California Master Plan Needs A Major Overhaul

California’s Little Hoover Commission, an independent oversight panel that submits recommendations to the governor and the state’s Legislature, on Monday released a report that calls on lawmakers and higher-education leaders to scuttle the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education and draw up a new blueprint that better meets the needs of students and the demands of the state’s work force. The report says the state’s current three-tiered system, which consists of the University of California, California State University, and community colleges, is failing to produce enough graduates at a time when the state has finite resources to devote to higher education. The report also states that online education holds “great promise” for increasing access and lowering costs, but says it appears that California is “moving substantially slower than it should to integrate online because of faculty opposition and/or general inertia.” The post is from The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Ticker blog.