Higher Education Policy

NORM-REFERENCED TESTS AND RACE-BLIND ADMISSIONS: The Case for Eliminating the SAT and ACT at the University of California by Saul Geiser, UC Berkeley CSHE 15.17 (December 2017)

Saul Geiser
2017

Of all college admission criteria, scores on nationally normed tests like the SAT and ACT are most affected by the socioeconomic background of the student. The effect of socioeconomic background on test scores has grown substantially at University of California over the past two decades, and tests have become more of a barrier to admission of disadvantaged students. In 1994, socioeconomic background factors—family income, parents’ education, and race/ethnicity—accounted for 25 percent of the variation in test scores among California high school graduates who applied to UC. By 2011, they...

TO GROW OR NOT TO GROW? A Post-Great Recession Synopsis of the Political, Financial, and Social Contract Challenges Facing the University of California

John Aubrey Douglass
2013

After more than two decades of state disinvestment, the University of California faces significant challenges and misunderstandings regarding its operating costs, its wide array of activities, and its mission. Reduced funding from the state for public higher education, including UC, has essentially severed the historic link between state allocations and enrollment, altering the incentive and ability for UC to expand academic programs and enrollment in pace with California’s growing population. “To grow or not to grow?,” that is the question. This macro management and major...

Clark Kerr's World of Higher Education Reaches the 21st Century: Chapters in a Special History by Sheldon Rothblatt (2012)

Sheldon Rothblatt
2012

This book on President Clark Kerr of UC which consists of contributions (besides Rothblatt's) from Vartan Gregorian, David Gardner, David Breneman, Paul Lingenfelter, Arthur Levine, Patrick Callan, Thorsten Nybom, Michael Shattock, David Palfreyman, Ted Tapper and Guy Neave. Besides providing portraits of Kerr, arguably America's best-known higher education leader and public policy analyst in the last 50 years of the twentieth century, the contributors discuss the character (and fate) of the California Master Plan for Higher Education and its influence (or limited influence), Kerr's...

Usable Social Science by Neil J. Smelser (2012)

Neil J. Smelser
2012

This volume is a one-of-a-kind contribution to applied social science and the product of a long collaboration between an established, interdisciplinary sociologist and a successful banking executive. Together, Neil Smelser and John Reed use a straightforward approach to presenting substantive social science knowledge and indicate its relevance and applicability to decision-making, problem-solving and policy-making. Among the areas presented are space-and-time coordinates of social life; cognition and bias; group and network effects; the role of sanctions; organizational dynamics; and...

A Career in Chemical Engineering and University Administration, 1963-2013 by C. Judson King (2013)

C. Judson King
2013

Conducted by Lisa Rubens and Emily Redman, with Sam Redman, in 2011, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2013.

Jud King is a distinguished chemical engineer, holding 14 patents, who brought an engineer’s creative and problem-solving abilities to a succession of academic and administrative positions—including Provost and Senior Vice-President of the UC system. This wide-ranging and richly detailed interview takes us from King's pioneering research and the growth of his discipline, to the governance, decision-making process,...

The Dream is Over: The Crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of Higher Education by Simon Marginson (2016)

Simon Marginson
2016

Co-published by CSHE and UC Press, The Dream is Over begins with the story of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California, created by visionary University of California President Clark Kerr and his contemporaries, and artfully expanded on earlier pioneering efforts of Californians to build the first coherent mass system of higher education. The Master Plan’s promise of equality expanded...

From Rangeland to Research University: The Birth of University of California Merced by Karen Merritt and Jane Fiori Lawrence (2007)

Karen Merritt
Jane Fiori Lawrence
2007
Introduction: Why a New Research University at Merced? Karen Merritt

In February 1989, the University of California (UC) Regents authorized President David P. Gardner to plan up to three new campuses; the first of the three would be located in the San Joaquin Valley, a rapidly growing area of the state with the largest population fifty miles or more from a UC cam- pus. The campus was scheduled to open in 1998. Instead, UC Merced, the tenth UC campus, opened for instruction in September 2005, with 706 freshmen, 132 transfer students, and 37 graduate students, 13 of whom had begun study at...

The Pursuit of Knowledge Speeches and Papers of Richard C. Atkinson by Richard C. Atkinson, Patricia A. Pelfrey and David S. Saxon (2007)

Richard C. Atkinson
Patricia A. Pelfrey
David S. Saxon
2007

Richard C. Atkinson’s eight-year tenure as president of the University of California (1995–2003) reflected the major issues facing California itself: the state’s emergence as the world’s leading knowledge-based economy and the rapidly expanding size and diversity of its population. As this selection of President Atkinson’s speeches and papers reveals, his administration was marked by innovative approaches that deliberately shaped U.C.’s role in this changing California. These writings tell the story of the national controversy over the SAT and Atkinson’s successful challenge to the...

Education's Abiding Moral Dilemma: Merit and Worth in the Cross-Atlantic Democracies, 1800-2006 by Sheldon Rothblatt (2007)

Sheldon Rothblatt
2007

The conflict between access and quality in education has been front-page news for decades. Policies regarding the role of elite universities, the organisation of secondary education, admissions criteria, courses of study, high stakes testing, and fiscal and programme accountability have changed with uncommon frequency, resulting in confusion and uncertainty. Yet it is the argument of this book that the tension between access to education and the preservation of quality is another chapter in the much longer history of merit selection in England, Scotland and America, and should be...

The Conditions for Admission Access, Equity, and the Social Contract of Public Universities by John Aubrey Douglass (2007)

John Aubrey Douglass
2007

The social contract of public universities—the progressive idea that any citizen who meets specified academic conditions can gain entry to their state university—has profoundly shaped American society. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of admission policies and practices at public universities. Using the University of California, the nation's largest public research university and among its most selective, as an illuminating case study, it explores historical and contemporary debates over affirmative action, gender, class, standardized testing, and the growing influences...