California Master Plan For Higher Education - History

History

Prior to the Master Plan's development in the 1960's, California struggled to reform its society. Under a political strangle hold, due to the railroad monopoly of the 1920's, new, self-proclaimed reformers attempted to overthrow the economic and political corruption existing in the state at the time. They wanted to create new institutions with a public morality to give California a new form of purpose.

In the 1950s, the state's legislators and academic administrators foresaw an approaching surge in University enrollment, due to the baby boomers (people born after 1945) coming of age. They needed a plan to be able to maintain educational quality in the face of growing demand. The underlying principles that they sought were:

• that some form of higher education ought to be available to all regardless of their economic means, and that academic progress should be limited only by individual proficiency; and
• differentiation of function so that each of the three systems would strive for excellence in different areas, so as to not waste public resources on duplicate efforts.

Clark Kerr stated that his goal was to balance the competing demands of fostering excellence and guaranteeing educational access for all.

The Plan laid out that the top 12.5% (1/8th) of graduating high school seniors would be guaranteed a place at one of the University of California campuses (Berkeley, Los Angeles, etc.); the top third would be able to enter the California State University (San Francisco State, Cal State L.A., etc.); and that the community colleges (Bakersfield College,College of the Canyons, etc.) would accept all applications. Previously the UC's admissions standards allowed the top 15% of the state to enroll, and the CSU would accept the top half. These percentages are now enforced by sliding scales equating grade point average and scores on the SAT Reasoning Test or ACT, which are recalculated every year. No actual rank of the students in high school are used as many schools do not rank students.

Graduates of the community colleges would then be guaranteed transfer to the Cal State or UC systems in order to complete Bachelor's degrees. This practice was carried over from previous years before the Plan was enacted, with graduates from the CCC being accepted as third-year students at the Universities by virtue of their prior coursework. Finally, the Plan established that the University of California would be the sole portion of the system charged with performing academic research, and would award master's and doctoral degrees in support of that mission. The Cal State system, in addition to awarding master's degrees, would be able to award joint doctorates with the UC.

The Regents of the UC and the Trustees of the CSU approved the Plan in 1959, and the California Legislature adopted it in 1960 in a special session. Periodic reviews by the Legislature occur to the present day, which occasionally result in the enactment of modifications.