It was as much a peace treaty as a plan, and it was built around a pledge: Every Californian would get a fair shot at a taxpayer-supportedcollege education.
"It is the most significant step California has ever taken in planning for the education of our youth," said Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, while signing the Master Plan for Higher Education on April 26, 1960.
Nearly 50 years later, the plan is faltering, burdened by decades of passive state oversight and a blurring of the roles the state's three branches of higher education were supposed to play.
The results are grimly manifest throughoutCalifornia.
A major role of the state's 110 public community colleges, for example, was to act as "feeder schools" to the University of California andCalifornia State University systems.
But studies have found that only about a quarter of the community college students who take transferable courses actually go on to aCalifornia public four-year school.
Sometimes there's no room to transfer: Earlier this month in San Diego, 1,000 students who in the words of one administrator "did everything they were supposed to do" at the community college level were denied admission to San Diego State University.
Sometimes there's no room even if they don't