Chancellor's Memo (January 1972; Vol. 10, No. 1)

              Chancellor's Memo
University of California Santa Cruz
Volume 10, Number 1 January, 1972
THE MASTER PLAN AFTER ELEVEN YEARS
The year 1959-60 was one of the most productive of my busy lifetime.  The highlight of that year
was the preparation and adoption of the Master Plan for Higher Education. With seven others I
served as a member of the Master Plan Survey Team. We represented the four segments of higher
education — UC, State Colleges, junior colleges, and independent institutions — whose postures
were increasingly antagonistic.  Under the peerless leadership of the late Dr. Arthur G. Coons,
we managed to forge a plan for higher education, the main features of which have lasted for
eleven years and may remain many more.
The Master Plan is a great chart, with guidelines in most of the problem areas.  It, like the
American Federal Constitution, is a bundle of compromises, as must be any settlement of the
claims of competing parties.  It placed the main rules by which public higher education functions
into the Constitution, the law, and the realm of formal agreement.
A coordinating agency was needed to advise state government and the segments on fiscal matters,
functional differentiation, and orderly growth. As proposed by the team, the Coordinating
Council for Higher Education was composed exclusively of three representatives each of the four
segments. By 1971 the segments were reduced to only one representative each, and the gubernatorial appointees received the lion's share of votes in the Council.
Among the other features of the Master Plan was the procedure for orderly growth.  The CCHE was
given the responsibility for planning and recommending on the need for and location of new
facilities and programs. Master Plan recommendations regarding admissions did tighten entrance
requirements, establishing the present pattern of eligibility of the top one-third of high
school graduates to the state colleges, and the top one-eighth to the University, while retaining the traditional open door to the junior colleges.  We placed great emphasis on providing the
same autonomy for the state colleges as the University had long enjoyed.
Has the Master Plan outlived its usefulness? I argue that, while some obsolescence is inevitable,
the main pillars of the Master Plan are as valid today as they were in 1960.  Consider some of
the proposals for change:
"One governing board."  Critics often advocate consolidating all of public higher education
under a single board.  The magnitude of our three systems argues against such consolidation in
California; one board simply cannot govern so far-flung and diverse an empire.  A consolidated
system would, I think, tend to conformity and sameness on the part of its operating units.
Differentiation of function could be maintained only at the cost of galling classifications.
"Regional boards." In an effort to reduce the span of control of governing boards, one set of
consultants advocated regional boards. The proposal overlooks the state-wide, national, and even
international status of individual colleges and campuses.
"Open admissions." The charge of elitism in entrance requirements can be made against most
institutions of good quality. Some other states have avoided the problem by allowing any high
school graduate to enter their land grant colleges or state universities. If they maintained
scholastic standards, however, open admissions led to great wastage of resources through high
flunkout rates. California's community colleges are better equipped to handle remedial work than
we are.
The Master Plan, after eleven years, is still a valid charter. It has given stability to our
tripartite system of public higher education and it has furnished the road maps for an orderly
expansion of higher education that has provided Californians with among the best colleges and
universities of the American states.
[Signed: Dean E. McHenry]