Universities: The Tragedy at Cal: A Fiscal & Presidential Crisis

Weary regents of the University of California groped their way toward a temporary resolution of the system’s financial crisis in a three-day meeting in Santa Barbara last week. With only Governor Ronald Reagan voicing an audible dissent, the board voted that there will be no imposition of tuition at the university in the 1967-68 school year. Whether there might be a tuition after that will be considered at a regents’ meeting next April. The regents also decided that they could live with a hold-the-line budget of $255 million for 1967-68. That is $15 million more than this year’s budget, but $23 million less than they had originally proposed. They also chipped in $19.5 million from their reserve fund, which is normally used for special projects.

Although he had not yet won his fight for tuition, Reagan could point to a theoretical saving for state taxpayers of more than $42 million, at no apparent loss in quality. University officials, however, insist that they will have to limit admissions next year to keep within the budget, which is still a matter of much controversy within the state. Reagan has been roundly denounced for his cost-trimming efforts—most notably by Cartoonist Bill Conrad of the Los Angeles Times (see cuts). Editorially, the Times has been cool to the Governor’s tuition proposal, and to a budget cut that would affect university quality.

Outside Choice. The compromise must still be approved by the state legislature. Until the university’s fiscal future is clearly resolved, it seems unlikely that the regents will make much headway in finding a successor to former President Clark Kerr. Most observers expect someone outside the state to be chosen, even though plausible candidates within the university are at hand. Berkeley Chancellor Roger Heyns, who impresses all factions on the campus with both his fairness and firmness, has been stumping the state to argue against tuition and budget cuts, seems incompatible with a Reagan administration. U.C.L.A. Chancellor Franklin Murphy, a Reagan political defender but an opponent of the Governor on the budget issue, seems content to stay in Los Angeles, where he is a civic as well as campus leader.

The blunt and unexpected manner of Kerr’s dismissal also makes the finding of a successor difficult, since rightly or wrongly many educators now regard the former president as an academic martyr. As pieced together from Kerr and the accounts of various regents, the details of the president’s removal are now clear —and they add up to what one regent calls “a tragedy—because no one wanted it to happen then.” Although a majority of the board had long since lost faith in Kerr, they did not want his dismissal to coincide with a new Governor’s assumption of office, precisely in order to avoid the political implications. But Kerr’s ultimate fate was foreordained. “Good as he is—and he is damn good,” says one regent, “he had developed enough barnacles that he had to go.”

Kerr accumulated his first set of barnacles with his handling of the 1964 Berkeley riots, which alienated students and faculty as well as the regents. The board was further annoyed when Kerr in 1965 publicly resigned without first consulting the regents; they persuaded him to reconsider, but many resented the power squeeze. Still another mistake was Kerr’s swift reaction to Reagan’s initial budget and tuition proposals, when he ordered a temporary hold on student admissions—again without consulting the regents.

During the regular January meeting of the board, Kerr was grilled on this admissions freeze. One regent recalls that “there was an inquisition air about it—the talk was agonizingly tense.” Kerr took the questioning as confirmation of the published rumors that the regents were getting set to fire him. On the last day of the regents’ meeting, Kerr asked Board Chairman Theodore Meyer and Vice Chairman Dorothy (“Buff”) Chandler to his office, told them: “If you’ve made up your mind to get rid of me, January is better than February.” With the financial situation fluid, he later explained, “How could I sit at a table and negotiate when the people across the table had set a time bomb under me to go off Feb. 15 and they knew it, and everyone in the state knew it?”

Quick Execution. Actually, the regents had not expected to move against Kerr that quickly. But Meyer and Chandler understandably reported to the board that Kerr was insisting on an immediate “vote of confidence.” Kerr, also understandably, saw it more as “a clarification of status” and, believing the votes were against him, as “a suggestion for quick execution.” Some regents, however, felt that Kerr was gambling on the possibility that the regents would not dare fire him in order to avoid the charge of political interference.

The debate continued for 21 hours, with each regent airing his feelings about Kerr. Reagan was among those who proposed that the question of Kerr’s status be postponed. “By the time everybody had had his say,” recalls one, “it was like squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube—you can’t get it back in—and it was perfectly obvious that there was a lack of confidence in Kerr.” In the end, the 14 to 8 vote went against Kerr. After the decision, Meyer and Mrs. Chandler told Kerr of the vote, and asked on behalf of the regents if he would resign. A proud man, who has insisted all along that he would never quit under fire, Kerr refused, saying that the board must take the responsibility.

Too Much Red Tape. Cal’s next president, no matter who he is, faces an extraordinarily difficult challenge—part of it brought on by Kerr’s administrative indecisiveness, part of it inherent in the job itself. One problem is to restore confidence in the presidency on the university’s nine campuses; although some students and professors are privately relieved that Kerr has gone, most also remain distinctly fearful that his successor may turn out to be worse. And despite Cal’s reputation for excellence, it is a university with a host of unsolved academic problems. Although Kerr gave far greater authority to the campus chancellors than they had ever had before, some professors still complain that there is too much bureaucratic red tape. Kerr also insisted that teaching ability should rate equally with research skills; but Cal is still governed by a publish-or-perish system that alienates students and forces professors to quantitative rather than qualitative production.

Still another major issue that the new president must face is the future growth of the university. One of Kerr’s major achievements at Cal was the state’s master plan for higher education, which sees an ultimate expansion to a super-multiversity of eleven campuses with 149,000 students by 1975. Some regents feel that Kerr never really faced up to the ultimate cost of this program for growth, simply assuming that somehow the state, like God, would provide what was needed. In defense of Kerr’s grandiose plans, however, university officials point out that California, with the second highest per capita income of the 13 Western states, spends proportionately far less on higher education than most of its neighbors. The annual cost per student has actually dropped from $710 to $690 (in noninflated dollars) since 1958.

Defininq the Job. In the long run, perhaps the most important question is how well Kerr’s successor defines and clarifies his job. At Cal, the line of authority between regents, the president and the chancellors of the nine campuses has always been fuzzy—and there have been suggestions that the president is actually superfluous. Some regents believe that Kerr was remiss in not trying hard enough to redefine his responsibilities clearly enough—even though redefinition is also a responsibility of the board.

To a lesser degree, the problems that have plagued the University of California and Clark Kerr exist in most of the expanding state university systems. Because California has set the pace toward excellence, how it resolves them—financially, administratively and academically—will have a significant impact on the shaping of higher education in the U.S.