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.
