In honor of the 125th of the founding of the University of California, the Center for Studies in Higher Education at Berkeley, in cooperation with the Institute of Governemental Studies, takes pleasure in publishing a series of "chapters" in the history of the University. These are designed to illuminate particular problems and periods in the history of U.C., especially its oldest and original campus at Berkeley, and to identify special turning points or features in the "long century" of the University's evolution. Histories are stories meant to be read and enjoyed in their own right, but...
Clark Kerr defined and put into place what is essentially the modern version of the University of California and built the wherewithal for developing and sustaining academic quality. He defined the structure of multiple campuses all with the same research mission and equal opportunity. He fostered the ambitious conversion of three specialized sites and the creation of three entirely new campuses, all to become general campuses with equal opportunity. These steps provided enrollment capacity for the next sixty years. He decentralized governance so that the nature and scope of academic...
Globally, fees and tuition are growing as an important source of income for most universities, with potentially significant influence on the market for students and the behavior of institutions. Thus far, however, there is no single source on the fee rates of comparative research universities, nor information on how these funds are being used by institutions. Furthermore, research on tuition pricing has also focused largely on bachelor’s degree programs, and not on the rapid changes in tuition and fees for professional degrees. This paper offers a brief scan of pricing trends among a...
In the discourse that swirled in the mid-1800s around the creation of new American public universities, three major and interrelated tensions became evident: the first related to the continued debate regarding the proper curricular balance between practical education and classical studies; the second focused on the appropriate autonomy of institutions intended to serve the public interest in a society often racked by sectarian and class conflict; and the third centered on the degree to which these public institutions should be selective in their admissions and representative of the state’s...
Since establishing its first campus in 1868, the University of California (UC), California’s landgrant university, developed into the nation’s first multicampus systemin the United States, and is today widely recognized as the world’s premier network of public research universities. This short essay provides a...
In the post-Revolutionary War era, private institutions dominated America’s emerging higher education landscape, all tied to sectarian communities and often with limited forms of public financing. The United States could have sustained that dominance, essentially differing to the private sector in expanding access, and delaying the “rise of the publics.” This did not happen. A major turning point came in the mid-1800s. Private colleges seemed incapable or simply not interested in serving the broader needs of American society. Institutions such as the University of Virginia, and the new...
David Earwicker is Principal and Founder of Aspen Insight Consulting, a higher education research development firm. He holds a PhD in Education Policy from the University of California, Davis, an M.A. in Middle East Affairs/Islamic Culture Studies from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from UC Davis.
During 2022-23 he is a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. At CSHE, under the sponsorship of John Aubrey Douglass, his research work is...
Senior Research Associate and Visiting Scholars Coordinator
Anne J. MacLachlan is a retired senior researcher at CSHE who continues to be devoted to increasing access, persistence, and success in postsecondary education for underrepresented groups (URM) including domestic minorities, women, and those from uneducated/poor families with an emphasis on those in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Her research areas cover the spectrum of postsecondary populations including community college and transfer students, undergraduates in general, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty. Among these, doctoral...
Amal Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the California State University, Sacramento. His teaching and research explore the evolving relationships between public higher education and its institutional, political, and social contexts through rigorous interdisciplinary engagement between organizational theory, public policy, and history. Current interests include policy intermediaries, educational innovation and entrepreneurship, and equity in the American professoriate. His work has been published in Higher Education, CSHE’s Research and Occasional Paper...
