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.
