Still Waiting for that New Master Plan

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

On the thought that maybe repetition is a Good Thing, we will keep pointing to evidence that there is a need for a new Master Plan process to create a new Master Plan for Higher Education. The facts underlying that need just keep piling up:

From CalMatters: In the past two years, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed three bills that would have allowed community colleges to award students more bachelor’s degrees. Unfazed, lawmakers are now backing a fourth bill that does much of the same. The measure, Assembly Bill 664, cleared its first legislative tests by passing the Assembly Jan. 26, potentially setting up another collision course between state lawmakers and the governor.

While Newsom supports more bachelor’s degrees for students, he’s repeatedly stated his opposition to adding more community college baccalaureate programs that go outside an agreed-upon process in a law that he and lawmakers approved in 2021. That law said community colleges can develop up to 30 bachelor’s degrees per academic year, as long as the degrees do not duplicate the baccalaureate programs of the University of California and California State University.

But since then, community colleges and Cal State have disagreed on what counts as duplication, resulting in more than a dozen stalled community college bachelor’s programs because Cal State opposed them. Both public university systems oppose the latest bill. They fear more community colleges will seek their own degrees that duplicate what the universities offer, unraveling the 2021 law. The universities see themselves as the traditional generators of bachelor’s degrees. Community colleges say the state is too big and spread out to limit public four-year degrees to just the Cal State and UC...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2026/01/community-colleges-california-2/.