Master Plan Review
Summary of the seven working
group final reports
Issues affecting UC and higher education based on final reports
of 7 working groups
May 3, 2002
The Joint Legislative Committee to Develop a Master Plan for Education
held hearings
in February and March on final
reports of the seven Master Plan working
groups. The committee staff are using the seven reports to assemble
a draft Master Plan that will be made public in May. The Joint Committee
is accepting “e-testimony”
on the reports on its website. UC representatives on the seven work
groups were mostly successful in ensuring that the final work group
reports included recommendations that UC could either support or at
least not oppose. The extent to which the draft Master Plan will follow
the recommendations of the seven work groups is unknown.
In preparation for the Sacramento debate over a new Master Plan,
the UC Master Plan Advisory Group, chaired by Chancellor Vanderhoef,
forwarded a paper on the Master Plan to President Atkinson and Provost
King. Entitled “A Perspective on Developing a New Master Plan,”
this paper is a broad statement of University principles that underlie
our commitment to serving the state under a new framework designed
to encompass all levels of education, pre-kindergarten through university.
It highlights elements from the existing Master Plan for Higher Education
that are seen as vital to the continued success of California postsecondary
education. At the same time, it indicates ways in which UC can become
a more engaged and active partner in K-12 improvement, consistent
with the University’s land grant mission.
Below is a summary of some of the work group recommendations of most
interest to UC:
Governance. That report recommends establishing a new gubernatorially-appointed
Chief State Schools Officer to run the California Department of Education
and eliminating the elected State Superintendent of Instruction and
the Executive Director of the State Board of Education. The report
recommends that the Governor be the single appointing authority for
the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC). The work
group considered creating a Secretary of Education that would have
authority over both K-12 and higher education (a recommendation that
was of concern to the University). Instead, it recommended that coordination
between K-12 and higher education should occur in the Governor's office
and that the Governor should have the authority to specify how that
coordination is undertaken. This work group also recommended the establishment
of an independent agency to collect K-16 data--a recommendation that
surfaced in several work groups.
Student Learning. The Student Learning work group introduced
a new recommendation targeted at UC admissions policy late in its
deliberations. It recommends that each UC campus expand its freshman
year enrollment by 5 percent. Students enrolled as part of this expansion
should be “selected from students in educationally disadvantaged
schools (as defined in the current UC Outreach programs) who may fail
to meet UC eligibility, but who display extraordinary talents or leadership
in other domains.” This recommendation originated from UC faculty
members who are concerned that the systemic reforms suggested elsewhere
will be long-term and that a short-term intervention is needed to
ensure that UC does it share of remediating underprepared but promising
students. At the suggestion of other UC representatives, members of
the work group ultimately agreed to modify this recommendation to
fit within existing Master Plan and UC policy on admission by exception.
This policy allows up to 6 percent of the freshmen class to be students
not fully eligible for UC.
Other recommendations of this work group include:
- Make the UC/CSU “a-g” course pattern the “default”
curricula for all California high school students, even those planning
to attend the community colleges or not attend college at all. Senator
Alarcon has already included this recommendation in his bill, SB
1731, which requires that high schools enroll each and every student
in the “a-g” course pattern unless the student, his or
her parents, and a school official consent in writing to the student
“opting out.”
- Create an intersegmental faculty body of the senates of UC, CSU,
CCC, AICCU, and K-12 (which does not currently have an academic
senate) to work on K-12/higher education alignment of curriculum,
exit assessments, admissions, and placement requirements.
- Create longitudinal databases linked among the various segments
to track and report students' progress on achieving the learning
standards articulated in the report.
Finance and Facilities. This work group split into subgroups,
one for postsecondary and one for K-12. Recommendations for the postsecondary
level focus on adopting state policies to dampen the “boom and
bust” cycles in higher education appropriations and to provide
more stable funding for the segments. Consistent with the “partnership”
model, the report recommends annually funding core higher education
needs and enrollment growth but using additional funds in “good”
years only for one-time rather than base-building expenditures. The
report also recommends adopting and adhering to a consistent student
fee policy, establishing 10.93 percent as the community college’s
share of Proposition 98, and reviewing the marginal cost approach
to budgeting.
There were work group discussions about differential funding by student
level in public postsecondary institutions (i.e., lower division,
upper division, graduate). No recommendations to that effect were
included in the work group report although this issue may re-emerge
in the draft Master Plan. The report does recommend allowing UC and
CSU to charge differential fees, “taking into account large differentials
in instructional costs and the personal economic benefits available
to graduates later in their careers.”
Other recommendations. Other work group report recommendations
of interest to higher education and the University include the following:
- Increase the capacity of higher education to produce more teachers
and educators.
- Develop an infrastructure at the public segments to support the
ongoing professional development of future and existing higher education
faculty.
- Develop new and expanded education doctorate programs in the
public sector. The CSU request for an independent doctorate was
a very contentious issue. However, the CSU/UC agreement on the Ed.D.
is likely to become the template for resolving this issue.
- Focus some portion of postsecondary funding on program/certificate/degree
completion, time to completion, and education/labor market outcomes
rather than only enrollment.
- Consider granting educational segments “flexibility in their
internal allocation of funds to address the higher costs associated
with career, technical, and scientific instruction and contextualized
learning more broadly.” CSU representatives advocated this
recommendation because of their concern that marginal cost is not
adequate for higher cost programs.
- Identify an individual or entity to be responsible for developing
and disseminating an annual forecast of education in California,
including short (1-3 years), intermediate (5-10 years), and long-term
(20 year) projections related to student demand, capital facilities,
the education workforce, and system performance. Create a statewide
student data system and Establish common identification numbers
for all students in the public education system.
Final reports later this year. Further deliberations will
occur for the rest of the legislative session with the goal of adoption
of a new Master Plan by late July or early August. It is unclear yet
how many additional issues will emerge beyond those discussed in the
work groups.
THE EDUCATION DOCTORATE AND EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP. The Joint
Master Plan Committee is still likely to address the issue of education
doctorates in its draft report. However, the focus has shifted considerably
since CSU and UC announced their agreement to pursue a Joint Ed.D.
Since the joint agreement was reached in November, the Joint Ed.D.
Board has already held four meetings, consulted with K-12 and community
college leaders, issued a Request for Proposals, and received a number
of proposals beginning April 15th. The Joint Ed.D. Board hopes to
fund a number of these proposals before the summer. Board members
already have consulted with senior K-12 and community college leaders
about the ideal content of and need for Ed.D. programs. The Board
will be undertaking a process to identify state and regional needs
for new programs, building on three regional meetings with county
superintendents in which the University participated last fall. Also,
UC and CSU will be co-sponsoring a resolution in the Legislature to
memorialize and obtain legislative support for the Joint CSU/UC Ed.D.
agreement.
UC continues to move forward with planning for the creation of a
new California Institute for Educational Leadership (CIEL). A faculty
design team has been meeting to discuss how UC can best assist in
efforts to improve educational leadership in the state. That team
has also been meeting with K-12 and community college leaders.
Master
Plan home
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