State Higher Education in California Report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
A. Board of Regents for the University System.
- 1. The Commission recommends that the functions of the Regents of the University of California be so extended as to give the Regents jurisdiction over the entire State university system-that is, over all State institutions the primary function of which is to offer instruction which is specialized on a level above that of the common school system (in other words, above the junior college), including the State university and the State teachers colleges. For purposes of practical administration the lower divisions of teachers colleges, and of the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, are included in the university system of management.
Unification. In effect this recommendation would concentrate the management of all specialized professional education for law, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, engineering, teaching, etc., under one State board. It would remove the seven State teachers colleges at Arcata, Chico, Fresno, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Barbara, and San Diego from the jurisdiction of the State Board of Education and the State Director of Education and place them under the Regents. The Regents already control the eighth State teachers college, which is now an integral part of the University of California at Los Angeles. The various State professional schools and courses now located in different parts of the State but under the management of two State boards are more closely related to each other in function, technique, and management than they are to the conduct of the common schools, which have an emphatically different function and are largely managed by local boards. All aspects of higher occupational specialization-that is, professional education-should be under the management of one State board and not illogically distributed between two boards as at present.
Teacher Training. Certainly the professional training of all teachers and other common school functionaries should be under one direction or management. Extension of the jurisdiction of the Board of Regents would not only unify the planning of professional education
Coordination. Integration is most needed in this field of service, for elementary school teachers are now trained in seven independent State teachers collages and one university teachers college, geographically separated from each other, and secondary school teachers are completely trained in the University of California at Berkeley and partially or fully prepared in some fields at various teachers colleges as well. All the professional graduate school specialization for teachers and educational administrators is given at the University of California at Berkeley, but the eight teachers colleges also train certain supervisors and administrators in a fifth year offering. Privately controlled colleges and universities also train teachers. Finally, the task of coordinating State effort with that of institutions ouside the State system is immensely complicated when State management is divided.
Unified management is more urgently needed in professional training for service in the public schools than in any other professional field in which the State is involved. With nine State institutions (School of Education at Berkeley; Teachers College, University of California at Los Angeles; State Teachers Colleges at Chico, Fresno, Humboldt, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Barbara) geographically scattered, the ever-present danger of duplication at high cost alternates with the peril of meager support and inefficiency.
Restrictions. In 1915 the State Legislature began gradually to limit the powers of the seven separate boards for normal schools. Finally in 1921 it gave to the State Board or Department of Education complete control over all. Unification of state-supported teacher training has always been needed in California. It has now become an urgent necessity. The amount of public money involved in this service is large. The present and an impending further increase in the over-supply of licensed teachers makes the problem of dividing and distributing functions among teacher-training institutions crucial.
Policy-Making. With a decrease of professional emphasis in the field of teacher training, long foreseen and now increasingly induced by changing conditions and lack of coordination in the system, there is a natural local disposition on the part of the teachers colleges toward undue expansion so as more fully to utilize the existing staff and other facilities. This has called and will increasingly call for additional capital and operating expenditures which are demanded by local initiative rather than by wise state-wide planning. In addition, teacher training has shown a natural disposition at each of the seven teachers colleges to overdo somewhat the liberal program. Educational policy-making and expenditures thus become the accidental product of local educational and political pressure and not the fulfillment of a state-wide plan based on a scientific anticipation of genuine educational needs.
Teachers Colleges. The Commission believes that the argument frequently heard that the State Board of Education, in charge of common schools, should still be left in charge of teachers colleges so as to control the source of supply for the schools under their management is not of sufficient weight against all the other major advantages to the
Originally, when the teachers colleges were normal schools with courses so brief and admission requirements so low as to be vocational schools of secondary grade, there was no warrant for making them part of the higher educational system.
Inasmuch as the professional courses in State teachers colleges now rest on lower or junior college divisions, under their own control, a condition similar to that in the university at both Berkeley and Los Angeles, similar problems therein involved would he handled by the same agency.
With the extension of the jurisdiction of the Regents of the University of California to cover the whole University System of the State, a period of transition will ensue which may prove difficult unless adequate provision is made for the necessary readjustments. The Commission is therefore of the opinion that for this period of transition a special committee of Regents should be constituted for the seven State teachers colleges. By this means the needs and problems of the teachers colleges, will be more readily and fully become known to the whole Board of Regents.
Expansion. There are two present problems in teachers college expansion. One involves vertical extension upward into advanced work of professional or graduate status. The other includes horizontal extension of the academic work of the teachers colleges into the domain of the liberal or cultural. These problems are similar to problems often met in university management. They are better dealt with in a unified way by a board that is by tradition and function experienced in dealing with such actual or potential developments at other points in the State.
The Commission is not disposed to recommend any change in the method of government for the University of California, not merely because any change would involve the difficulties of constitutional amendment, but because the present organization has worked unusually well. A comparative study of the efficiency of arrangements for State university control in other American states affirms this view. Such defects as current criticism of university management implies would not be corrected in any large degree by changing the present method of governance. The major criticisms of the university pertain to the articulation of the university with the common school system. The specific shortcomings indicated require correction through better coordination and articulation of the two systems and intelligent cooperation. Coordination, not reconstruction, is the need.
It is true that appointments ex officio are no longer generally regarded as effective in composing educational boards. In 1930, among the forty-eight states only twelve had boards of education composed mostly of members ex officio, thirty had wholly or mostly appointed or elected boards, while six states had no state board of education. Nevertheless, appointment ex officio has amply justified itself in connection with the University of California Regents. Experience in California,
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=hb9r29p2g2&brand=oac4
Title: [1932] State Higher Education in California: Report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Recommendations of the Commission of Seven
By: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Author, Capen, Samuel Paul, 1878-1956, Author
Date: June 24, 1932
Contributing Institution: University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
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