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Jeanfromfillmore
04-26-2010, 12:57 PM
California's iconic master plan for higher education is in peril
Fifty years ago, California promised its young people a top-notch college education that would be free or cost next to nothing.
Today, annual undergraduate fees are set to top $11,000 at some state-run universities, students are frustrated by fewer course offerings, and employee furloughs and layoffs are continuing. The 1960 master plan that served as a template for the state's higher-education system is in tatters.
As the plan turns 50 Tuesday, legislators, think tanks and academics are debating whether the iconic document remains relevant or whether it should be abandoned and replaced with a blueprint that reflects the state's new realities.
"I think this is a plan whose time has come and gone," said Patrick Callan, president of the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "The message to young people used to be 'if you do your part, there will be a place in college for you.' We've eroded this commitment from top to bottom."
The plan that Gov. Edmund G. Brown signed into law April 27, 1960, was in part to resolve turf battles among the state's colleges and universities. It deemed the University of California campuses, including the then-fledgling UC Riverside, as the state's primary research institutions and allowed them to choose students from among the top 12½ percent of the state's high-school graduating classes. California State University was to select from the top third. The forebear of Cal State San Bernardino was created two days after the master plan was enacted. The community colleges were to admit anyone.
That part of the plan has remained intact, but the cost of higher education in California has skyrocketed, especially in the past few years. In 1960, UC charged $147 a year in fees. Starting this fall, in-state undergraduate students will pay $11,287, up from $9,896 today. CSU's 2010-11 fees have not been set but they have nearly doubled since 2003, to $4,893. Community colleges were free. Now they cost on average $780.
Fees soar
Fees have been shooting upward for the past three decades. The passage of 1978's tax-cutting Prop. 13 limited the growth of state revenues, while California's population and the need for post-secondary education continued to rise.
In 1960, "the state government had all of these financial resources and not everyone needed to go to college," said William Tierney, director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at USC. "Fifty years later, we have a state that is bankrupt and there is a greatly increased need for people to go to college."
Yet budget cuts are spurring colleges and universities to cut enrollment slots rather than add students. At Cal State San Bernardino, 1,900 fewer full-time student slots are expected to be available this fall compared with 2008-09, a 13 percent drop that comes amid rising applications.
"It's shameful," said Cal State San Bernardino President Albert Karnig. "To keep quality, we're sacrificing access."
Michelle Henricks, who teaches students about college preparation at Lakeside High School in Lake Elsinore, said Cal State San Bernardino and other universities are rejecting or wait-listing students who they would have accepted in the past.
"I'm shocked at the schools kids are getting rejected from," she said.
Lakeside student Melissa McKiddy, 17, holds a 4.2 grade-point average. She was surprised to find herself rejected by UC San Diego and wait-listed at UC Davis and UC Irvine, her top choice.
"I was confident I would get in," a dejected McKiddy said.
McKiddy, who plans to be a veterinarian, was accepted by Cal State Long Beach and UC Santa Barbara but is still hoping to make the cut at UC Irvine.
Community colleges have adhered to the master plan's open-enrollment policy, but they have eliminated classes and sections in response to budget cuts, leading to a drop in attendance. Riverside Community College District enrollment fell by more than 3,100 students, or about 5 percent, between 2008-09 and 2009-10 after the college cut 14 percent of class sections.
The master plan saw community colleges as a key component of the higher education system, offering a free education to anyone who wanted it and giving a second chance to students who may not have done well in high school.
Yet many students entering community colleges aren't prepared for college-level work. In the Riverside college district, only 4 percent are ready for college-level algebra. Remedial education, envisioned as a secondary function for community colleges, is starting to dominate, said Ray Maghroori, the district's vice chancellor for academic affairs.
Debbie DiThomas, the district's associate vice chancellor for student services and operations, said community colleges need to preserve the open access laid out in the master plan but should expand testing requirements to more courses, establish more prerequisites, and supplement more classes with instructors' aides, remedial labs and other help.
Students sometimes become frustrated and abandon college plans if they are in a class and don't understand the material, she said.
"I sometimes think open access has been an empty promise," DiThomas said. "Students need to be given an opportunity to succeed, not just get in."
financial worries
Free or low-cost education was part of the master plan's means of ensuring access. But students are increasingly making life-changing decisions based upon money.
Norco College counselor Jimmie Hill said he sees far more students today pursuing careers they're not really interested in than when he started as a counselor 33 years ago. To save money, some choose occupations that mean less time in college, he said.
Riverside City College student Garrett Walraven personifies the diminished dreams.
If UC fees were at 1960s levels, Walraven, 21, said he wouldn't hesitate applying to UC Riverside's music program to study composition, so he could become a music teacher.
"That's my passion," he said.
But he's worried that if he didn't get enough financial aid for UC, "I'd have to work three jobs to make ends meet."
Now he's leaning toward going to trade school to become an auto mechanic.
The UC and Cal State systems have tried to allay concerns about cost by telling students that a combination of federal, state and university grants will in most cases cover all their fees if they come from families that earn less than $70,000 a year, which is about the state's median income.
John Faheem's Rancho Cucamonga family makes just above that amount. Faheem, 20, a junior at UC Riverside, has handled the ever-increasing fees by ramping up his work schedule -- now at 31 hours a week -- and cutting back on sleep. He will probably increase his work hours even more to pay for the 14-percent fee increase in August.
After cuts in class sections, Faheem has had to attend summer session to take required courses to graduate, adding even more fees.
"It shouldn't have to be this way," he said. "I shouldn't have to go through all this to get an education."
UC Riverside Chancellor Timothy White said he worries about students like Faheem. Students have borne the brunt of the budget cuts, he said. But the master-plan promise of an esteemed higher-education system cannot be compromised, even during a financial crisis.
"The excellence of the University of California is at the core of everything," White said. "It attracts great students, it attracts great faculty, grants and contracts, it generates wonderful ideas ... Quality is off the table."
But Jennifer Hughes, a religious-studies professor at UC Riverside, said that with the average class size at the university rising in the past year from 32 to 35 students, quality already is being affected.
She worries about top-notch faculty leaving the university in frustration. Mandatory furloughs have reduced professors' pay, and some lecturers' contracts have not been renewed.
Hughes and other professors talk about how the cuts make it easier to accept an offer from a competing institution, especially with continuing uncertainty over the university's financial future.
"If I can't be part of building this department, and if the university doesn't have the money to pursue excellence, then it makes it less appealing to stay here," she said.
CHANGING COURSE
White and other UC chancellors are partially making up for budget cuts by increasing the percentage of out-of-state undergraduate students, who pay triple the cost of California residents to attend UC. That eases the burden on in-state students and adds more diversity of perspectives in the classroom, he said. Less than 2 percent of UC Riverside undergraduates are from outside the state.
Critics of the move say it could shut out some in-state students from their preferred UC campuses, whittling away even more at the master plan's pledge to California students.
UC guarantees admission to in-state students in the top 12½ percent of their high school classes but some campuses are far more selective than others.
Tierney, the USC professor, would go further than adding more out-of-state students. Educational fees within the UC system and among Cal State campuses are identical. Tierney favors a supply-and-demand approach in which the most elite campuses charge more than the less selective ones.
He proposes increased fees for students from well-off families as a way of subsidizing greater financial aid for less wealthy students, another deviation from the master plan.
Tierney also supports closer collaboration among high schools, community colleges and four-year universities, with more college-prep classes in high schools and a Cal State takeover of some community colleges, so students can seamlessly transfer to a Cal State campus.
Universities need to focus more on retention, said Hans Johnson, associate director of research at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. In a report released Thursday, Johnson called for state funding of universities to be tied in part to how many students graduate, not just how many enroll.
Only about half of Cal State students who enter as freshmen graduate within six years. That's not only bad for the students but it increases the Cal State system's costs, Johnson said.
The report also calls for UC and Cal State to each increase the number of students they accept, from 12½ to 15 percent of the top California high school students for the UC system and from a third to 40 percent for Cal State. That would help the state close the gap between the rising number of college graduates it needs and the number it will have, Johnson said.
A report Johnson wrote last year predicted the state could face a shortage of 1 million college graduates by 2025 unless trends are reversed. That would imperil California's long-term economic future, Johnson said.
"The master plan was forward-thinking for its time," he said. "But no one would doubt our economy is very different than 50 years ago and skill requirements in the economy are very different than 50 years ago. The master plan is now regressive and needs to be updated."
A special joint state legislative committee on the master plan is looking at possible changes. It has been focusing much of its discussion on improving graduation rates and better meeting the state's jobs needs, said Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod, the committee's vice chairwoman and a Democrat who represents much of central and western San Bernardino County.
The committee will meet next week to decide whether to pursue legislation, write a report, or do something else, she said.
Callan, of the national higher-education center, said the master plan helped make California the nation's leader in public higher education. But its demise has been building for years, he said. Rather than tweak a master plan that no longer works, the state needs to rewrite it and recognize that the halcyon days of the 1960s are not returning.
"Sometimes the hardest thing is to change a public policy that succeeds," he said.
Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com. Reach Michelle L. Klampe at 951-375-3740 or mklampe@PE.com.
turning 50
Gov. Edmund G. Brown signed master-plan legislation into law on April 27, 1960.
Community colleges were free. They were to provide open access.
There was no tuition at UC or Cal State, only small fees for some non-instructional costs. Budget cuts in the 1980s led to the introduction of instructional "fees," effectively ending tuition-free education.
UC was to accept the top 12.5 percent of California high school graduates. Cal State was to choose among the top third.
The number of community colleges in California has risen from 64 in 1960 to 112 today. The newest independently accredited colleges are in Norco and Moreno Valley.
There were 16 Cal State campuses in 1960
and 23 today. The number of UCs has increased
from six to 10.
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