The California Master Plan: Admissions, Race, and the SAT � The Quick and the Ed

The California Master Plan: Admissions, Race, and the SAT � The Quick and the Ed

The California Master Plan: Admissions, Race, and the SAT

by Chad Aldeman

50 years ago Monday the California Legislature signed into law the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education. In honor of the anniversary of this seminal document, I’ll be doing a series of posts on important Plan elements, starting yesterday with a brief history.
Blame the Baby Boom generation and the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California for the widespread use of admissions tests for college. With the passage of this document 50 years ago yesterday, California became the first state to codify which students were to be eligible for which higher education institution. It set clear guidelines: The University of California was to enroll the top eighth of all high school graduates, the California State University schools were to enroll students between the top one-eighth and the top one-third, and the California Community Colleges were to be open to all other students. But, to handle a quadrupling of student demand between 1960 and 1975, the state had to come up with equally clear guidelines about how to define its student populations.
Enter the SAT. In 1951, 81,100 students took the SAT, mainly

DIY U

by Ben Miller

America’s colleges and universities were among the first institutions to make use the of the Internet. But while academics have recognized for decades how the spread of technology can have huge benefits for their research and communication, higher education overall has largely ignored the transformative potential of the Internet.
Sure, some colleges use online course management software, such as Blackboard, but this is done to replace administrative functions like collecting lecture slides and handouts or tracking assignments. Online courses are prevalent in the for-profit sector,  but not particularly common at brick and mortar institutions, which largely rely on lectures for instruction.
That model worked OK when colleges educated a largely homogeneous group of students and had little funding