Reviving a Mission for UC

SACRAMENTO â€”  Gov. Gray Davis’ proposal to spend $12 million to expand the University of California’s role in teacher education has provoked controversy in certain quarters. Representatives of the California State University system pointed out that under the Master Plan for Higher Education, adopted in 1960, the CSU system, not UC, bears primary responsibility for teacher education. Republican Assembly Leader Rod Pacheco, a UC Riverside graduate, argued, “CSU is already ramped up. It’s like asking IBM to build a car rather than asking Ford.â€�

Yes and no. While it is true that the CSU system, under the general provisions of the Master Plan, is responsible for educating the majority of teacher candidates, this is merely a matter of numbers and should not be considered a monopoly. Currently, CSU trains 65% of state teachers, while UC’s share has fallen from a onetime high of 11% to 5%. (Private schools account for another 30%.) Davis aims to double the number of teachers graduating from UC programs. The state will need to hire 27,000 teachers a year over the next decade, which leaves plenty of room for growth in both the CSU and UC systems.

Should the University of California remain aloof from teacher training, it would do grave damage to itself as one of the leading universities in the world. Without teacher training, the cycle of learning so essential to true university life--the cycle of teaching to learning, of learning to research and from research back again to teaching--would remain incomplete, to the detriment of society at large.

The University of California was conceptualized in 1849 and politically reaffirmed in 1879 in two drafts of the state Constitution. UC is, in effect, a fourth branch of California government. Over the years, it has grown to international prominence as a research and teaching institution. Today, it is arguably the single greatest comprehensive research university in the world.

At no time, however, did UC neglect, much less turn its back on, the practical needs of California. Indeed, in two fields--mining and agriculture--UC scientists helped get California on its feet in the 19th century. Today, at UC Davis and UC Riverside, agricultural research and teaching continue to serve what remains the largest sector of the California economy--agriculture.

Meanwhile, beginning in San Jose in the 1870s and spreading to San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chico and eventually throughout California, state-supported colleges were founded. The primary mission of these normal schools, as they were called, was the education of teachers. These schools were supervised by the state Board of Education and superintendent of public instruction.

By the 1950s, however, this system was demanding reorganization. Many of the former state normal schools had long since developed into full-service colleges of distinction, strong in alumni and local influence. Newly developing communities, meanwhile, were petitioning the state Legislature for state colleges of their own. Every state college, moreover, was growing increasingly restive by having to report to the state Board of Education. The state colleges wanted a board--and a destiny--of their own.

Hammered out in the late 1950s and formalized in 1960, the Master Plan for Higher Education dealt with these tensions by creating a new institution, the California State Colleges, soon to be California State University, with its own governing board and distinctive mission. Here would be the great people’s university, accepting the top 33% of high school graduates, equipping them for productive lives in scores of useful callings. (UC accepts the top 12%.) A community-college system would offer an even more elaborate menu of vocational training, while channeling its graduates wishing a bachelor’s degree to either the CSU or the UC system.

When Davis challenged the University of California to reinterest itself in teacher education, he did not intend to disparage the continuing importance of the CSU system to this effort. CSU has developed campuses that in any other state might well serve as the central state university. CSU Humboldt, for example, is a world leader in forestry research. CSU Fresno holds comparable distinction in enology and agriculture. CSU San Diego excels in communications and planning. The architecture school of Cal Poly Pomona, part of the CSU system, is nationally ranked, as is the engineering school of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. CSU San Francisco has established itself as a national center for humanities research, including literature and classical studies.

The regional significance of these CSU campuses, furthermore, cannot be over-estimated, either in terms of their practical or psychological value. CSU Los Angeles, for example, has been at the forefront of the rise of Latino California, now moving into political ascendancy. CSU Sacramento has literally helped bring into being an entirely new metropolitan region. San Jose State University (as CSU San Jose insists upon calling itself) is almost single-handedly keeping alive library education as California enters the information age.

So, too, has the CSU system provided California with the majority of its public school teachers. This is not to say that the CSU system has a monopoly in teacher education. Each sector of higher education in California, Davis is reminding us, has a vested interest in flourishing and effective classrooms. Each and every institution, after all, is dependent on a steady flow of well-prepared undergraduates entering each fall.

Nor is teacher education in any way a second-class activity, despite what certain academic snobs might say. Harvard University, for example, which is no slouch when it comes to pure research, sponsors a widely respected masters of arts in teaching program in its school of education. Teachers College at Columbia University, another respected Ivy League institution, is famous for its teacher-training programs. Stanford University, a West Coast equivalent of the Ivy League, maintains a distinguished school of education. UC Berkeley and UCLA, flagship campuses of the UC system, each maintain graduate education programs. The University of Southern California recently received a $20-million gift from Barbara and Roger Rossier to be used, in part, toward putting more effective teachers in Southland classrooms. Davis’ $12 million would finance UC teaching institutes to prepare 6,000 K-3 reading teachers.

As the examples of Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA and USC so amply demonstrate, the most effective and socially responsible practice of university life in some way involves the entrance of the university into the teacher-training cycle. There is no such thing, in other words, as research that is so pure, so raffine, that it is exempt from the total educational health of society.

A culture ignorant of basic biology will not likely be eager to support research into genetics. A culture ignorant of the subjunctive mood and the semicolon cannot be expected to care about Horace or Shakespeare. A populace devoid of basic math skills will not appropriate funds for research into the far regions of theoretical physics.

A university tempted to conduct its higher researches in a spirit of indifference to the quality of the larger culture will soon find that its academic life has become increasingly self-absorbed, snobbish and self-referencing. The people, in turn, sinking further into ignorance, will increasingly see the life of the mind as practiced in the university as something not only irrelevant but hostile to them in an almost personal way.

The University of California is among the most glorious achievements not only of its distinguished faculty and students, its administrators and librarians, but of the people of California. For a century and more, the people of this state have turned to their university in time of need and challenged this distinguished public institution, built with their tax dollars, to come up with effective public solutions to pressing public problems. In issuing his invitation to UC to interest itself in the health of the state’s education system by becoming involved in teacher education, Davis is speaking, most effectively, for the people of California, who are the first and last constituency of the UC system.