Getting Everyone On Board With Higher Ed Policy Also Matters - Part 2 (told you so)

Pat Brown signs law implementing
Master Plan for Higher Education (1960)

As blog readers will know, we recently pushed for setting up a process for a new Master Plan for Higher Ed that would define (redefine?) the roles of the three segments: UC, CSU, and the community colleges.* In fact, as blog readers will know, we have made this point from time to time over the years.

Now comes CalMatters with a story of what happens when you operate without a plan that has the support of the various stakeholders, legislature, and governor. We told you so:

As two California higher education systems continue to feud, lawmakers have entered the equation... The matter at hand — the 1,300-student Feather River College in rural Plumas County offering a bachelor’s degree in applied fire management — has become a lightning rod issue, sparking delays and anger on both sides. “I was quite frankly shocked and disheartened,” said California State University Interim Chancellor Jolene Koester at a trustees’ meeting, claiming that the community college system had “acted unilaterally” and out of accordance with the law by approving the bachelor’s degree program at Feather River. At the same meeting, Koester stressed that each component of the state’s higher education system — the 116 community colleges, 23 California State Universities campuses, and 10 University of California campuses — play a distinct role...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2023/04/california-community-college-fire/. 

UC, in the case above, is seemingly uninvolved. But just as the community colleges encroach on CSU's traditional sphere, CSU will continue to encroach on UC's supposed sphere of graduate education.

Old timers will recall that apart from the Master Plan, the state also once had a California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) to sort things out among the segments. It ended when Jerry Brown zeroed it out in the state budget.**

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/04/getting-everyone-on-board-with-higher.html.

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Postsecondary_Education_Commission.