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Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Master Plan

An article on the history of the Master Plan for Higher Ed has appeared aimed at challenging the standard history.

Revisionist Reflections on California's Master Plan @50

John Aubrey Douglass, University of California, Berkeley

Summary:


The 1960 Master Plan:
• Is not the creation of one man, Clark Kerr, but the result of negotiations based on earlier innovations and planning studies
• Did not create the tripartite system, invent existing mission differentiation, or
seriously alter the allocation of function
• Did not expand California’s commitment to mass higher education. The
Master Plan shifted future enrollment demand to CCC, actually reducing access to UC and CSU
• Did so largely to save money and create a more politically palatable proposal
for expanding enrollment capacity
• Did not incorporate its admissions pool into state law;

• Did not enact into law its vision of a tuition free system of pubic higher
education
• Is more important for what it preserved and prevented then what it invented


The 1960 Master Plan: What it DID do
• Consolidated in one statute largely existing missions of UC, CSU, and CCC – with the exception of adding recognition of research function at CSU but without a claim on additional resources
• Removed CSU from State Board of Education and created in statute Board of Trustees
(proposal first introduced in 1953)
• Adopted a plan to create new campuses for UC and CSU developed largely in 1957

• Ended lawmakers’ frenzy of bills to create new campuses

• Ended heated turf war between UC and CSU

• Controlled future costs to California taxpayers

• California Higher E dreform effort produced (under political pressure) by the Higher Ed segments, and then
translated into legislation and practice

Full article at http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1105&context=cjpp

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