Reimagining California’s Master Plan with Pat Callan

What happens when a plan designed in 1960 still shapes the experiences of California students today? In this episode of Degrees of Change, Dr. Su Jin Jez sits down with Pat Callan, one of the nation's most influential leaders in higher education reform. Pat shares insights from decades of policy work and helps us unpack how California’s Master Plan was shaped, where it falls short, and what must change to make California’s higher education system more equitable and responsive to the needs of today.

Key Topics

• The original goals—and limitations—of California’s 1960 Master Plan
• How the state drifted away from a student-centered vision
• The roles of state leadership, accountability, and courage in driving change

Our Guest, Pat Callan

For decades, Pat Callan has been one of the nation's most respected leaders in higher education reform.  He served as president of some of our nation’s most influential organizations, such as the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and the Higher Education Policy Institute, and as a leader of several state postsecondary education commissions—including California’s former entity.

He has published many articles and papers on higher education policy, educational opportunity, public accountability, financing of higher education, and state policy leadership. He coauthored Designing State Higher Education Systems for a New Century and Financing American Higher Education in the Age of Globalization. He is coeditor of Public and Private Financing of Higher Education: Shaping Public Policy for the Future and The Learning Connection, New Partnerships between Schools and Colleges.

Resources and Links

• From Institutions to Individuals: A Paradigm Shift for California’s Master Plan for Higher Education - Written as part of a UCLA Civil Rights Project series on the future of education and civil rights in California, our white paper explores a bold, equity-centered vision for California’s postsecondary system—one built to endure varying economic cycles, aligned with today’s economic and societal needs, and strengthens pathways to opportunity.
• California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy - Learn more about our work.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to Degrees of Change on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Sign up to receive updates.

Follow California Competes on LinkedIn.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Master Plan's Promise and Problems
• 2:30 History of California's Master Plan
• 5:03 When the Solutions of 1960 Become Problems
• 7:55 The Need for Coordination
• 11:29 Principles for a New Master Plan
• 14:04 Episode Closing and Resources

Transcript

Pat Callan: 0:02

The basic principle of the Master Plan was routinely violated. It sort of became the gospel that everybody preaches, but nobody practiced.

Su Jin Jez: 0:10

Welcome to Degrees of Change, where we explore bold ideas for solving California's most pressing higher education and workforce issues. I'm your host, Dr. Su Jin Jez, the CEO of California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy. Our series, Designing a Master Plan for Tomorrow: 65 Years of Lessons, a Future of Shared Prosperity, takes a fresh look at California's landmark 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. I'm excited to welcome Pat Callan to Degrees of Change. He's a prominent voice in higher education reform. Having served as President of some of our nation's most influential organizations such as the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and the Higher Education Policy Institute, and as a leader of several state post-secondary education commissions, including California's former entity. Pat brings invaluable insights into bridging the Master Plan's original vision with the imperatives of our current educational landscape. To kick us off and help provide some grounding for this conversation, could you explain the original purpose and significance of California's Master Plan for Higher Education? What core problems was it designed to solve in 1960, and which of its principles remain relevant today?

Pat Callan: 1:33

The overwhelming concern, this was in the late 50s and early 60s, the arrival of the baby boomers, it was literally a tidal wave, and the master plan was really about how to accommodate kids coming out of high school And if you read the master plan, it's not exactly an inspirational document. It's mostly a lot of projections of enrollments and costs and needs for new institutions. But it had underneath it a revolutionary set of assumptions. California was the first government entity anywhere in the world to assure there'd be a place in higher education for every high school graduate who wanted education or training after high school. And the focus was mostly on the baccalaureate degree even the part for community colleges.

Su Jin Jez: 2:23

At that moment, who was college designed for? And why was this so revolutionary?

Pat Callan: 2:31

Well, it was designed basically for this baby boom population. Mostly people thought of college and post-secondary education, we would say now, as for young high school graduates. And that was overwhelmingly the preoccupation of the... It accounts for some of the strengths, but also some of the weaknesses of the master plan. And so for what it set out to do, which was to guarantee a place in college in one of those three systems, and then set up a set of institutions to accommodate it, and and commit California for doing that, which for quite some time it did. I mean, you see this huge expansion of higher education capacity that took place in the 60s. And up until the early 70s, California stepped by that commitment rigorously. But it did not deal with what we would consider the post-secondary universe today. It was not about adults. It was not about the workforce. It was about young people, which was kind of the temper of the times, being able to get spaces in higher education to make sure California could provide them. And in order to make sure it was affordable, that's why they instigated this rigorous differentiation of mission, because they knew there was no way the state could afford it unless they had a kind of specialization division of responsibility. And it also created a system which California lacked for assuring that new campuses and new capacity would be built, not necessarily where the most powerful legislators were, but where the demographic conditions justified it. And I say the system sustained, I'd say the commitment to access of this population sustained pretty much through the baby boom era. After that, California, on many times, especially in hard economic times, weakened that commitment.

Su Jin Jez: 4:25

I feel like the master plan, amazing piece for its time. And you have the statement that I love, that you said the solution of 50 years ago, when you wrote this 50 years ago, so I guess you wrote this 15 years ago, the statement, the solution of 50 years ago, the master plan structure is now a substantial part of the problem. And we featured it as the opening of our white paper, setting the stage for like this conversation on the need for a bold paradigm shift. So what first led you to see California's once revolutionary master plan as that structure as an impediment rather than the solution? The

Pat Callan: 5:03

basic principle of the master plan was routinely violated as we reduced access and made college less affordable. And what was protected was the things that the institutions, for good reason, these segments of higher education, valued the most, which was their autonomy and their sense of mission. Basically, if you compromised on the access point, you basically compromised the purpose of the plan. And it seemed to me that what became the most vulnerable part was the part about who was to be served. And it didn't seem to be that effective in adapting to just the changing population and the changing economy of the state, and often was an impediment. And then the politics of California changed in ways that I think were not particularly healthy for this particular area because it sort of became the gospel that everybody preaches, but nobody practiced. One of the weaknesses of the master plan was that there was no provision for revision, that it was never envisioned as a plan for all the populations that we try to serve today. The basic idea of coordination, and maybe you want to get to this later, but I'll just make this one, is that there's some entity that represents the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, that the state, if somebody is looking at this after the public interest more generally. Now, all of these institutions and agencies in higher education see themselves as serving the public interest. That's not the question. The problem is they're also passionately committed to their own mission and often believe that is the public interest. And so you need some entity that looks short of the political scope which are always the last resort for resolving issues. You need some entity that's looking at the world from that point of view. But I didn't disagree with the decision that Governor Brown made to sort of put it out of business because it was hard to see what effect it was having on the real world of higher education.

Su Jin Jez: 7:09

Yeah. I think there's this recognition that, a growing recognition that this is needed for our state. We're seeing this momentum growing both the administration and the legislature right now. And I'm wondering if thinking about your experience leading education commissions across multiple states, including California, what do you see as sort of the important powers and authorities such an entity should have to drive meaningful and lasting reform? And how should we as a state be thinking about this right now?

Pat Callan: 7:55

I think there are a few things that from California could learn from its own lessons. One is the original coordinating agency thought that you could, because to some extent, the master plan had been developed that way. They thought that you could coordinate simply by institutional consensus that you would just, you know, and what that, And that was tried in many places around the country, and it really didn't work anywhere. And by the way, coordination is something that almost everyone supports in the abstract, but there's a lot of ways it can go wrong, you know. I don't think a coordinating body ought to try to micromanage the institutions or agencies that it's responding to. Its focus ought to be a policy focus, and it ought to have a heavy evaluation function as far as the programs, all of the programs, the state is running. And again, it needs to have a public interest perspective, which means it can't be dominated by the institutions, but it can't be people who want to run the places either. And that's why there's so much talk in California about it. a regional perspective, because California is just too big and too complicated to have somebody, and you don't need another layer. If it just amounts to another layer of bureaucracy, it will be another layer. So you have to be very careful about the functions you assign to it. And I think it has to have a way of having leverage, which means it has, I don't think it should control the budgets of the entities, but it has to have a voice. I mean, it has to be heard by the Department of Finance and the governor as we were when I was running the coordinating agency. We participated in every step of the process, but as advisors, not as trying to take the process over. To create a board just to give advice if and when people People want to accept it. It doesn't make much sense. You've got to think about how this thing has efficacy. And I think the way is to first have a strong evaluation function because a lot of its policy recommendations should come out of a sense of what works and what doesn't. Secondly, some ability to stimulate innovation. And it has to have a strong commitment to listening. I mean, even though, as I found in the coordinating roles I had over the years, you're often... If everybody agreed, you wouldn't need coordination. So you're often in places where you have to be committed. When you think these institutions and agencies are on the right track, you've got to be willing to put your life on the line for them and support their ideas, whether they're popular or not. And if you think they're wrong or they're misguided or they're inappropriate, given the priorities the state should have, you've got to be willing to go there and and often have them be in an adversarial relationship with the legislature and the governor. So it takes an awful lot of very difficult even-handedness, I think, to do this. It takes a lot to make this happen, and it takes also, needless to say, some political leadership in the state that's willing to support it, you know. I was fortunate in that I had, in trying to persuade me to come to California, I had a lot of meetings with governors and legislatures, and Nobody gave me a blank check, but everyone indicated a willingness to support that kind of a program. So that helped me a lot.

Su Jin Jez: 11:15

If you were to author sort of a master plan for 2025, what would be like some of the principles that would guide you in thinking about what California should be focused on or thinking about in this plan?

Pat Callan: 11:30

The basic principle of the master plan explicitly, and I think it has been several times, but it should be the access point. The principle ought to be only in a much broader way than the master plan ever envisioned. I think the need to be explicit about what it means for the public to provide access to what, to higher education, I think it ought to be a core principle. And the focus on the economy, which I understand is a major, and the labor market and all is an appropriate one. But one of the things I've always thought about coordination, which it sounds maybe romantic and a bit out of vogue now, but there's a streak of you to do this work that ought to be somewhat chronteric. contrarian, that when everybody in the state wants to talk about access only, you ought to support the access conversation and start a conversation about quality. And when people want to talk about quality, you ought to support that conversation and make sure there's a conversation about access going on. And we tend to go through that in different phases, you know, and also you need clarity about things like quality. For a lot of people, quality is just keeping people out, selectivity. It ought to be very concerned about the institutions and agencies that have to provide this work, but I think it ought to be focused on the students and potential students that you ought to be serving rather than the huge institutional focus that was in the last master plan. You ought to talk about what people growing up in California ought to have and what adults in California ought to have available and what workers in California ought to have available and try to define policies more along the needs of the public and of students and potential students than along the lines of just institutions. And we want our institutions to be successful, but you have to make sure those kinds of things are counted in the definition of success, not just prestige or status. And it's very important for the people who do this work not to assume that good information equals good public policy. You have to create a bridge because you can improve your information and just All you've done is create a better ability to document the system's failures. You know, the people it's not serving, you've got to have a way of translating better information to better policy.

Su Jin Jez: 14:07

I appreciate the time with you, like always.

Pat Callan: 14:09

I appreciate it too.

Su Jin Jez: 14:11

Thanks for joining us on Degrees of Change and for being part of the conversation to reimagine California's higher education system. To learn more about our white paper and this series, visit CaliforniaCompetes.org. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming episodes featuring more voices shaping the future of higher education in our state. I'm Dr. Sujan Jez. Until next time.