Some Soul Food for Thought

The LA Times has an editorial entitled "The struggle for the soul of UC" about the pressure from the legislature to cut out-of-state students at UC. In essence, the editorial suggests that since folks are angry when their kids don't get into a UC, more capacity at UC is needed, i.e., a new campus. But, says the Times, building a new campus would take a long time. So, instead, it suggests converting a CSU into a UC.  

There are some problems with that approach. 

1) The essence of a UC is its faculty, not a collection of buildings, and where the new faculty would come from to populate the former CSU campus is not discussed. 

2) The former CSU faculty members would go where, exactly, when they were abruptly replaced by the newly recruited UC faculty?

3) The faculty-to-student ratio at a UC will be higher than at a CSU and some of the faculty's efforts go to graduate students, so you likely end up reducing the net state undergraduate capacity (UC+CSU).

4) To deal with problem #2, the LA Times suggests that maybe the community colleges should offer more BAs. 

The editorial reads as though someone had an idea but didn't think it through. You can read the editorial at:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-28/editorial-the-struggle-for-the-soul-of-uc

We have said many times on this blog that if California wants to rethink its higher ed policy, it needs to recreate something like the old Master Plan process, with emphasis on the word "process." Otherwise, you get ad hoc suggestions (as from the Times) and ad hoc pressures (as from the legislature) with no coherent structure.