Contributors

Patrick Callan was Executive Director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission and is now Director of the California Higher Education Policy Center Project.

Burton Clark is Allan M. Cartter Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

A. H. Halsey is Professor Emeritus of Social and Administrative Studies at Oxford University and Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College.

Clark Kerr is President Emeritus of the University of California.

Sheldon Rothblatt is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Martin Trow is Chair of the Academic Senate, University of California, and Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Chapter I: Introduction by Sheldon Rothblatt [not available online]

Not available online.

Chapter II: Excerpts from Higher Education in California, by A. H. Halsey [not available online]

Not available online.

Chapter III: The California Master Plan of 1960 for Higher Education--An Ex Ante View by Clark Kerr

Clark Kerr

Thirty years ago the Master Plan came into being. It was on February 1, 1959, that Roy Simpson, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and also the executive head of the California State Board of Education, representing the state colleges, and I, representing the University of California, went before the Legislature asking for the opportunity to prepare a Master Plan.

At the time, it never occurred to us that that Plan would remain so intact as it has thirty years later, and after three official reviews by the State of California. It never occurred to us that thirty years later it would be subject to so favorable a review by so distinguished a panel of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Examiners concerned with implications beyond California. It never occurred to us that George Papadopoulos and Dorotea Furth, on behalf of OECD, would consider this Plan worthy of study, or that “Chelly” (A. H.) Halsey, Michio Nagai and Pierre Tabatoni would join in reviewing the Plan.

The Agora Not the Acropolis

Our concerns then were mostly with the 1960s and, to a lesser extent, the 1970s and the 1980s, and entirely with California. We did not even think, although it was called “the Master Plan,” that we really were developing a Plan. What we really were engaged in was negotiating a treaty among the constituent parts of higher education in California that would, at the same time, be acceptable to the Governor and Legislature of the State. We wanted a structure for planning, not a Plan. We wanted what, in carpentry terms, would be called a “roughed-in” structure, a framework for detailed

---

development--what the Germans call a Rahmengesetz. And we certainly did not want--in fact we were trying to avoid--a plan in the sense of a document that was specifically regimenting, rigid, and sufficient unto itself.

But these OECD Examiners came in from an ex-post point of view, evaluating what we did--the quality of our solutions; and also what might be the possible implications for states or nations elsewhere. We, on the other hand, were not concerned with any long-term evaluation of what we might accomplish. We were engaged in current problem solving. The call was then before us to achieve a local and contemporary solution. We did not think we were preparing a Model. We had no thought that we were preparing a Model at all, in the sense of something that might be imitated elsewhere. We were not even preparing a Model in the sense of trying to maximize a solution here. To use terms from economics: we were not trying to “maximize” ultimate real benefits; rather, we were engaged in “satisfying” current felt needs--looking for a solution which was satisfying in the shorter run. Consequently, we were not conscious of ourselves as making history at all.

The Master Plan has been called “The California Dream.” We were not dreaming The California Dream. Actually, for those of us who were involved, we were more trying to escape the nightmare that was otherwise facing us. We were not engaged in a high level, sophisticated weighing of theoretical alternatives, but the very low level, practical examination of possible solutions. We were not on the Acropolis looking back on events, but down in the Agora, the marketplace, making deals under the discipline of time deadlines. But the philosophers up there, way above us, thirty years later, now conclude that our deals had some elements of permanent and perhaps universal value. And they see, today, more in what we did then, than we ourselves saw at the time.

Reading the OECD report when it first came out, I was reminded of a University meeting at Berkeley many years ago when Robert Frost was our speaker. Frost, as he did so well, read from his poems, but he also made comments about being a poet. He said, among other things, that when he wrote a poem, he always knew the first implication of what he was saying. Sometimes he had a dim view of what a second implication was that might be read into it. But only the commentators--the critics--knew for absolute certainty what his third, fourth, fifth and sixth and seventh intentions were. And I have to note that our Examiners are reading a bit more into what we did then than we had in mind at the time.

The following is an account of how the development of the Master Plan looked and felt to us who were involved. This will be a personal account of how it felt to be on the playing field that day.

---

Origins of the Plan

Specifically, the Master Plan began in Regent Edward Carter's living room in Los Angeles in August 1958. It was my second meeting with The Board of Regents after becoming President of the University of California on July 1st. Ed Carter was the Chairman of the Committee on Educational Policy. I went before that committee and said that the University was in an almost impossible position. We were facing immense growth, but we did not know what our responsibilities were going to be--for undergraduate training, for Ph.D. degrees, for professional degrees, for research.

Some of the state colleges wanted to become full-fledged universities. Some of the community colleges wanted to become four-year colleges. The private colleges felt threatened by what they considered to be the insensitive expansion of the public sectors. Would the University continue to be the sole provider of Ph.D. and high level professional training (medicine, law, engineering, architecture and other professions) and of basic research among the public sectors; or would it share these responsibilities? Would the University continue to have undergraduate teaching, and particularly in the lower division? How many new campuses would there be and in which of the public sectors and where located? What would be the admission requirements in each public sector? How would the public sectors be coordinated--by the State of California or by themselves? The Board of Regents expected me to plan for the future of the University, but everything was up in the air--the atmosphere was an impossible one for planning. The leaders of the other sectors faced similar imponderables. What plans could each of us make separately; or would the State of California tell us what to do?

We were under the pressure of time. The tyranny of time was very much in our consciousness. The “tidal wave” of students was just about to sweep onto our shores. The birth rate for women of childbearing age after World War II was about 3.6. The net reproduction rate, which maintains the population, is 2.1; and 3.6 was the highest rate in modern American history. All those young people, born of the Baby Boom, were on their way to our doors. Beyond that, half a million new people were migrating into California each year. And even beyond that, we were making the great transition from mass access to higher education to universal access. Putting all three of these together, it was clear that we were going to be engulfed and would need to be ready.

In addition, there was Sputnik not so long before--in the fall of 1957. America's research universities had particularly been called upon to produce more and better research than ever before, facing what was then considered to be a great world crisis for us. It was also the time when economists began talking about what Adam Smith had talked about in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations: the importance of human capital as well as of physical

---

capital, possibly being more important than physical capital itself. We, in higher education, were being called upon to produce higher skills for more occupations than ever before.

There was another pressure, and that was that the State Legislature was in the process of taking over the determination of higher education policy, taking it away from higher education itself. There were dozens of bills before the Legislature to change different aspects of higher education and to create new campuses across the state. We were particularly worried because there just had been created by legislative action--not at the request of the State Board of Education--a new state college. This state college was in a little town called Turlock, which is a nice little town, a respectable little town, famous, until the state college was put there, only for one thing: there were more turkeys raised and slaughtered there per year than anywhere else in the world. But Turlock also had the Chairman of the Senate's Committee on Education (and the Speaker of the Assembly came from nearby Modesto), and he had gotten through a bill which said that in Turlock, along with all their turkeys, there would be a new state college. The Legislature also approved a new state college in Sonoma, which was far down on the priority list of the State Board.

We in the University of California became nervous. Was the Legislature going to take over? We were particularly sensitive to Turlock and Sonoma because in 1944 the state Legislature had given to the University--not requested by it--the Santa Barbara State College, which later on (after 1958) became a great asset to the University, but in 1944 was imposed on the University. We were not anxious to see such intrusions by the Legislature into what we considered the internal affairs of higher education happen again. We were all very conscious then of our claimed autonomy. We were deeply concerned by any indications that the political process was taking over.

In spite of all the complications, we met the pressure of time. Eighteen months after the meeting at Regent Carter's house, and twelve months after Roy Simpson and I went to the Legislature and asked for a year's grace to prepare the Master Plan, we had a Master Plan, endorsed unanimously by The Regents of the University and by the Academic Senate, by the State Board of Education--also unanimously but with reluctant agreement by some of the presidents of the state colleges and their faculties; unanimously by the Community College Association; unanimously by the independent colleges and universities. And in the Legislature, when the votes came, there was a ringing endorsement: in the Assembly, out of 70 voting, 70 were in favor. In the Senate, out of 37 voting there were 36 in favor. On April 26, 1960 the Plan became law with the Governor's signature. That was a year of extraordinarily hard work, under extraordinary pressures.

---

Thirty years later one looks back on something which, from current perspectives, might seem inevitable; but it was not. We were living under terrible pressures, day by day, to get it done; and we barely did.

Uncertainties

There were great difficulties. In fact, there was no Master Plan until the very last moment. It almost seemed as if we had fallen short. There was major conflict between the state colleges and the University. The state colleges were in the process of becoming comprehensive colleges from normal schools training teachers, and were adding engineering and other fields. Every program they wanted to add had to go before a Liaison Committee consisting of representatives from the University and from the state colleges. Quite frequently the university representatives said “no” to whatever was requested, and when our representatives said “no,” supposedly they could not do it. This created great tension between the two systems, increased by the fact that, from our point of view at the University, some of the state colleges, having been vetoed by the University, just went ahead and did what they wanted to do in some roundabout disguised way. And we thought that was undesirable. Relations were getting worse and worse. State colleges at that time all over the nation were desirous of becoming full-fledged research universities, and there was one great model of a successful transition: Michigan State University, which had been a land-grant agricultural college as well as a teachers' college, but had been called Michigan State College. I sat on the sidelines, as Berkeley's Chancellor, during many of these Liaison Committee meetings and saw the great tension and antagonism between these two segments. Sometimes, with my head in my hands, I would sit there worrying about what I heard.

Some of the community colleges also had high aspirations. Almost inevitably, some of them would have liked to become four-year institutions. Also they wanted to expand to cover the state; and they opposed the giving of a competitive two-year degree by some of the state colleges--in the course of development of the Master Plan they won on both of these points. The private colleges feared that the public sector would overwhelm them, and set up campuses right next door to where they each were. What would the Board of Education do? The Board was in charge of the state colleges, since they provided most of the teachers for the high schools and elementary schools under Board control. Would the Board be willing to release the colleges from being under their control? And if so, what might these colleges become? With the Legislature increasingly exercising its inherent power over higher education, what might it decide about the future of these colleges? We did not know. We did know that the Legislature had given us one year to prepare a Master Plan on the assumption that we could not

---

agree and that the political representatives would then have the chance to make the decisions in the end.

It was also unclear what role the new Governor in the fall of 1958, Pat Brown, would play. He was widely quoted (or misquoted) by state college representatives from a presentation he had made at Chico State during the campaign. He was said to have committed himself to making the state colleges into university campuses. And some state college representatives were very hopeful about the “promise,” and it greatly encouraged them. And there was a member of the Governor's staff--Fred Dutton--who later was a Regent of the University of California. He stated quite boldly that the University of California was the wave of the past and the state colleges were the wave of the future; that the University was a conservative, elitist, Republican institution (and its Regents largely were Republicans), and that the state colleges were progressive, mass oriented, Democratic institutions (and its first trustees, still to be appointed, largely were Democrats)--the state colleges were the institutions for “the next thousand years.” What would come out of the Governor's office? We did not know.

Negotiating the Plan

Some of these uncertainties went unresolved to the very end. And then, at the last meeting we were having in the Regents' Room in University Hall at Berkeley, it all broke down. Several of the state college presidents were in revolt. This was in December 1959. We were terribly worried that it was all over. There was a summit meeting in my office in University Hall to try to put it back together again. There were seven or eight of us at that meeting. On behalf of the University were Regent Donald McLaughlin, Dean McHenry, and myself. Regent McLaughlin was the Chairman of the Board and McHenry the Dean of Academic Planning. For the state colleges were Roy Simpson, William L. Blair, Chairman of the State Board of Education, and Glenn Dumke, the President of San Francisco State College and the leader of the presidents' group. Louis Heilbron, of the State Board was, I believe, also there. And from the private sector there was Arthur Coons, President of Occidental College and Chairman of the Master Plan Study Committee.

At this summit meeting, we tried desperately to put an agreement back together again after the revolt against it by several of the most influential of the state college presidents. All of us there knew the consequences if we did not: we would have to go to the Legislature and say, “We failed. It is now up to you.” The University made its last concession--the final “sweetener”--and it turned out to be enough to do it. I proposed that the University

---

join the state colleges in giving joint Ph.D. degrees. I got the idea from Herman Wells, President of Indiana University, who had made a similar arrangement with Ball State. This was accepted. And so there got to be a Master Plan at about six o'clock that night; but, in the middle of the afternoon, there was not going to be any Master Plan, or so it appeared.

Few heavily contested issues are settled any better than the process and people who are involved. So it was with the Master Plan, and I should like to step back in time to indicate what happened after that first meeting on the subject with the Regents in August 1958 when they agreed that I should initiate an effort at what became the Master Plan. We were just absolutely stalemated in the Liaison Committee between the state colleges and the University. And so I went to Roy Simpson, and said, “Roy, the Liaison Committee is not working.” He agreed. “We do not want the Legislature to take over.” He agreed. “Nor do we want some outside group of consultants to come into California and tell us what to do. Can't we find some way we can cope with it ourselves?” Then I made the suggestion that we bring into the process the community colleges that had always been a part of the schools and not part of higher education. I said, “If we bring them in, that makes it three, and they deserve to be part of the process. But why not also bring in the private colleges because they have an interest, too, and that makes four. Maybe we can get agreements out of four parties where we cannot get them out of two stalemated parties.” Then I suggested that, to assure the impartiality of the process, the chairman be from the private sector. Roy agreed. Each of these agreements was of extreme importance. It was particularly daring to suggest that so much influence be given to the private sector.

This was a very high-minded set of proposals. All of these parties were affected. They all had a stake in the solutions. There was also a more low-minded aspect, and that was the one I just mentioned: that you could get a solution among three or four parties where you could not with only two who were so antagonistic towards each other. There was even a lower-minded reason, below that, which was that I considered that the University's relations with the private institutions and the community colleges were better at that time than were the relations of the state colleges. In the course of my life I have come to love situations where the high-minded reasons and the low-minded reasons support each other, and this was one of those.

---

The Issues

What were the big issues, the central items? Differentiation of functions among the segments was the key point. Student admission levels that each segment would have also needed to be determined to reflect the differentiation of functions. Everyone liked the idea that the community colleges would be making eligible all high school graduates in the state and that community colleges would spread throughout the state in many locations so that every high school graduate would be within commuting distance of a community college. And now today the community colleges have 1,400,000 students. Then they had 300,000.

The state colleges then admitted roughly the top 50 percent of the students out of high school. They agreed to go down to 33 percent. This meant that the state colleges gave up some students to the community colleges; but, as a result, somewhat more able students went, on the average, to the state colleges. We in the University agreed to go down from 15 percent of high school graduates to 12.5 percent. This had the same impact: more students for the community colleges and somewhat more for the state colleges, and a University student body with higher academic credentials. Then we added transfer rights, which were very important, so that anybody who did reasonably well in a community college could transfer either to a state college or to the University of California. This also meant that there would need to be more articulation among the curricula of the community colleges, the state colleges and the University so that credits could be transferred and requirements met--also a very important point.

We had to agree upon some system of coordination, because we not only wanted to have our own plan, we also wanted to keep it within our control. We set up a coordinating council with representatives from all four segments. This was later changed to bring in public representatives. The coordinating process did not work too well until Pat Callan became director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission in 1978. We had had difficulty before that time, but when Pat came in, in his quiet way, with his good judgment, with his very considerable ability, and with the accumulating trust from all four segments of higher education, it began to work well.

For the state colleges quite a lot was done. Rather than treat their proposals on a micro basis, program by program, we went macro--anything they wanted within their overall mission. We agreed that they should have masters degree programs across the board, and would never again have to ask the Regents of the University of California for permission. This was placed within their sole jurisdiction. Also we agreed that they would be eligible for some state research support for studies that were related to their levels of instruction--which meant the more applied fields. We agreed to help them secure their own board of trustees, which they did. We also

---

agreed to try to secure for them--but were unsuccessful--the same constitutional independence as the University of California itself had and which was so very important to our development. Also, we agreed to help the state colleges to escape from a line item budget approach by the State Department of Finance. And then, at the very end, we established the possibility of joint Ph.D. degrees between the University of California, with its worldwide renown, and the state colleges. This gave them academic recognition which they welcomed.

The private colleges received an opportunity to participate in making decisions previously made entirely without them via membership in the coordinating mechanism, and this included discussion of the location of new public campuses. Also, support was given to the state tuition scholarship program, which did much more for them than for the public institutions.

The community colleges, instead of being part of secondary education, became a part of higher education. And they were given the opportunity to provide guaranteed universal access to higher education for the first time in world history anywhere.

The University kept what were called its “crown jewels”--the Ph.D. and other advanced degrees beyond the M.A., and basic research.

The state colleges were allotted five new campuses and the University three; and the community colleges had the prospect (and later reality) of many.

We did all this without any academic studies, without the advantage of all the literature that the OECD Examiners have so clearly and excellently presented. Almost none of that literature then existed, so we had to do without it. Had it existed, some of us who were working on this probably would not have known it did exist. If we had known it did exist, I am not sure we would have read it. If we had read it, I am not sure we could have understood it. If we had understood it, I am not sure we would have used it anyway. So much for all that high quality literature.

Philosophical Orientations

We all had some preconceptions. To the extent that I was being philosophical about it, I thought of Thomas Jefferson as a guide. John Rawls had not then produced his Theory of Justice or I would certainly have had him in mind also. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” but he also believed, as practiced at the University of Virginia, that unequal treatment should be given to carefully selected students at that university. Jefferson's position was that to make a democracy work, among other things, you needed to have a well-educated populace across the board, since the people themselves are given the power to govern themselves. But he also believed that there needed to be an

---

“aristocracy of talent” to provide the skills of leadership and the technical skills of doctors and lawyers and so forth in the society. Rawls' point of view was somewhat the same. Rawls said that it was “just” to be unequal in the education provided if, first, all young people had equal opportunity to show their merit. And second if, once they obtained their special skills, these skills were of benefit to the least advantaged members of the total population. So I had in mind that we wanted universal access, but we also wanted a margin for excellence as well.

The second philosophical orientation of which I was conscious was agreement with Benjamin Franklin on the importance of “useful knowledge,”--of all useful knowledge and not just the most theoretical; that all useful knowledge was worthy of respect; and that the test was not the type of the knowledge but the quality of it regardless of the type. See also the discussion in John W. Gardner, Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (New York, 1961), 131 (“We must foster a conception of excellence which may be applied to every degree of ability and to every socially acceptable activity.”) and 160, “[E]xcellence implies more than competence. It implies a striving for the highest standards in every phase of life. We need individual excellence in all its forms-in every kind of creative endeavor, in political life, in education, in industry-in short, universally.” I was raised in an agricultural community of farmers and craft workers and greatly admired their skills and knowledge. Thus it seemed to me that the worth of the community colleges was not measured by the level of knowledge they taught but by the quality of their teaching; so also for the state colleges; and so also for the University. All had important roles to play and it was important that they play them well. This orientation, perhaps, made me somewhat insensitive to aspirations for every institution to concentrate on the same higher level of knowledge when all levels were useful and absolutely necessary.

Another basic view I had in mind was from John Maynard Keynes. I refer to his view that it was not effective to have either a totally atomistic economy or a totally controlled economy; that it was better to have a guided economy at a macro level with atomistic decisions at the micro level. In higher education, I feared that atomistic competition would lead to all institutions seeking to homogenize themselves with similar academic missions as research universities and that, while this would serve their academic ambitions, other functions also very important to society, including universal access and the training of middle-level advanced skills, would be neglected. Thus the idea of decentralization and competition within a framework of guided missions; thus “guidance” in a “treaty” versus detailed directions in a “Plan,” and versus unbridled self-interest at the other extreme.

---

The fourth orientation was the importance of the autonomy of institutions of higher education--an orientation then intensely shared by the Board of Regents and faculties of the University of California, and by all the other segments of higher education. But autonomy is not a right. It must be constantly earned and earned by responsible conduct and effective service to society. James Madison, among the authors of our Constitution, particularly supported the social value of shared power among several relatively autonomous institutions. We would advance our autonomy by developing a Master Plan that well fitted the needs of the state.

The four above philosophical orientations are standard American convictions and, judging by results, were mostly shared by all of us working on the Master Plan, although we did not discuss them directly. They were the background music.

In the back of all our minds were, additionally, four great practical imperatives--when one thinks back on our discussions. (1) We had to have viable solutions for society, not only a “treaty” among the four segments. We also had to be concerned with ways to meet societal needs at large in the state in a way that would succeed in securing the support of the Legislature and the population.

This in turn, meant that (2) it was imperative for us to satisfy, as best we could, the egalitarian desires of an egalitarian people in an increasingly egalitarian state; and also a very diverse state already at that time in terms of population origins. That meant access to higher education for everyone.

The next imperative (3) was the meritocratic imperative to help produce for society highly trained scientists and doctors and lawyers--people given special opportunities, the meritocratic imperative in a society increasingly based upon high knowledge and high skills.

There was another imperative: (4) the labor market imperative. The occupational structure of the state and the nation was changing rapidly with many more “in between” occupations coming along at the upper levels of the occupational structure requiring four and five year degrees. We had to meet the labor market requirements of a modern industrial society.

Our task was to put together, in a way that might succeed, solutions to begin to respond to these four great imperatives all at once. The first imperative affected all segments jointly; the second particularly the community colleges; the third particularly the University; and the fourth particularly the state colleges. The “treaty” was aimed at meeting--through joint efforts--all four imperatives.

The Players on this Small Stage

A final comment is on the roles of the people involved. We were so very fortunate. We could not have taken any major step without the

---

agreement of Roy Simpson, the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Roy took no initiatives. But he was a statesman. Among many other things, he was willing to see his Board of Education give up its historic supervision of the state colleges.

Louis Heilbron, member of the State Board of Education and later a chair of the new Board of Trustees of the State Colleges, always felt that, for the sake of the people of the state, the University ought to keep “the crown jewels” of research and top level professional training. So he supported this differentiation of function.

Glenn Dumke, the chief representative of the presidents of the state colleges, was under a great deal of pressure from some of his colleagues not to have an agreement, to wait instead to see whether or not they could get full university status through the political process. He stood up against enormous pressures, including during a long automobile ride with several of his fellow presidents. There were those presidents who wanted discussion limited only to securing university status; and they were supported by many of their faculty members. And several presidents had promised their faculties that they would get them university status. Many faculty members had their Ph.D. degrees from leading research universities and had looked forward to employment within this segment of higher education. To them, the state colleges were graveyards of disappointed personal expectations. Glenn Dumke, in addition, always kept any agreement he made.

Then Dean McHenry: He was the University's principal representative in the detailed negotiations and contributed all kinds of ideas. The University could not possibly have had a more skilled and devoted representative. His contributions were heroic.

Arthur Coons, President of Occidental College and Chairman of the Study Group, never suggested, in any way, that the process should be directed particularly to serve the private institutions; and he was totally impartial among the three public segments. Robert Wert, Vice Provost at Stanford, took the same positions. Both of them were very skilled in human relations.

And then the Governor, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. He gave us encouragement and respected what we were trying to do. He had a difficult task, he knew, to finance the enormous expansion of higher education that went particularly with commitment to universal access. He fulfilled that with great distinction. He had to appoint the trustees to the new board for the state colleges, and he made good appointments, as he did for the Board of Regents. He came to view the Master Plan as one of the great triumphs of his administration.

And the legislative leaders, a large number of them, but particularly Dorothy Donahoe in the Assembly and her assistant, Keith Sexton, were devoted in their support of the Plan. Among senators, Walter Stiern played a leading role, as did George Miller.

---

Throughout the negotiations, the community colleges were ably represented by Howard A. Campion and Henry T. Tyler. Thomas C. Holy and Arthur D. Brown were joint staff members for the University and the state colleges, respectively.

All of these people had to be statesmanlike. And all of them were. My field is industrial relations, and I have been involved in many disputes between “capital” and “labor.” Some outsiders have a view of monolithic capital versus monolithic labor. It is always more complex than that. I discovered that years and years ago. All parties are divided. What looks externally like one bargain between “capital” and “labor” is really three bargains because there is bargaining going on within each unit, bargaining going on within the trade union and within management. And when the bargaining between capital and labor fails, it is usually caused by the failure of the bargaining within labor or within management. In the Master Plan, we not only had two, but six, parties involved. The Governor's office, the Legislature, the private institutions, the state colleges, the community colleges and the University. We had divisions within each of them, but particularly within the state colleges. Their leaders were the ones who had to face the greatest internal divisions and thus had the greatest responsibility for bringing their contending points of view together. And representing the state colleges at our summit were men who, under compulsive pressures from the people they represented, stood up and did the statesmanlike thing: Roy Simpson, William Blair, Louis Heilbron, Glenn Dumke. They deserve the most respect of all.

Overall, it was a kind of marvel of human relations, maybe even a miracle, that the Master Plan was put together at the last moment. It was not the inevitable result of elemental forces and the automatic consequences flowing from them. It was only put together because a particular group of human beings came together under particular circumstances and rose to the occasion.

In any event, what we did in the dust and dirt and confusion down in the marketplace with much sweat, a little blood, and an occasional tear has now been blessed by the favorable verdict of three decades of California history, and now also by the mostly supportive analysis presented in so lively a fashion by the three wise men in their roles as OECD Examiners.

California has one of the better systems of higher education, public and private taken together, in the nation. There are many reasons over the past century and a half why this should be true. One of those reasons is that it was possible in that short period of time when all this pressure had surfaced for us to put together the Master Plan. It was intended to solve the problems of that time and that place, yet it has endured now for three decades. And it may even hold some lessons for other places. For nearly

---

everywhere in the industrial world, five central issues confront higher education of how to satisfy both (1) the egalitarian and (2) the meritocratic imperatives and to decide (3) by which institutions; and (4) on whether to rely on a plan, or on “guidance” or on atomistic competition; and (5) how much should be controlled by higher education itself and how much by the state. The California Master Plan of 1960 faced all these issues and made decisions that met the tests of that time and that place.

As the OECD Report states, the Master Plan was “a distinctive attempt to reconcile populism with elitism”; an effort to combine “equality with excellence”; and “logic was superimposed on history” by integrating “both populist and elitist forces into one system.” We did, at that moment, seize upon history and shape it rather than being overrun by it. At the time, it felt like the Perils of Pauline. In retrospect, it looks more like the triumph of collective good judgment.

Footnotes to Chapter III

1--I got the idea from Herman Wells, President of Indiana University, who had made a similar arrangement with Ball State.

2--See also the discussion in John W. Gardner, Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (New York, 1961), 131 (“We must foster a conception of excellence which may be applied to every degree of ability and to every socially acceptable activity.”) and 160, “[E]xcellence implies more than competence. It implies a striving for the highest standards in every phase of life. We need individual excellence in all its forms-in every kind of creative endeavor, in political life, in education, in industry-in short, universally.”

3--The Governor's office, the Legislature, the private institutions, the state colleges, the community colleges and the University.

Chapter IV: Is California the Model for OECD Futures? by Burton R. Clark [not available online]

Not available online.

Chapter V: California's Master Plan for Higher Education: Some Second Thoughts for the Fourth Decade by Patrick M. Callan [not available online]

Not available online.

Chapter VI: Class, Race and Higher Education in the United States by Martin A. Trow [not available online]

Not available online.

Chapter VII: A Dialogue with California by A. H. Halsey [not available online]

Not available online.

Appendix: Conversazione Conference Participants [not available online]

Not available online.

About this text
Courtesy of University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb8489p1ft&brand=oac4
Title: [1992] Excerpt from The OECD, the Master Plan and the California Dream: A Berkeley Conversation
By:  Rothblatt, Sheldon, Author
Date: 1992
Contributing Institution:  University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
Copyright Note:

Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commericially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user

University of California Regents

Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, South Hall Annex, Berkeley, CA 94720-4650