Continuing re Liberal Education -- Part V, the Berkeley student conundrum

Dr. Jacobsen (see previous posts) cited the Clark Kerr Master Plan circa 1960, which proposed underlying principles for three levels of college – the UC system of research universities, the CSU system of state colleges, and the two-year community colleges, whereby:

•   some form of higher education ought to be available to all regardless of their economic means, and that academic progress should be limited only by individual proficiency; and

•   differentiation of function so that each of the three systems would strive for excellence in different areas, so as to not waste public resources on duplicate efforts.

Clark Kerr at the time stated that his goal was to balance the competing demands of fostering excellence while guaranteeing educational access for all, goals ostensibly still in place today.  This would have been a wonderful point for Jacobsen to stimulate a discussion about the purpose and value of a college education – he ducked the chance, however, perhaps sensing that this would be like picking a scab off a wound.  Naturally this surfaced again, becoming an animated topic later at our campfire and at the breakfast table.  

The Master Plan said that the top 12.5% (1/8^th) of graduating high school seniors would be guaranteed a place at one of the University of California (UC) research campuses (e.g. Berkeley, Los Angeles); the top third could enter the California State University system (e.g. San Francisco State, Long Beach State, Fullerton State, Fresno State); and all serious students could attend a local community college (e.g. Bakersfield College, De Anza, or Foothill College). When Kerr built this plan, there were only five operational UC campuses, with two more about to open.  Kerr added two more – Irvine and Santa Cruz – before the Mario Savio events shortened his tenure as UC President.   Meanwhile, California population grew 237%.

The Plan further specified that every UC campus would be a research university for its graduate programs, striving to add unique value with topics and inquiry not found in the same combination elsewhere.   This assures that peak quality can be marshaled without competing for scarce resources, and duplicating efforts unnecessarily for taxpayers. 

Kerr's perspective: “We can have two premier PhD programs in Physics, but not nine; ditto for Business Schools, Medical Schools, or Law Schools.” 

Thus, each campus was expected to develop a unique character, one that included research leadership at a top level in the chosen fields.  This way, California via the UC campuses could offer discipline breadth to the top 12% of students around the state, who for the most part could ‘stay at or near home’ for their undergraduate years, with a panoply of choice.  For their graduate school education, they would select the appropriate research university, which while in-state with commensurate low tuition, would more likely not be local.  Thus, the education costs could be minimized, both for students and for taxpayers.

How has it worked out?

Unfortunately, Jacobsen here made a major gaffe.  By bringing up Kerr’s Master Plan as the archetype for the whole system, he was obligated to discuss how it has unfolded – including the holes and unexpected consequences, and the possible avenues for further action today.  Nope…

There are three parts to the answer.

Jacobsen partially addressed the first part – it is no longer 12% of the California students who can get into a local school, but more like 5%.  Opportunity has been curtailed due to more children, a lack of building more campuses, and not being able to expand the current ones. An additional unaddressed factor is Berkeley ‘popularity’ – it has the most alumni, and ‘the best programs.’  But the numbers behind the policies are causing the most difficulty.  For example, consider that Cal had 25,000 undergraduates in 1970, 90% from the local Bay area, less than 10% living on-campus.  Cal today is proud that 77% of their new students live on-campus or within a mile.  The era of living at home while attending a ‘local’ UC university is over. Using Jacobsen’s numbers, of today’s 25,000 undergrads, 10% are from out-of-state, and 30% of the 90% who are in-state are not local (e.g. they’re from the central Valley, or Southern California). These ratios mean that there are only 15,750 slots for locals rather than 22,500.  It is even worse for the new 2012/13 freshman class – there were only 12,250 ‘local slots’ last year.

Meanwhile, the Bay area has burgeoned in population.  While San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties have only grown 21% in four decades, the other six counties surrounding Cal have grown 73% in the same period – a total rise of 57% in the nine counties. The net result, with the entering class of 2012, is that there were 2.9 times as many kids from the Bay area vying for each ‘local slot’ at Cal than up until a mere decade ago.  Three times as hard to get in – if these numbers ‘got out’, there’d be hell to pay, at least with the Lair audience.  Jacobsen did not explicate these numbers for them -- one of those "Big Data" skillsets needed?

The second part of the question posed by the Master Plan is breadth.  One measure of this is the variety of majors on any given campus.  Berkeley offers 82 undergraduate majors, plus a wide variety of cross-options and minors.  Four other UC campuses – UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Davis – each offer more than 100 undergrad majors plus additional minors.  Three – UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside offer an average of 70 majors to undergraduates.  UC San Francisco, very specialized for medicine, offers 50 undergraduate majors; UC Merced, just getting underway, has 19.  Class sizes, teaching quality, lab facilities, and other considerations are roughly equal across the ten campuses; no one attending any of the UC campuses is particularly disadvantaged because they couldn’t attend Cal or UCLA.

The third part of the question is the excellence question.  Undoubtedly Jacobsen felt that he had addressed that with his comments re admitting ‘lower achievers’ because their father had the funds to pay out-of-state tuition, but that misses the real point.  The point is that excellence presumes great teachers and great research, and on this score Jacobsen was mute.  In fact, he was given a soft pitch to hit, and he whiffed, saying merely that ‘the graduate schools take care of themselves.’   In fact, they really serve the UC campuses widely because of the presence and involvement of these key researchers.  Granted, they may not be eloquent teachers, but their insight, creativity and research acumen lends an aura and a role model for excellence that is incredibly difficult to articulate credibly any other way.  

This last point can vary widely -- both as a function of the breadth offered on a given campus, and the quality and research interests of the professors in those disciplines.  So, how do the ten campuses fare on this?