Top-quality higher education
open to every California family:
How to Restore the Promise
Yes, California higher education is in crisis. But it’s not too late to rescue it.
Most California families consider a university degree essential to their children’s security and success. Three out of four Californians agree that the state’s higher education system is "very important" to its future. Two in three agree that we will need a higher percentage of college-educated workers in twenty years, but also believe that the cost of college prevents qualified, motivated students from pursuing degrees. Half of California adults call this a "big problem." [1] Neglect and mismanagement of higher education threaten California’s economic potential, social peace and international standing.
California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education created the world’s best higher education system by uniting full access with top educational standards. This combination requires public investment in core instruction and research: it is precisely what private institutions cannot provide on the necessary social scale. Since 2000, however, the State has slashed real-dollar support per UC and CSU student by nearly 30 percent; by the close of the decade, cuts will exceed 40 percent.[2]
As a direct result, the universities have been forced to break the Master Plan’s promises of full access to top-quality education and fully-funded enrollment growth. UC and CSU are now charging an increasingly unrepresentative student body segregated into rich and poor campuses more money for lower quality. Objective measures of this decay include larger class sizes, fewer tenure-track faculty, less hands-on laboratory time, and declines in the graduate programs so important to developing California’s next generation of innovators and leaders.
1. Public Policy Institute of California (2007)
2. "The Cuts Report" (2008)
