This sensitive and lively 1968 history made an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between higher education and social change in nineteenth-century England, showing how the internal life of an ancient university was affected by historic events extrinsic to it. The role that university was required to play in society was being forced to evolve: no longer a finishing school for the aristocracy, universities were becoming a place of professional training for the middle classes. This required a new generation of dons to relate tradition to the ideals of the...
Fifty years on, Clark Kerr’s multiversity and the Californian Master Plan for Higher Education stand as signal high points in the building of not just great public institutions but high participation modern human society. Key features of the Californian Model have become a universal template for research universities and system design. Seminal ideas and practices of higher education developed by Clark Kerr, Martin Trow, Burton Clark and others continue to colonize the thinking of policy makers, scientists, scholars, students and citizens, with profound effects not just in the United States...
A 1966 University of California academic plan estimated that future enrollments would soar to well over 200,000 before leveling off, and that by 1975 student demand would require two more UC campuses in addition to the ones opened a few years earlier at Santa Cruz, Irvine, and San Diego. The 1970 US census brought these stratospheric assumptions down to earth. Its projections of declining numbers of college-age students into the next decade and beyond, combined with the shock of unfavorable academic market and budgetary trends, became the starting point for an ambitious new UC planning...
Fifty years on, Clark Kerr’s multiversity and the Californian Master Plan for Higher Education stand as signal high points in the building of not just great public institutions but high participation modern human society. Key features of the Californian Model have become a universal template for research universities and system design. Seminal ideas and practices of higher education developed by Clark Kerr, Martin Trow, Burton Clark and others continue to colonize the thinking of policy makers, scientists, scholars, students and citizens, with profound effects not just in the United...
This article reviews the educational policies of Spain and England in their most emblematic colonies, Mexico and India, respectively, and compares them to those of the United States. Mexico and India share one important historical feature: both were colonies in which the native population greatly outnumbered European colonists and in which native cooperation was crucial to the colonial enterprise. In both cases, the European powers felt compelled to educate members of the native elites to conduct the business of empire for them. In contrast, the United States was a “white colony,” in...
This paper is a personal recollection of Clark Kerr and his presidency of the University of California by a friend of 43 years, not from a distance, but as a former student, colleague and successor president of the University. It is also a summary remembrance of the contributions made by his three most influential predecessors. These three presidents: Gilman (1872-75), Wheeler (1899-1919), and Sproul (1930-1958), essentially defined the trail of history that led to and helped shape Kerr’s own presidency (1958-1967). The principal focus of this paper is Kerr’s beliefs, values, style,...
This concise book tells the absorbing story of the development of one of the greatest public institutions in the country. Beginning with the land grant that established a university in California, the accessible narrative takes the reader through the difficulties and triumphs of the institution as it rose to the peak of scientific and scholarly stature, where it stands today. Included is a discussion of why the University of California is unique among institutions of higher learning, a chronicle of past university presidents and the particular contributions each made to the...
