The California Higher Education Policy Center recently commissioned the Public Agenda Foundation of New York to conduct a series of focus groups and public opinion surveys on national and state attitudes toward higher education. The Closing Gateway reports on the results.
The Center is committed to stimulating public awareness, concern and involvement in issues affecting the future of California higher education. Ultimately, higher education in California will be as available and as effective as the public expects, demands, and supports. Therefore, the Center was particularly interested in assessing public concern about higher education and in understanding what value the public places on the accessibility of higher education. This report offers important insights into these and other public perceptions of higher education.
The Closing Gateway contains a particularly powerful message about the importance of access to higher education for Californians. State and higher education policy makers who have advocated, supported, or acquiesced in rolling back opportunity and sharply raising prices as responses to state financial problems are clearly out of synch with public preferences. And the public appears to be open to rearrangement of priorities and significant innovation to keep the doors of opportunity open. There appears to be a classic mismatch between the recent choices of leaders and the wishes of voters and taxpayers as of the summer of 1993.
The Center was fortunate to enlist the Public Agenda Foundation in this effort. The authors are John Immerwahr, senior research fellow of the Public Agenda Foundation and department chair of philosophy at Villanova University, and Steve Farkas, senior research associate at the Public Agenda Foundation. Deborah Wadsworth, executive director of the Public Agenda Foundation, played a central role in all aspects of the organization, coordination, and design of the project. The Center and the Public Agenda Foundation were assisted in this work by an advisory committee consisting of Virginia Smith, Arturo Madrid, and Joanne Hurley. Joni Finney was project director at the California Higher Education Policy Center.
The Center welcomes the reactions of readers to our reports.
Patrick M. Callan
Executive Director