Master Plan for Education

Albert K. Karnig
President
California State University, San Bernardino
February 1, 2000

Senator Alpert and members of the joint committee, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the features needed in California's next Master Plan for Education.

I'm fairly new to California, having served as President of Cal State, San Bernardino for the past two and one-half years. I don't presume to have absorbed the nuances of planning and strategy developed over four decades since the inception of the initial Master Plan. However, since I served previously as provost at the University of Wyoming and as associate provost and director of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University, I may bring some comparative perspective to the table.

One thing is certain. Education is the only fuel that can power our state's economic engine while simultaneously propelling us toward a greater degree of social justice. Without increasingly high levels of education and broad distribution of the fruits of that education, California's future is apt to be overcast, not bright. At the outset of this new century, we must find avenues to advance the skill development and social mobility of students drawn from all groups in our population. The global economy will demand the best of our educational system—and we'll be competing against the very best that other states and nations have to offer.

I want to focus briefly on five (5) sets of educational issues that will prove vital to California's long-term success. The comments reflect my own personal views and do not necessarily represent the positions of the CSU Trustees or Chancellor's Office. I've tried to address planning and policy needs—not the politics of public education—so I apologize if my remarks appear naive, presumptuous or injudicious. The five areas are:

1. Tidal Wave II

While there is still some disagreement about the size of the crest, there is now consensus that we will experience a dramatic surge in student enrollment through all levels of education. The wave will emanate from several sources, including the "echo" of the baby boom generation, immigration from other states and abroad, as well as greater participation by historically underrepresented groups. For the CSU campuses alone, we anticipate up to another 130,000 students - roughly a 35 percent increase - over the next decade. To give texture to these numbers, the floodtide of 130,000 additional students is equivalent in size to nearly ten (10) Cal State, San Bernardino campuses.

The Master Plan and derivative policies must find ways to accommodate this explosion of students and afford even greater opportunities for successful passage through the public educational system. In order that each eligible community college transfer can continue toward a baccalaureate degree and each eligible graduate can pursue a master's degree or teaching credential, we will focus intently on access and the availability of upper-division and graduate programs at convenient locations.

To succeed, we will require financial and other support to strategically locate branch campuses, which are the most cost-effective ways of reaching areas that are underserved at present, including, for us, the Coachella Valley. We must also further develop the capacity for distance education to accommodate site-bound students, especially in professional graduate programs. We also need to offer programs across the day. In fact, we now provide courses from 8am till 10pm, and on Saturdays, as well. We must expand these weekend offerings, and campuses must move toward year-round operation, so we do not lose valuable time in the summer. There will be hard budgetary issues, at least initially, because the critical mass of students and associated economies of scale will only be attained after some time and experience with year-round programs. Indeed, it's likely that students should be offered incentives to fully participate in the summers, which, normally, are times during which students secure funds for the regular academic year.

2. A Seamless System through K-18 System

Given the crunch of additional students across the educational spectrum, it will be more incumbent on us than ever to create as seamless, interactive and solution-oriented a system as possible. I think we all understand how interdependent the respective levels of education have become. The initial Higher Education Master Plan quite reasonably concentrated on the community college and university systems. In the 1950s and 60s, California K-12 education was a crown jewel. Unfortunately, much has changed.

The challenges faced by our elementary, middle and high schools are subjects of daily attention from the popular press, legislature, executive branch, citizen groups and myriad others. And for many years, the higher education community has dealt with high school graduates who are underprepared in English and math. The solutions we have devised have been of the band-aid variety, including English/writing and math proficiency exams and, for those who fail these tests, a patchwork of remedial courses. In some ways far more sadly, low levels of preparedness are also an overwhelming challenge to students themselves, who must spend unnecessary money and precious time pursuing their ultimate degree goals.

The solutions lie in greater collaboration among the various facets of the California educational system. One appropriate step was last year's consolidation of entrance criteria between the CSU and UC systems. Another is the eventual end of "social promotion," even though some districts have delayed taking this step; and it is yet unclear whether the system can absorb the enormous social and political costs that will be triggered by vigorous implementation of the policy. Furthermore, there is promise in smaller class sizes, raising teacher salaries—and therefore improving the chances of retaining our best instructors—as well as more emphasis on accountability, including the assessment of student learning.

But I'm convinced the key is to make certain that young children acquire the building blocks for success very, very early. Indeed, some of the most pivotal actions must be taken before students enter the school system; and each of the responsibilities must involve parents and families in assuring that:

Once in school, we must find better ways to assure that children can read by the end of third grade, that they can do at least simple arithmetical computations in elementary school and that they are successfully introduced to science programs no later than in middle school. We are all increasingly conscious of the stages of cognitive development. Certain subjects and concepts are simply more readily learned at specific ages. Sometimes, in fact, we ignore what we know about these stages, as in the introduction of a second language. It's obvious that young children learn languages most easily, but, with dreadful results, we continue to wait until high school to expose students to a second language.

If students learn building-block skills, they have the foundations for success. If students succeed academically, they are apt to enjoy and work enthusiastically toward future academic achievement. If they fail, they will usually withdraw or pursue other paths, sometimes outside the law. In contrast, when children are successful in their early school years, even if they get off-track later, they have the fundamental skills with which to succeed at a later time. Students who don't get the skills when they should are far more likely to encounter failure in the future, even if they are working hard to achieve.

Universities must continue to strengthen their teacher preparation, renewal and development programs; and while meeting Tidal Wave II and class-size reduction policies, we must also increase the number of well-prepared teachers who can enter the classroom. Universities must work ever more closely with K-12 systems, especially in faculty-to-faculty exchanges, to help communicate expectations, to learn first-hand about the problems classroom teachers encounter, to assist in identifying deficiencies and to work collaboratively to formulate interventions.

3. Student Fees

Public higher education in California is the best bargain in the nation. Tuition rates—or fees as they are called for California resident students —are quite low for community college and UC students. Moreover, among the thousands of public and private institutions, CSU's fee level is the very lowest in the United States. Currently, full-time CSU students pay $1830 in state university fees—half as much as the national average for 4-year public colleges and universities and half the CPEC set of 15 peer institutions. The principal beneficiaries of the system are upper-income families and their children, who receive an excellent education at dime-store prices. Conversely, even the nominal CSU costs—and the more-than-double, but still-modest, UC fees—may prove overly burdensome to those in our society who are deserving but less affluent, often, though not inevitably, people of color. Therefore, adequate financial aid must be available.

I understand and support the desire to make higher education as affordable as possible. However, as the need for additional resources to educate Tidal Wave II students grows more pressing, it would be more sensible to ask upper-income families to pay higher fees while providing more State grants-in-aid for students from families with insufficient means. To allow all students to pay artificially low fees places an immense burden on the system, especially during economic downturns, and ultimately weighs heavily on all taxpayers. That's why every other state university charges more than the CSU, with an effort to backfill with financial aid to support those in need.

The financial advantage of a college degree has never been larger, and it's growing at a swift pace. College graduates can now expect to make 86 percent more than those with a high school diploma ($44,740 annual earnings, on average, versus $24,110). In fact, over the last twenty years, the median income of individuals with only a high school education declined by 4 percent, but that of college graduates grew by 15 percent.

The current system, with students paying only about 20 percent of the cost of education, constitutes a deep and unnecessary state subsidy to highly affluent families that disproportionately represent the full-time enrollments in California's public universities. Considering the profound and expanding financial advantage that a college degree brings, it constitutes an enormous personal as well as collective benefit. By setting fees at a level that produces the additional revenue needed to assure educational opportunities and by offering aid to those who could not otherwise attend, we would better generate the resources necessary for a world-class education and, at the same time, assure access to all regardless of wealth.

4. Low Transfer Rates from Community Colleges to CSU and UC

California's Higher Education Master Plan is marked by mission differentiation. Assuming an appropriate distribution of high school courses, students scoring in the top 12.5 percent qualify for UC, those in the top 33 percent can enter the CSU, and any high school graduate can enroll at a community college. Actually, California has emphasized entry into higher education through community colleges more than all but one state (Wyoming). Overall, 60 percent of California college students are enrolled at community colleges, whereas just five other states have more than half of their college students attending community colleges.

In his testimony to the joint committee on the master plan, Clark Kerr noted that only about 20 percent of California community college students transfer to a university. There are multiple reasons for this transfer rate, certainly including factors which may have directed students to a community college in the first place, e.g., lower levels of preparation and financial wherewithal, home and peer pressures, and distance from the nearest university. To treat this last circumstance, we need to develop bachelor's degree completion programs that are available at community college sites, and, where there is enough demand, also develop branch campuses.

Furthermore, while I believe we have a remarkably good system of articulation, especially given the myriad community college-university connections possible in the state, we must improve on that foundation. To that end, on a regional basis, CSU campus representatives have been meeting with their community college colleagues to ensure that community college courses transfer to all regional CSUs. Specifically, teams of faculty from various disciplines are convening to develop and agree on the 4-6 courses in common that would be required by a particular major at all CSU campuses throughout the region. The goal is to articulate the lower division component of most majors, much like the current Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum, so that students who wish to transfer have, from the outset, a degree plan that is clearly articulated and that will guarantee transfer into a major program at a nearby CSU without loss of units or time.

Ultimately, however, as other states have discovered, perhaps the best alternative is to create more focused Associate of Arts degree programs which have curricula and advising materials that are directly aligned with the requirements for the bachelor's degree majors of the nearby 4-year institutions. Block articulation agreements can readily be framed. This is an approach that has been followed in New York, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina.

5. CSU's Financial Structure and Role in California's System of Higher Education

The CSU campuses vary greatly across a variety of dimensions, e.g., from primarily residential institutions to almost exclusively commuter schools, from small campuses to among the largest in the U.S., from highly impacted across nearly all programs to relatively open to enrollment growth, and from substantial program maturity to early stages of program development. Nonetheless, despite their differences, they share a number of characteristics that marginalize their ability to reach their potential - and in turn to maximally help students to reach their potential.

I'd like to discuss four areas dealing with CSU's finances and role. And I want to particularly underscore that the views represented are mine, not those of the CSU Board of Trustees or Chancellor's Office, though I hope that both the Trustees and Chancellor are in broad agreement with my remarks. The four areas are:

A. Funding levels — With few exceptions, the CSU (and certainly the San Bernardino campus) primarily serves students who are in the first generation in their family to attend college, including historically underserved people of color, community college transfer students, and those needing additional—and often expensive—forms of academic support. (In fact, the CSU system consistently has met and exceeded the original Master Plan's mandate to matriculate 60 percent upper-division students; the system actually enrolls 67 percent transfers.)

However, despite the higher costs associated with serving students with greater financial needs, as well as disproportionately enrolling (higher-cost) upper-division students, CSU has been poorly funded. The level of allocation creates special strain in offering high-cost programs such as computer science, engineering, nursing, teacher preparation, social work, accounting, finance, environmental health, and various other science and professional programs.

Three structural factors interplay to drive down CSU per student funding:

(1) As noted previously, CSU's fees (tuition levels) are the very lowest in the nation. Other public universities typically receive more than twice as much from tuition (fees) to supplement their FTE formula allocations.

(2) Per-student allocations are driven by full-time equivalent (FTE) formulas. A CSU student FTE consists of 15 credit hours of undergraduate or graduate credit per term. In most other states, 12 hours of undergraduate credit is an FTE, and to my knowledge no other state uses more than 12 graduate hours to constitute an FTE. Indeed, our own sister UC system employs 12 units of credit for a graduate FTE at the master's level. Even the federal government uses 12 units as the minimum number required to determine financial-aid needs of full-time undergraduate students and only 8 units for funding full-time graduate students. The legislative analyst has noted this disparity and agreed that over time the CSU should be funded at the rate of one FTE per 12 units at the graduate level; this change has not, to my knowledge, moved forward. Reducing the graduate per FTE to 12 credits would help to address some of the issues treated above.

(3) The CSU FTE allocation is itself one of the lowest in the nation—roughly $9000 per FTE student, much lower, of course, than the UC funding per undergraduate FTE. In addition, even when there are appropriations with narrowly specified goals, CSU frequently receives low funding. As a recent example, the UC was appropriated $50 million for outreach to K-12, or over $5 million per campus, while CSU received $15 million—significantly less than $1 million per campus—despite serving over twice as many undergraduates as the UC overall.

Please understand, I do not begrudge UC's funding, whether in formula or in special appropriations. The UC is an extraordinarily fine amalgam of research campuses, and I believe California has wisely invested in its infrastructure and operating budgets. Clearly, however, given its broad responsibilities, far more consideration must be given to the CSU system when it plays a similar role.

Frankly, I worry that in receiving among the lowest support levels per student in American higher education, the CSU campuses will eventually shortchange our students who, as described previously, often need additional academic and personal attention. At this point, we have overcome the relatively low fiscal support with what I believe is exceptional instructional productivity by our faculty and staff. As one illustration, I do not know of any other major university or system in the U.S. that has faculty who regularly teach as many courses as in the CSU.

Further compounding this issue is the one-time and/or sporadic nature of such funding. In light of the decrease in higher education's share of the state budget—from 14.6 percent in 1990-91 to 12.6 percent in 1999-2000—predictability has become an overwhelmingly important element of funding. Legislation such as Prop 98, which provides a set percentage of the State budget for K-12 and community colleges, dramatically promotes comprehensive planning and budgeting for effective operations. Consideration should be given to similar predictability for the CSU and UC systems.

B. Technological Needs — The additional costs and structural impacts of technology and use of computers have not been sufficiently recognized in funding formulas and budget processes. The value of computer-related skills grows sharply with each passing year. Our graduates must be technologically empowered if they are to be competitive in the job market—and if we are to be competitive as a state. Students simply will live most of their lives in an increasingly technologically-based society.

The overall goal of the CSU's Integrated Technology Strategy is to enable students, faculty and staff to communicate, to teach, to learn, to research, to use information resources, and to conduct the University business using technology. Meeting these goals, we believe, will lead to further excellence in learning and teaching, improve the quality of the student experience, expand access and enhance administrative productivity.

Can anyone quarrel with the judgment that we must provide baseline technological access, training and support for all of our students? A recent CSU survey demonstrated that over two-thirds of CSU students ranked computers as "very important" for their class assignments. Their need for technology and information competency grows daily. As an example, on our own campus, the demand for materials from outside the library has increased exponentially. In merely one year, the number of "hits" to the library's homepage has gone from 50,000 in 1998 to nearly 450,000 in 1999. These numbers merely suggest the vast demand and cascading reliance on technology that we will experience in the future.

In the area of administrative computer systems, our campus is participating with others in a system-wide implementation of new software that will fully integrate three systems: financial records, human resources and, ultimately, the mammoth student information data base.

Nearly all of these technological activities have been undertaken without additional financial resources. This means that we must move funds from other activities to financially buttress these costly new software programs. And since a substantial majority of any campus's budget is devoted to academic programs, if the cost of new items is significant, funds inevitably must be shifted away from existing degree programs or initiatives. At this point, the best estimate is that the implementation of the management systems will cost the CSU approximately $250 million—with the Cal State, San Bernardino share, as an example, roughly $10 million.

We are quite prepared to invest in technology because we know our students need it in order to develop skills in the highly-competitive global job market. California increasingly will depend on a technologically-skilled workforce to maintain its edge in our globally-linked information society. Given the immense costs of technology and the certainty that technology will be an essential linchpin in both academic and non-academic programs, the revised Master Plan for California education should include technology as a component section.

C. Applied doctoral programs —The CSU and its respective campuses are not permitted to offer doctoral degrees, though the California Master Plan offered the opportunity, in principle, for CSU and UC faculty to offer joint doctorates. Clark Kerr has noted that joint doctoral programs have produced disappointingly small numbers of graduates, with fewer than 400 joint doctorates in the past 40 years. The reasons are fairly simple: UC faculty have many different, pressing and, given their mission, understandably higher priorities. Moreover, many doctorates of interest to the CSU—in industrial technology, educational leadership, various facets of business and public administration, etc.—are neither areas of prominent interest in the UC nor always areas of faculty depth. Conversely, these tend to be fields of enormous strength among the 10,000 full-time CSU faculty, with many who have remarkable national and international stature, as well as many hundreds who have led their national and regional associations in recent years.

I surely understand the value that the Master Plan placed on mission differentiation, and I believe it would be dysfunctional to suddenly see the CSU offer doctorates in fields of basic science already well-covered by the UC. Without question, there is an ongoing role for collaboration on joint degrees. Nonetheless, it is counterproductive to California's economic development and its students to continue to prohibit the offering of applied doctorates by the CSU. The needs are profound, and programs can readily be built upon strengths that already exist and in fields of clear mission emphasis in the CSU. The demand for doctoral programs is great, especially for applied programs available to part-time, fully-employed adults who need advanced training and expertise in topics directly related to their professions and employment.

I've been asked by our faculty, how is it sensible that new institutions and those with no experience in graduate education, no full-time faculty, only rented store-front facilities, and no library holdings may offer doctoral programs while the CSU, with widespread expertise and resources, is explicitly forbidden to serve the citizens of the state with much-needed programs? The answer is that it's not sensible. I believe the new Master Plan should allow the CSU to develop doctoral programs in applied, professional areas where need and faculty expertise is demonstrated.

D. Start-up funding for new programs — We know that there is an overarching need for undergraduate and graduate programs in technological fields. In the early 1990s, due in large part to defense industry cuts, California lost well over a half million jobs. In the latter half of the decade, the state rebounded due substantially to growth in the computer hardware and software industries as well as by other firms dependent on technology. Nationally and statewide, we will be pressed for more and more technologically-skilled employees. With regard to demand, a 1998 study of the Information Technology Association of America found that firms nationally have more than 10 percent of their positions vacant—about 350,000 overall. Without question, the new economy needs to produce increasing numbers of graduates with technological skill.

However, while the CSU serves powerfully in producing this skilled workforce, actually graduating more engineers and computer scientists than the combined total of all other California institutions of higher education, many CSU campuses do not, for example, even offer engineering programs. In what might appear to be total defiance of the dramatic explosion of the tech industry and the need for graduates in engineering and related fields, since 1969, no CSU campus has added a core set of engineering programs. That also means that campuses which were created in the mid-60s and later to serve areas with large proportions of historically underrepresented groups cannot offer important opportunities to their students.

What would promote such a counterproductive outcome? Well, once again, the answer is simple and direct. CSU funding is based on current and projected enrollments in programs already in operation. With the low marginal funding of existing programs, there are few fiscal mechanisms available to cover the costs of facilities, equipment, library materials and personnel needed to implement new high-cost programs. We cannot initiate new degrees in high-cost fields without securing at least bridge funding for startup and projected operating expenditures.

To illustrate this point, Cal State, San Bernardino has had engineering on its Trustee-approved Academic Master Plan for over 10 years, but no one felt it appropriate to plan seriously for the program until receiving assurance that start-up funding and facilities would be available. The campus has seen it as injurious to try to implement costly (but much-needed) degrees by stripping resources from existing programs—thereby reducing their quality and support. I believe this funding dilemma helps to explain why, as I said earlier, no engineering program has been started in the CSU system since 1969, despite several studies and consultant reports that have shown conclusively that there is both need and demand for additional engineering training in the state.

Moreover, the greatest impact is apt to occur at institutions that serve areas struggling with economic development, that contain fewer corporate headquarters, that have less growth in high tech industries, and therefore do not have as much opportunity to secure start-up funds from partnerships with the private sector. In light of the need for all our institutions to be faster, friendlier, more flexible, and more responsive to need and demand, the Master Plan should address the issue of funding for new program development.

Finally, in closing my comments, I would reemphasize that education is the central driving force in moving the State's economy, empowering its citizens, and ensuring higher levels of social justice. In Bob Dylan's now well-known refrain, "The times they are a-changing." And as they change with awesome rapidity, education and its undergirding principles must change as well.

I hope you will find ways to retain the soul of the California Master Plan—with its stress on access, affordability and mission differentiation among the three segments of public higher education. I hope you will also take this wonderful opportunity to refine the body of the plan by at least including the K-12 system and by courageously challenging worn assumptions, so that higher education can serve more effectively as the gateway to success for our students and the springboard for California's continuing economic, social and cultural development.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share my views and for considering my perspectives and recommendations.