A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Dream Is Over tells the extraordinary story of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California, created by visionary University of California President Clark Kerr and his contemporaries. The Master Plan’s equality of opportunity policy brought college within reach of millions of American families for the first time and fashioned the world’s leading system of public research universities. The California idea became the leading model for higher education across the world and has had great influence in the rapid growth of universities in China and East Asia. Yet, remarkably, the political conditions supporting the California idea in California itself have evaporated. Universal access is faltering, public tuition is rising, the great research universities face new challenges, and educational participation in California, once the national leader, lags far behind. Can the social values embodied in Kerr’s vision be renewed?

Throughout the twentieth century, public universities were established across the United States at a dizzying pace, transforming the scope and purpose of American higher education. Leading the way was California, with its internationally renowned network of public colleges and universities. This book is the first comprehensive history of California's pioneering efforts to create an expansive and high-quality system of public higher education. The author traces the social, political, and economic forces that established and funded an innovative, uniquely tiered, and geographically dispersed network of public campuses in California. This influential model for higher education, "The California Idea," created an organizational structure that combined the promise of broad access to public higher education with a desire to develop institutions of high academic quality. Following the story from early statehood through to the politics and economic forces that eventually resulted in the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, The California Idea and American Higher Education offers a carefully crafted history of public higher education.

This is the first comprehensive and contemporary history of the largest and most diverse public system of higher education in the United States. Serving over 2 million students annually—approximately one-quarter of the nation's community college undergraduates—California’s 116 community colleges play an indispensable role in career and transfer education in North America and have maintained an outsized influence on the evolution of postsecondary education nationally. A College for All Californians chronicles the sector's emergence from K–12 institutions, its evolving mission and growth following World War II and the G.I. Bill For Education, the expansion of its ever-broadening mission, and its essential role in the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. Chapters cover California’s junior and community colleges’ development, mission, governance, faculty, finances, athletics, student support services, and more. It also examines the successes and ongoing political, financial, and educational challenges confronting this uniquely American educational experiment. Book Features: Encapsulates the evolution and contemporary status of our nation’s largest and most diverse undergraduate education system.Examines how the colleges were influenced by the political, economic, and social issues of the day.Includes new historical information affecting postsecondary education in California.Analyzes some of the most important current and emerging issues that will continue to influence California’s community colleges. Contributors: Carlos O. Turner Cortez, Michelle Fischthal, Jonathan Lightman, Jessica Luedtke, David W. Morse, Joe Newmyer, Mark Robinson, Leslie M. Salas.

The twenty-first century has the potential to be the era of universal higher education access: the post-massification century. The growth of knowledge-based service industries and an increased need for technological and social innovations require more education, training, and re-training at the post-secondary level. This edited collection addresses the crucial issues emerging from this ongoing expansion of higher education, focusing on how national systems of higher education can respond to demands for further expansion when traditional routes to higher education have been largely exhausted. Does it make a difference how secondary education systems are organised? Can we encourage under-represented groups to participate in higher education, offering them new ways of experiencing higher education without sacrificing quality? What role will new suppliers of higher education, such as private providers, and modes of delivery, such as MOOCs, play? Are there innovative ways to manage the finances of universal access, including tuition fees and student loans? Will all social groups benefit equally from expansion, and find the institution and programme that fits their needs? Expansion will require different modes of delivery, new system models, revised qualification structures, changes to the role played by government, and a revision of the public–private finance mix. While this may lead to tensions in terms of the quality, efficiency, or equality of opportunity in the higher education system, there are also new opportunities for students and higher education institutions. With experienced researchers offering insights, national strategies and policy examples from around the world, Access and Expansion Post-Massification will give researchers and policymakers the tools they need to expand higher education into the era of the knowledge society.

The dream of public higher education in America is to provide opportunity for many and to offer transformative help to American communities and the economy. Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education explores the massive challenges facing California and the nation in realizing this goal during a time of enormous demographic change. The immediate focus on California is particularly appropriate given the size of the state—it educates one out of every nine students in the country—and its checkered political record with respect to civil rights and educational inequities. The book includes essays not only by academics looking at the state's educational system as a whole, but also by those within the policy system who are trying to keep it going in difficult times. The contributors show that the destiny of California, and the nation, rests on the courage of policymakers, both within the universities and within the government, to move aggressively to reclaim the hope of millions of students who can make enormous contributions to this society if only given the chance.