SECTION ONE: General Principles


Although much of our discussion revolved around specific recommendations for the future of higher education, certain general themes also emerged from the interviews.


1. CONSENSUS: Higher education issues in California are extremely serious and should be at the very top of the state's agenda.

The future of higher education in California is regarded as an extremely serious issue by almost all of the leaders interviewed. The general feeling is that California's dual tradition of high quality and affordable fees was one of the state's very strongest resources, and that it faces serious dangers in the years to come. Indeed, many of our panelists are themselves graduates of the California system, and they stressed the importance to their own lives of access to the best schools in the nation at an affordable price. Perhaps the best indication of their concern is their eagerness to talk to us. Despite the extremely busy schedules of the people we contacted, only a handful of people turned down our requests for interviews. People were generally eager to talk to us and thanked us for doing something about this important issue. The quotes speak for themselves:

(a) Higher education is my number one concern. Higher education is failing to provide an outstanding educational experience for those who can benefit from it; they are short on money, short on facilities and enrollment is falling off. Because of our large population the need is greater than ever before.

(b) I've been following higher education issues for a long time. One of the principal concerns to me is access, and on this one the toothpaste is long since out of the tube. There was a time when a person could attend outstanding universities here at both the graduate and undergraduate level for a low cost. That has gone already and I don't know what the future holds.

(c) This topic is terribly important because education is the most important infrastructure in our country. It is the one piece without which we won't have any other infrastructure.

(d) The issue that seems to me most important is the problem of providing higher education to everyone who wants it on an affordable cost and in a reasonable time. Today the state is in bad financial shape, fees have been raised and it takes a long time to get an education.

(e) This is important because disproportionately, women and persons of color have been affected by the insensitivity of higher education to respond to their needs. Every negative change we have talked about impacts most heavily on minority students. If we don't take a renewed look, we are going to continue to develop a society of classes. Something which seems as simple as higher fees can really begin to drive a chasm between those who can afford schools and those who can't. As those fees become bigger, the students segregate out more and mix less and are less exposed to one another.

2. CONSENSUS: The state does not have an effective process for dealing with higher education issues.

Despite the importance of higher education issues, our respondents were nearly unanimous in saying that the state is not dealing with the issue in an effective way. The respondents continually stressed that there is no process in place to deal with the issues and resolve them. We heard numerous complaints about the lack of focus on this issue in the recent governor's race and about the ineffectiveness of the Board of Regents, the Legislature and the universities themselves to deal with the issue. Several people called for some sort of high level commission to refocus the state on the priority issues, but many expressed lack of optimism about the ability of any group to refocus the state's attention on the issue.
(a) What do I think of the process for dealing with these issues? What process? I don't think we have a process for dealing with them.

(b) When the baby boom came along, the attitude then was "Get it done." In terms of percentage change in the number of students that was much more onerous than what we are facing today. No one was turned away, we took care of them all, just as we had with the GIs. In both cases as soon as people realized that there was a problem there was a drive to solve it. Today I don't see anyone driving hard to solve the problem. I don't see anyone facing up to it. I don't see it on any of the state university boards, or in the community colleges. That is what is most missing, a sense of determination to solve the problem. That is what really bothers me.

(c) This issue is not where it should be on the state's agenda. We are spending much too much time in the governor's race on who is strong enough on crime and capital punishment. This issue should be right at the top or the whole infrastructure will suffer.

(d) There is a very skewed discussion with no real oversight. The existing system doesn't perform any meaningful function other than preserving the status quo.

(e) Until a decade ago, California thought that it was exempt from the problems about higher education that everyone else was facing. It has made addressing the problems even more painful than in some other states. I was in a panel with a number of UC people, and what I noted was a defensive insularity. If an idea was proposed they said, "Who are these guys, and what do they know about higher education?"'

(f) It would be interesting to engage the entire state on the question of the future of higher education. The discussion of the issue would be as important as the solution. Would it be possible to make education the kind of political issue that immigration is today? Despite the stupidity with which the immigration issue has been debated, at least everyone is engaged and has a view.

(g) I can't imagine politicians having the discussion. It would need to be a partnership of stakeholders, including business educators and leaders.
(h) I don't have the answers but it is clear to me that, as a state, the leadership doesn't have any consensus as to where we are going. They have not thought through the choice between a liberal education versus the needs of the job market. The faculty just go on teaching whatever they want to teach, and are primarily caught up in doing prestige things that will make their individual school more prestigious. It may be very well, but it gets us away from what we are supposed to be doing.

(i) I have been in meetings with the people who run all three levels. They are OK when they are in the room together, but as soon as they leave the room and start competing for dollars it falls apart, they all become politicians.

(j) If you go back to the time of the Master Plan you see that in those days the state's leadership thought that it was an absolute imperative to have a good education system. We have fallen away from that. Politicians have come to see education as a cost rather than an investment.

3. CONSENSUS: California's public higher education system will need to make major changes if it is to continue to be a viable institution.

Nearly everyone we interviewed feels that even the current status quo cannot continue. While there might be disagreement about the size of the projected increase, nearly everyone agrees that the number of potential students is on the rise. And there is a widely shared view that, as matters currently stand, higher education will have a tough time even holding its own in the competition for state resources. As most of the panelists analyze the situation, the taxpayers are unwilling to pay more in taxes, economic growth will be limited, much of the budget is already committed, and there is fierce competition for the money that the Legislature and the Governor actually have control over. While our respondents are distressed by the idea that the money goes to things such as crime prevention ahead of higher education, even the idea of stabilizing state support at its current level seems optimistic to many of our respondents. Instead they see further decline in the state's ability and willingness to finance higher education.

In one way or another, nearly all of our respondents believe that higher education itself will need to make major changes. While they may not agree on the shape of those changes, they nearly all think that major revisions are necessary. A theme that we heard over and over is that higher education will be required to go through a restructuring analogous to what has been seen in industry, and that the process has just begun.

(a) I have watched corporate restructuring closely. Over the last 20 years we have seen a devolution of the initiative of responsibility downward and outward, with fewer layers of bureaucracy and greater customer orientation. Now we have seen in the last few years the same thing has been happening in what is faddishly called "reinventing government." It is really a belated recognition that the federal agencies and private corporations are both large-scale, intricately organized systems that have serious ailments. There is no doubt in my mind that the universities have the same ailments and will have to go through the same process.

(b) There should be some kind of shakeup or a commission of some sort that looks at the goals of education-which should be to create the best education for the most people-and then gets tough with the elements that are counterproductive of that goal. This is what we do in the private sector; we are constantly re-evaluating and being tough about what we do, and if we don't do that we'll be killed. There ought to be some of that force of credibility and accountability in education too. Sometimes I think that the only real way to fix it would be to close the whole damn thing down and start all over again.

(c) In one area that I follow closely, I know that the UC system spends about four times as much as a commercial firm would for the same service. I don't know where the money is going because they pay the vendors less than commercial firms pay them.

(d) I think higher education should take a look at some of the leaders in industry, people who have to work the bottom line and who can't afford to let bureaucracies soak up all of the money. Industry is showing the way. Higher education should take its cue from the marketplace where they propose to send their students.

(e)It is hard for me to believe that the administrative structure is so large that they had to hire offices in Oakland. Most corporations either have their primary staff at the level of operating divisions with a small corporate staff, or vice versa. In higher education we have large staffs at both levels.

(f)Higher education in California is a socialized institution, and nothing renders it immune from socialism's defects. It is inefficient, highly expensive and it benefits a small group at the expense of a larger group.


4. CONSENSUS: There is an urgent need for more fundamental thinking about the purposes of higher education.

In the interviews, we presented a menu of ideas for dealing with problems in higher education, and our respondents reacted to those with greater or lesser enthusiasm. But in many cases, they were impatient with the framework in which the issues were being discussed. The ideas-such as eliminating duplication in graduate programs, exploring a three-year bachelor's degree or reconsidering teaching loads-were frequently perceived as tinkering around the edges. There was a widely shared sense that much of the current discussion is budget-driven rather than concerned with education. The respondents constantly called for a more fundamental re-examination of the goals of higher education and the relation of proposed steps to those goals. One theme that was constantly repeated was that we should go back to fundamental questions and ask about the state's fundamental goals for education before trying to answer questions about funding and administration.
(a) When I looked at the Center's recommendations my reaction was that this was an exercise to defend the universities politically, rather than an educational discussion of what the state really needs. What we need to do is to look forward to the future of California, and ask what are our educational needs and how are we going to meet them, and only then try to talk about how to pay for them.

(b) It is hard for me to comment on these proposed reforms in isolation from broader changes. Higher education, as it is currently structured, is too narrow; it focuses on disciplines all too inadequately interlaced. It almost never sees them in an organic way. Were it possible to engage students in a way which almost compelled students to see the relationships of various things, then these all too separate disciplines could be integrated more effectively.

(c) I start with the premise that there is a structural problem. When it comes to education you can always say there is not enough money. In my judgment, the issue isn't a problem of not enough money, the issue is a problem of management, administration and prioritizing the different roles for education.

(d) I would not attack the problem in terms of the revenue. I would like to start at the other end. Here is the number of students each year, what does it take to provide them with a first-rate education, how many faculty will that require, etc. In other words, let's start from zero, then see what kind of higher education system we need and then talk about how much it will cost.

(e)My sense is that higher education issues are being looked at totally from a budgetary perspective. I would like to step back: if we had to do it over again, would we change the objectives at all, and if we didn't, how would we go about meeting them? For example, if the goal is to produce an educated workforce then maybe we need to talk more about vocational and technical programs. If the goal is a liberally educated person, then we need to talk about other things. In either case, there might be solutions that are totally outside the existing system that we are not thinking of because we are not asking the right questions.

5. CONTROVERSY: Rising fees: Are they a major problem or merely a symptom of the problem?

Our panelists are well aware of the increases in fees over the last few years, but they disagree about the significance of the increase. For many of our respondents, the increases in fees are in themselves a serious problem which has already impacted dramatically on the well-being of the state. For these respondents, escalating prices for higher education have already discouraged many students and are increasingly driving California to being a two-class society of haves and have-nots. It is precisely these escalating fees which make it necessary for higher education to explore cost-cutting reforms.
On the other side of the issue, many of our panelists feel that escalating fees are only a symptom of more global difficulties in higher education. These leaders are not convinced that recent declines in enrollment are necessarily driven by increasing fees. Indeed, many feel that existing fees may be too low. These leaders resist the dichotomy of reforms versus increasing fees. For them, the system needs both higher fees and major reforms. Higher fees are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Higher fees are a major problem:

(a) My chief concern is that the fees have been increased rather significantly and I expect that has deterred many young people from going on to higher education.

(b) What this country is about is improving oneself socially and economically, and accessible quality education is the cornerstone of that hope. We are going in the wrong direction. We need to get back to what California was.

(c) We are developing a class system where people who don't have the money can't go to college.

(d) I am incredibly concerned about the rise in fees. I am especially concerned about its impact on the community colleges where it has had a tremendous impact in moving kids out of higher education. It is depriving people of lower income of higher education. My own graduate school has been cut. What I had the opportunity to do, the new generation will not have. We have abandoned the idea of equal access to higher education.

(e) The system is starting to drive out students, because we have been raising fees and it is harder to get the classes that people need.

(f) We are finding that even at the level of community colleges, students can't get the courses that allow them to matriculate to the state college level. Between their work schedules and the increase in fees, they find that they can't get the courses they need to transfer to the state college system. It was always tough and it has gotten even tougher. It becomes more and more discouraging. The financial aid either isn't out there or runs out before they have completed the process.

Higher fees are not the main issue:

(a) Some people think that education should be free, but if you give people something that is free, its value decreases. I don't believe that people ought to get a public education without effort on their part.

(b) We can't continue to guarantee access to all qualified students. There just isn't enough money in the bank. Students should be asked to support more of their education.

(c) There is too much histrionics about rapidly escalating fees. It is a symptom of the problem but not the problem.

(d) I am not convinced that declining enrollments are related to increasing fees. I have seen shocking numbers about people dropping out of high school and of people getting through high school without the ability to go on. Is what is keeping them out the fees or is it those other factors?

(e) The statement that community college fees have gone up 260 percent is misleading, because you are starting from a base of practically zero. The fees are probably not above average state university fees in other states. Some places, like Michigan, have semi-privatized their state education systems.

(f) There are declining enrollments, but I am not sure we know why. Part of it can be rising costs creating barriers, but part of it may be changing demographics. Perhaps the colleges are not perceived as inviting, the values of recent immigrants may be different.


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