteristically all-American vision (p. 186).

Jefferson?  Franklin?  Nobody is likely to confuse the political leadership of the Golden State with either of these statesmen.

The compact between the people of California and the state with respect to the provision of postsecondary education is all but dead.  The reasons for this demise are too complex to go into here, but suffice it to say that it will be up to the citizens of the state to pay for their college and university educations themselves, with less and less subsidy from the taxpayers.

The decision of the Regents of the University of California to increase fees by one-third this semester and next fall has been widely criticized both off-campus and on, many claiming that the decision is a repudiation of the spirit of the Master Plan.  But the truth is that the Regents were faced with a Hobson’s choice.  They could have chosen to greatly restrict access and allow the quality of the institution to degrade, or accelerate the shifting of the cost burden to students.  While the Regents have taken steps to try to protect access for poorer students through financial aid initiatives, we’ll have to wait to see if they will be able to maintain this in the long run (for more on this issue, see my blog at http://donheller.blogspot.com/2009/11/university-of-california-regents-raise.html). Cal State and the community colleges will soon have to follow this path.

Should California simply give up, admit that the Master Plan is dead, and hold a suitable memorial service so that we can all express our grief and move on with our lives?  Or is there a chance it can be resuscitated through extraordinary life-saving measures?  I am not sure, but it is hard not to suspect that the Master Plan – and the state’s colleges and universities – are close to appearing in front of a higher education death panel of its own.

About the author: Donald E. Heller is Professor of Education and Senior Scientist, and Director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at ThePennsylvania State University.  He teaches and conducts research on higher education economics, public policy, and finance, with a primary focus on issues of college access and choice for low-income and minority students.

By Randy Clemens

Since last spring I have blogged about the Race to the Top Fund, the federal government’s $4.35 billion dollar competitive grant program (The Race Begins Today, With “Race to the Top,” We All Lose, Part I and Part II, and A History of Reform, a History of Failure). The fund supports four goals:

• Adopting internationally-benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace;
• Recruiting, developing, retaining, and rewarding effective teachers and principals;
• Building data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practices; and
• Turning around our lowest-performing schools.

I have been critical of the initiative for several reasons. First, the federal government is using money, not research and consensus building, to coerce change and implement the administration’s targeted reforms. I understand the rationale: education needs to improve and something needs to be done immediately. Constituents expect California’s politicians to pass the necessary legistlation, which they have, in order to compete for $700 million. I worry, however, that the government is throwing good money after bad.

Second, the reforms overtly emphasize the economic benefits of education to the detriment of the democratic purposes. Third, education has a long history of failed reforms. The favored changes, borrowing heavily from popular education rhetoric, including words like benchmark, accountability, data-driven, are trends presented as sure-fire solutions. Many occurred previously with little success. And I am certainly not the only one to voice my concerns.

Still, despite my apprehensions, the race continues. The application is in for California, along with 39 other states and the District. The Department of Ed selected 58 reviewers and provided an overview of the “transparent” process and selection criteria. California’s website presents useful information, including the final copy of the application.  I urge you to stay active in the process. And I hope, for the benefit of our students, that the reforms improve education.

by Zoe Corwin

For the past year and a half we have been working with the EA Game Lab in the USC School of Cinematic Arts to design an interactive online game that will boost college aspirations and teach college strategy.  As part of the journey to an online version, we have created and now widely playtested a paper prototype of the game.  This “playcentric” process of design is pioneered by the co-PI on the project, Tracy Fullerton.  Through playing the game multiple times with multiple audiences, designers aim to reduce the likelihood that digital version of the game will have serious design flaws.  A side effect of the process – it’s tons of fun!

Our prototype takes the form of a deck of cards.  The goal of game play is to build and submit a successful college application.  Players draw cards that assign character traits and family finances (last time I played I was a super jock, living with just my mom who made less than $40k a year), let them know what kind of a week they’ve had (if your computer breaks, your next turn is shortened), and compel question and answer exchanges targeted at increasing college knowledge.  As you read this blog, we are in the process of manufacturing 1,000 copies of the game and will be sending them out to college preparation programs across the country (in early March).

CHEPA’s outreach team, Victor Garcia and Diane Yoon, have now played the game with 100 students.  Several students have played twice, and many have requested games to play at home. I recently played the game with Tracy, Megan Jones (an investment banker) and Laird Malamed (Activision).  After two hours of animated play, we had to drag ourselves away – and Tracy has already returned to play the game again with Laird and his family upon his request.

Over the next few weeks we will start to roll out the first phase of Pathfinder.  I’ll be introducing you to the website, sharing initial findings from play sessions, detailing the next stages of development (first a Facebook Application, then the core online game) and letting you know how you can order copies of the card game for your own play session.

Please stay tuned…

To learn more about Tracy’s book, click here: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Second-Playcentric/dp/0240809742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264689448&sr=8-1

by Bill Tierney

One of the oddities of academic life is that as scholars we are taught, and teach, about generalization.  We do research projects and we are extremely careful about what our findings tell us.  I have attended any number of seminars when the speaker is asked to ruminate on what the broader implications of his or her paper is, and the speaker always demurs.  “I can’t generalize,” we hear.

And yet when it comes to daily practice, we tend to generalize all the time.

Administrators are all corrupt liars.  They hide things:

• Second Opinion (Inside Higher Ed)
• New Jersey College Is Beset by Accusations (NY Times)

For-profits are all corrupt, too.  They simply take the money and run.  All of them.  Unfair recruiting practices, fly-by-night operations.  Scams.

Medical schools have sold out as well.  Remember the example of Jesse Gelsinger at Penn in 1999?  He participated in a medical trial, wasn’t informed properly, and the poor kid died after he received the experimental treatment.  That’s what it’s like in medical schools – they’re in cahoots with big pharmaceutical companies and could care less about life.

I in no way mean to demean any of these examples.  The New Jersey College sounds like a repeat of Adelphi College – and the actions at that place were as bad as I have seen anywhere.  I also have done case studies or consulting at a bunch of places where ethics (much less common sense) are in short supply.

I also know that some for-profits are scandal-ridden fly-by-night operations.  It also is a tragedy when anyone dies because he or she was not adequately informed about the risks involved in a medical experiment.

But it’s a far cry to see one case, or even a series of cases, and then to malign an entire industry.  I know many more administrators who are extremely ethical and personify integrity than I do ones who are corrupt.  I know many more for-profits that are trying to do the right thing, even though their model differs from traditional institutions.  And the model is still ethical.  I also know many medical researchers who are always aware of the ethics involved in their research and would never consciously misinform or under-inform someone.

The problem when we casually toss out generalizations is that we libel everyone who is related to the example under the microscope.  And that sort of generalization not only muddies the water for what we should actually do with the problem under discussion, it also verges on being unethical as well.