Academic turf war between California colleges underscores need for new higher education plan

When the Legislature passed the Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960, it envisioned a seamless, three-level system that would provide high-quality and low-cost instruction benefiting both those seeking careers and society as a whole.

Under the plan, community colleges would specialize in preparing students for transfer into the University of California and California State University, plus offer vocational and adult education classes.

The state university system would offer bachelor and master’s degrees in education, engineering and other professional fields. The UC would be the venue for research and award not only bachelor and master’s degrees but doctorates.

It never quite worked out as planned, for a variety of economic and political reasons. Instead of cooperating as the plan assumed they would, the three higher education systems slipped into competitive postures, vying for both capital to expand campuses and operational support from governors and the Legislature.

Over the last couple of decades, the competition for money also morphed into battles over academic turf. Community colleges sought authorization to award four-year baccalaureate degrees in some career fields and the state university system, while opposing the community colleges’ academic ambitions, aspired to award doctorates, which the UC system saw as an invasion.

These incursions were signals that the bifurcated roles contained in the master plan were no longer realistic and, with some other trends, should have sparked a reconfiguration guided by the interests and needs of students and those of the larger California society.

Instead, the infighting over who could do what has continued and extended into clashes over differing academic requirements for transfers and other operational glitches, as well as money.

Community colleges and state universities have pursued their expansionist goals one career field at a time in specific pieces of legislation, weaving through the academic and geographical limitations that the Legislature imposed to placate opponents. The result is an odd array of four-year degrees some community colleges can offer and doctorates that the state universities can award.

The situation is a microcosm of California politicians’ chronic inability to deal comprehensively with glaring public policy issues. Instead they tinker at issues at the edges while ignoring the underlying fundamental conflicts.

Another example illustrates the syndrome: the state’s ceaseless squabbling over water. The same interests fight over the same allocation issues year after year as governors and legislators come and go. None are willing to invest the political capital it would take to resolve it once and for all.

Back to the college turf battles.

The ongoing dispute erupted anew in February when the Community College Chancellor’s Office approved three new baccalaureate programs at Mesa College, Moorpark College and Southwestern College over objections from the state university system, which claimed they were duplicative.

Almost immediately two bills were introduced that would, if enacted, make it easier for community colleges to offer more bachelor degrees by making it harder for the state university system to oppose expansion into specific career fields by claiming they are duplicative within geographic boundaries.

Of course the four-year universities oppose the measures, Senate Bill 960 and Assembly Bill 2694, and in some ways that’s understandable since the universities are experiencing stagnating or even declining enrollment. But the bills are moving.

This situation, the competition for students, will become more acute as California’s population plateaus or declines. The shrinking number of K-12 students leads to a shrinking number of college applicants and fierce competition because enrollment drives state financial support.

It’s one of several reasons why California needs a realistic overhaul of the higher education master plan, one that rearranges the systems’ missions and expands options for students.