Time for Establishing a Master Plan Process - Part 2

UC President Clark Kerr hands
Master Plan to Gov. Pat Brown

As we noted in a prior recent post, although reference is often made to the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, the Plan is essentially dead.*

The result is a lack of division of labor between the three segments of higher ed - UC, CSU, and the community colleges - and a tendency toward ad hoc intervention by the legislature.

Here is another example from EdSource:

Seven bachelor’s degrees proposed by California community colleges have been flagged by the California State University as duplicating programs offered by CSU campuses, according to a report presented Monday to the community college system’s board of governors. That could put those programs at risk of being approved.

Under Assembly Bill 927, the community college system can approve up to 30 bachelor’s degrees annually, across two cycles each year. In the latest cycle, the system received applications for 29 different programs and 14 of them advanced to intersegmental review, a process during which the degrees are reviewed by CSU, the University of California and the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities. As part of the review progress, those university systems can flag proposed programs as duplicating programs that they offer.

In the latest cycle, CSU flagged the following seven programs as having duplication concerns:

• Sustainable Architecture at College of the Canyons
• Biomanufacturing at Los Angeles Mission College
• Applied Cybersecurity and Network Operations at Moorpark College
• Stem Cell and Gene Technologies at Pasadena City College
• Performance and Production of Electronic Popular Music at Rio Hondo College
• Public Safety Management at San Diego Miramar College
• Cloud Computing at Santa Monica College

CSU raising concerns about those programs doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t ultimately be approved. Earlier this year, CSU said it had duplication concerns about a degree in applied fire management being offered at Feather River College, but that program was ultimately approved anyway...

Full story at https://edsource.org/2023/seven-proposed-community-college-bachelors-degrees-flagged-by-csu-as-being-duplicative/694805.

Similar issues arise when CSU campuses come up with creative ways of offering PhDs, upsetting the Master Plan's division of labor. It was precisely this sort of competition for everyone to do everything that led to the process that produced the Master Plan to rationalize the overall system. It is becoming clear that a similar process is again needed.http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/07/time-for-establishing-master-plan.html.