December 7, 2009 - Kick-off hearing of the Joint Legislative Committee to Update the Master Plan

Expanded Remarks by John Vasconcellos

Members of the Joint Committee:

This is my first time on this side of the table in a legislative committee room since I retired from our Legislature five years ago last Monday - after having represented the heart of Silicon Valley here for 38 very full years.

I come before you today to testify because the issue you are charged by your colleagues with attending to is so very close to my heart, as it is so very crucial to the future of my beloved native state, which I continue to serve these last five years in our non-profit sector.

I bring with me the experience of having served as chair of both the 1st (1971-74) and 2nd (1987-90) Joint Legislative Reviews of our Higher Education Master Plan. I am no stranger to the topic, its centrality in our lives, and its role in whether and how we have a future befitting ourselves, our Golden State and our succeeding generations.

I have several points regarding higher education I want to share with you all today.

My 1st point: Although I subscribe almost entirely to what Chuck Young has shared, I would also call to your attention that our Master Plan includes those three public segments and also the 4th segment - the AICCU (Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities), also an essential component of our California picture which you ought well include on your agenda for throughout your study.

My 2nd point - a touch of history: the California Master Plan for Higher Education was adopted by our Legislature with the leadership of Governor Pat Brown in 1960, and has since gone on to become (in the minds of most) "legendary," as well as a model envied by much of the entire world.

Contrary to some folks' belief, I didn't come into the Legislature until 1967, so I'm not the father of our Master Plan. I have been called "the godfather" of our Master Plan because I chaired the first two Joint Committee reviews, and otherwise served as its chief shepherd during the remainder of my tenure here in the Legislature.

In that first review, Patrick Callan served as our Chief Consultant. Everything we recommended was enacted into law on a strong bi-partisan vote. Pat is now the founding director of the 11-year-old national center for public policy and higher education.
In the late 1980s, Brian Murphy (who's sitting here to my left) served as our chief consultant in our 2nd master plan review. You'll hear from him next today, in his role now as the president of De Anza Community College in Cupertino.
We undertook a massive bipartisan update on our California Community College system, which became AB 1725, the Magna Carta of our Community Colleges, enacted into law with only 2 "no" votes (1 from either party).

We proceeded further to produce a comprehensive bipartisan report we named, "California Faces…California's Future" - featuring on its cover four faces: two women, and two men; one Asian American, one African American, one Latino, and one Anglo, altogether to graphically portray the future of who we were then becoming, and now have become.

Unfortunately, that report was taken from me and assigned to another legislator, who failed to carry its recommendations into enactment. That report is still on the shelf, but it is worth your time to revive it. Its values are timeless and exquisite. Its writing is elegant, thanks to President Murphy, and yet its recommendations are still largely unattended to.

Senator Dede Alpert of San Diego chaired the third update, an ambitious enormous Master Plan review, from 1999 to 2003, combining K-12 education and higher education. She held extensive hearings, created task forces, and produced a huge report with many policy recommendations. Then shortly after she filed it, she was sent home by term limits before being able to get them enacted into law.

As you may have figured out, the way things work in this building is that if the person who developed the work product and has the passion departs without its enactment, it sits on a shelf. It is likewise worthy of your time to review, as you embark on this process.

My 3rd point: So, in effect, except for our upgrading the California Community colleges, the fact is that there has been no systematic update of the California Master Plan for Higher Education since 1975, 34 years ago, and that in a world that has changed in every way imaginable in that time period.

So it is now long past time for your committee to whole-heartedly accept this huge challenge, to review and update California's Master Plan for Higher Education.

My 4th point: Without any doubt, the future of our State of California and our people is dependent upon the quality and availability of our educational systems. You have assumed responsibility for assuring that our higher education system is fully equipped to sufficiently educate our people so as to enable them to be prepared to actually meet our needs in our future, both individually and as a State and people.

My 5th point: The basic challenge of your responsibility is to determine by listening to and learning from the very most solid objective credible research available to you - whether, and if so, how and why our system of higher education today is in peril, however small or huge. For upon your findings regarding our peril will depend entirety on the rest of your report and recommendations.

My 6th point: You members of this Joint Committee must recognize that this is almost for sure our very best focused opportunity and for assuring that California's future is powered by those who are sufficiently and constructively prepared to live and work in the 21st century. Assemblyman Pérez used superb language to describe our need and challenge: "The point of education is to liberate the entire human potential of our population so they can become empowered and self-determining." Let that become your mission as you proceed on this agenda.

My 7th point: I urge you to conduct your deliberations with this finest summation I've ever heard regarding California in today's world: "our primary California challenge is to realize the promise of a multi-cultural democracy, with gender equity, in a global economy, in this age of technology." Of course I am delighted to introduce you to the author of that quotation: President Brian Murphy here next to me. Keeping that big picture in mind will keep you and your efforts on target!

My 8th point: Since your responsibility and challenge are so huge, I urge you to approach your task smartly and strategically. And that's going to require you to be staunch and tough to focus your effort entirely upon a limited number of issues, hopefully selecting only those issues most basic and essential to your faithfully live up to your responsibility as this Joint Committee.

My 9th point: Make your entire review and update of California's Master Plan for Higher Education needs-based. Ground your review, your report, and your recommendations in the actual and projected needs of Californians, both individually and via the living standard of all Californians in our future.

I suggest that you begin your Master Plan Review by asking yourselves, "what do we need, in the way of higher education graduates, to realize our state's capacity to remain competitive in today's global economy?" I especially would not ever want you to ignore the aspirational dimensions of higher education. Yet I urge you to first ground your review in our needs, and then thereupon assure that the State of California renew its Master Plan promise to every qualified Californian.

My 10th point: Overall, I agree with many in this room today that you don't need to throw out our basic Master Plan, but instead to thoroughly review and appropriately update it. I'm not arguing that it is a perfect system, but it is a good system, and it has certainly served the people and State of California very well since its inception 49 years ago.

You are really going to have to focus yourselves and your entire effort upon assuring that our California Master Plan, our vaunted system of higher education survives (better yet, thrives) as a quality accessible affordable system, meeting the needs of the people and State of California for this coming decade.

Your time is so short, and your challenge is so great, that you simply cannot afford to operate as broadly as in previous Master Plan reviews. I appreciate your assembly co-chair, Assemblyman Ruskin, having suggested that each and all of you agree to limit yourselves to no more than the four most basic issues. You might well have to put smaller issues aside in order to get all four segments of California Higher Education on the same side of the table, even to get all of yourselves on the same side of the table, in favor of California Higher Education overall. Only that way are you going to be and become able to not get distracted by issues of less than central importance.

My 11th point: Please keep in mind the full implications of a primary purpose of our Master Plan and our system of higher education is to see to the education of California's students (primarily though not exclusively our youth). That is no small responsibility, as our student age population now exceeds three million Californians.

And even as some day fairly soon, we look forward to welcoming them into our midst in the operation of California, I encourage you to begin right now, today, to welcome our students, in particular their leaders, into the operations of your Joint Committee, into your hearings, into your heads and into your hearts. Listen carefully to who they are and what they have to come and say to you - including their goals and their concerns and their experiences and observations regarding the challenges and obstacles they are facing in their pursuit of higher education here in California.

For these are our children and our grandchildren. As well, they are our future and our old age security, you owe it to them and to yourselves, and to the future of the people and State of California, to listen to and actively engage these students, assure they leave here feeling they have your allegiance, even as you hold in your hands their futures.
My 12th point: I urge you to keep in your minds - and in your hearts - that distinguishing stroke of genius that inspired our original California Master Plan for Higher Education: was the pledge of universal access for every qualified student!

It is nearly universally agreed that it was our faithful fulfillment of that pledge, leading to our advanced creativity and innovation that has fueled California's astonishing world leading economic growth and development during those ensuing decades.

That unique California promise was faithfully honored until this year's budget calamity when 300,000 willing California students were turned away from our institutions of higher education. If this trend continues and becomes the way of our future, it seems to me that the state and people of California in fact have not much of any future.

There was a time, in fact a very long time, not so very long ago, when the standard modus operandi of the State of California was simple, clear and steady with regard to California's higher education system of financing: begin with our number of prospective students, and let the number of such students drive the dollars needed, and the dollars we provided. Today we seem to have reversed our bias: instead, we begin with the dollars we have, and let the dollars drive the number of students.

It used to be our California way that we always found enough money to ensure universal access for as many qualified students as we had wanting to enroll in our higher education system. Today it seems to no longer be our way. Now, in your deliberations, I encourage each of you to keep in mind that every qualified Californian who wants to be educated should have a place to go within our four-segmented higher education system that suits his or her capacity, preparedness and talents.

By each of your having accepted your appointment to this Joint Committee, especially at this singular moment in our history, it becomes your responsibility to determine which of these two biases, most assuredly provides all Californians a promising future. The people of California cannot afford for you to fail this test!

My 13th point: I hope you will bear in mind as you proceed that 2nd pledge of our original Master Plan for Higher Education: that higher education be as well affordable for our California students. So a system of financial aid that makes higher education affordable for every qualified Californian is a necessary part of that commitment.

Yet in this past year's budget deliberations, the governor proposed the entire elimination of our Cal Grant program. Since once upon a time I was the author of the legislation which created this Cal Grant Program, I found myself deeply disappointed. Our cal-grant program has made it possible for millions of needy Californians to go on to college or university, and become highly educated. In addition, now a quarter of all students at our private institutions of higher education are recipients of Cal Grants. If that Cal Grant program goes, those institutions will truly be in jeopardy, as well as the entire future of the State and People of California.

My 14th point: the distinction of the original Master Plan was that California had enough forethought to recognize the huge numbers of students (the children of the G.I. Bill generation) heading for our higher education system. So we acted smartly and boldly, becoming the very first political entity - state or nation anywhere on our globe - to make the pledge and the commitment to universal access.

And our smarts paid off with enormous dividends! We distinguished ourselves through this universal access and have had the most distinctive economy ever since. We have had the highest levels of college-going rates. But now with India and the People's Republic of China each graduating each year three times as many science and technology PhDs as the entire United States, we can no longer expect to ride high via quantity alone. We owe it to ourselves and our future - to exercise that same vision and smarts. We must ask ourselves, how now going forward, can we once again distinguish ourselves, assure our future promise?

In my estimation, the best - if not only - way we can now accomplish that is for us to take a very good look at quality. We must also look at the other dimensions of what a college education has to offer. We must ask, what is the quality of the educational experience? What do students learn about their potential, about self esteem, about diversity, technology, spirituality, emotional intelligence? There is a lot of human and personal development that occurs with higher education. That too ought to be looked at in some point during these hearings.

My 15th point: Insofar as you have determined that our system of higher education is in peril, as currently constituted and funded, it is not going to meet our needs, both as a state and as a people - you have the responsibility of addressing the why and how of our situation, and coming up with the findings and recommendations that address our unmet needs.

My 16th point (which you must recognize as in fact running through each and every one of my points): For you to conduct your study and come up with needs-based findings and recommendations, which you can then get enacted into law. You are going to have to figure out a way to generate a broad public dialogue amongst all the leaders and people of the State of California - so that they will fully recognize and appreciate all of your efforts, and whole-heartedly support you in seeking the enactment of your various essential recommendations to assure that our ongoing system of higher education truly has the support to offer real promise of our success.

My 17th point: The most curious incident that I have heard of recently is that the Texas legislature and system of higher education, have found enough money to employ a team to come recruit our disaffected professors at UC. If Texas can figure out how to fund their raiding of our UC professors, shouldn't we try to fund keeping our professors by paying them an adequate competitive salary?

My 18th point - A personal note: I have a dear friend, my former staff member 35 years ago. He is a retired navy commander, who now teaches Naval ROTC at Dinuba High School. His wife is from Hong Kong. They have two children: Jacque who's 22, who graduated from UC Santa Cruz, 18 months ago, is super bright - and cannot find a job, is now giving serious consideration to leaving our state.

Their son, Steven, is 19, a sophomore at Chico State, Vice-President of his Residence Hall Association, already looking ahead to running for student body president. He is majoring in Management Information Systems, and he ended up in the final 8 in a campus-wide entrepreneurship competition. He is already looking to leave our state because he sees no future here. These are two young friends I've known all their lives, and love dearly. Yet I found myself unable in good conscience to encourage either of them to, "stay here!"

After all, these are our children, our next generation, our future, our old age security. Are we willing to have them leave, to lose their regular presence in our lives? Or would we rather invest in their staying here and becoming educated, and being here as we grow older?

My 19th - and final point: In summation, it becomes your personal - and your political - opportunity and your responsibility, yeah even your duty, to help your colleagues and the governor - and all the people of California and their various civic leaders - to own up honestly and whole-heartedly to the realities of today and to prepare for the hopes and needs of our tomorrow. May you do so in ways that enable us to recommit to and proudly celebrate our Master Plan's 50th anniversary next year.

I trust you know you can count on me to help you in any way I can, and any way you need!

I thank you - and I wish you well!

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