Higher Education Policy

ACCOUNTABILITY IN POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION REVISITED

David E. Leveille
2013

Accountability in the private and public sectors of society has received significant attention in both research and practice, partly because of its importance, but also because it is challenging to define, measure and implement. The nature of accountability is complex, ambiguous and highly context-dependent. As related to postsecondary education (PSE), multiple stakeholders across the nation have been pushing for greater accountability for at least three decades. Various stakeholders, including elected officials at the national and state level seemingly obsessed with achieving a "one...

ACADEMIC COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: On Campus Fifty Years

Daniel J. Julius
Nicholas DiGiovanni, Jr.
2013

The authors provide a perspective, as scholars and practitioners, of the organizational, demographic, legal and contextual variables that inform the past and the future of faculty unions in US colleges and universities. They ask, how best to conceptualize and evaluate the impact of faculty unions; from the inception of academic unionization in the 1960's to the present, and further, what is known and not known about collective bargaining. Issues examined include: factors that influence negotiation processes, governance, bargaining dynamics, the institutional and demographic factors...

EXPLORING CANDIDATES, ELECTIONS, CAMPAIGNS, AND EXPENDITURES IN CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICTS, 2004-2010

Patrick Murphy
Max Neiman
Jelena Hasbrouck
2012

Previous recommendations to eliminate the district-level, elected boards have met with strong local resistance, particularly from faculty. The findings in this report do little to strengthen the case for locally elected, community college boards, however. The highlights of our findings are as follows: (1) a very high proportion of trustees seem to choose not to run for re-election and, overall, relatively few individuals choose to compete for trustee positions; (2) nearly half of the races involve just two individuals competing for a trustee seat; (3) there are some districts where...

THE FACULTY PROMOTION AND MERIT SYSTEM IN CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES:THE CASES OF WUHAN UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

Cristina González
Yamin Liu
Xiaoling Shu
2012

Any serious inquiry about improving the quality of a university must begin with an examination of its faculty promotion and merit procedures, since a university’s quality cannot be higher than that of its faculty. In this essay, we will examine the tenure track or regular faculty promotion and merit systems at the University of California, Davis, and Wuhan University, with a view towards understanding how they motivate the professoriate and foster creativity. In our analysis, we will pay special attention to compensation, as well as to work-life balance, issues. Our hope is to...

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...