California Master Plan for Higher Education

The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 was developed by a survey team appointed by the UC Regents and the State Board of Education during the administration of Governor Pat Brown. Clark Kerr, then the President of UC, was a key figure in its development. The Plan set up a coherent system for postsecondary education which defined specific roles for the already-existing University of California (UC), the California State College (CSC) system of senior colleges, now California State University (CSU), and the California Community Colleges system (CCC).

The Master Plan also proposed a statutory framework for its implementation, which was signed into law by Governor Brown on April 27, 1960. The statute actually implementing the Master Plan is formally titled the Donahoe Higher Education Act (now located at Part 40 of Division 3 of Title 3 of the California Education Code), to honor the memory of Assemblywoman Dorothy Donahoe of Bakersfield. Donahoe had authored the legislative resolution which eventually resulted in the study that created the Master Plan, and was one of its foremost advocates. However, she died on April 4, 1960, and did not live to see the Plan's recommendations signed into law.

Prior to the Master Plan's development in the 1960s, California struggled to reform its social institutions. Under political stranglehold, due to the 1920s-era railroad monopoly, new, self-proclaimed reformers attempted to overthrow the economic and political corruption existing in the state at the time. They wanted to create new institutions with a public morality to give California a new form of purpose. However, in the early years of California's emergence the population remained largely mobile, moving from opportunity to opportunity, making it almost impossible for the state to create permanent public schools. Furthermore, California progressives encountered obstacles in the form of people who thought that education should remain the work of local and religious groups, as well as being opposed to paying taxes for social purposes. Another wall towards progress that they needed to circumvent was the issue of appropriating land and money for universities. The 1st and 2nd Organic Acts (of 1866 and 1868, respectively) helped by first introducing the possibility of a state secular institution and second, actually allowing for the creation of a state university controlled by a Board of Regents (which would become the University of California).

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