The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 was developed by a survey team appointed by the Regents of the University of California and the California State Board of Education during the administration of Governor Pat Brown. UC President Clark Kerr was a key figure in its development. The Plan set up a coherent system for public postsecondary education which defined specific roles for the already-existing University of California (UC), the state colleges which were joined together by the Plan into the State College System of California and later renamed the California State University (CSU), and the junior colleges which were later organized in 1967 into the California Community Colleges (CCC) system.
The statutory framework implementing the plan was signed into law as the Donahoe Higher Education Act (honoring Assemblywoman Dorothy M. Donahoe, one of the plan's foremost advocates) by Brown on April 27, 1960.
History
Prior to the Master Plan's development in the 1960s, California struggled for many years to reform and improve its social institutions. In response to the powerful railroad monopolies' stranglehold on state business and politics at the turn of the 20th century, new Progressive reformers attempted to overthrow the economic and political corruption then prevailing in the state at the time. They hoped to create new institutions infused with public morality and purpose. However, in the early years of California's modern development the population had remained largely mobile, moving from opportunity to opportunity, making it almost impossible for the state to create permanent public schools that could effectively educate children from start to finish. Furthermore, California progressives encountered obstacles in the form of people who thought that education should remain the work of local and religious groups, as well as being opposed to paying taxes for social purposes. Another barrier that they needed to circumvent was the issue of appropriating land and money for universities. The 1st and 2nd Organic Acts (of 1866 and 1868, respectively) helped by first introducing the possibility of a state secular higher education institution and second, actually authorizing the creation of a state university controlled by a Board of Regents (which would become the University of California).
In the 1950s, the state's legislators and academic administrators foresaw an approaching surge in university enrollment, due to the baby boom children coming of age. They needed a plan to be able to maintain educational quality in the face of growing demand. The underlying principles that they sought were: That 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.
The original Master Plan was approved by the Regents and the State Board of Education and submitted to the Legislature in February 1960. In April of that year, the California Legislature passed the Donahoe Higher Education Act, which implemented several components of the Plan as statutory law. However, California's Master Plan is more than a single statute. The 1960 Master Plan is embodied in several documents: A study completed by the Master Plan Survey Team approved by the State Board of Education and the UC Board of Regents The Donahoe Higher Education Act giving legal force to several key components of the plan A constitutional amendment which established the Trustees of the California State Colleges (renamed the California State University in 1974).
Purpose
Kerr stated that the goal of the Master Plan was to balance the "competing demands of fostering excellence and guaranteeing educational access for all."
The Master Plan achieved the following: It created a system that combined exceptional quality with broad access for students. It transformed a collection of uncoordinated and competing colleges and universities into a coherent system. It established a broad framework for higher education that encourages each of the three public higher education segments to concentrate on creating its own kind of excellence within its own particular set of responsibilities. And it acknowledged the vital role of the independent colleges and universities, envisioning higher education in California as a single continuum of educational opportunity, from small private colleges to large public universities.