An article on the history of the Master Plan for Higher Ed has appeared aimed at challenging the standard history.

Revisionist Reflections on California’s Master Plan @50

John Aubrey Douglass, University of California, Berkeley

Summary:

The 1960 Master Plan:
• Is not the creation of one man, Clark Kerr, but the result of negotiations based on earlier innovations and planning studies
• Did not create the tripartite system, invent existing mission differentiation, or seriously alter the allocation of function
• Did not expand California’s commitment to mass higher education. The Master Plan shifted future enrollment demand to CCC, actually reducing access to UC and CSU
• Did so largely to save money and create a more politically palatable proposal for expanding enrollment capacity
• Did not incorporate its admissions pool into state law;
• Did not enact into law its vision of a tuition free system of pubic higher education
• Is more important for what it preserved and prevented then what it invented

The 1960 Master Plan: What it DID do
• Consolidated in one statute largely existing missions of UC, CSU, and CCC – with the exception of adding recognition of research function at CSU but without a claim on additional resources
• Removed CSU from State Board of Education and created in statute Board of Trustees (proposal first introduced in 1953)
• Adopted a plan to create new campuses for UC and CSU developed largely in 1957
• Ended lawmakers’ frenzy of bills to create new campuses
• Ended heated turf war between UC and CSU
• Controlled future costs to California taxpayers
• California Higher E dreform effort produced (under political pressure) by the Higher Ed segments, and then translated into legislation and practice

Full article at http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1105&context=cjpp