CONTINUING EDUCATION IN THE
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY
A History
By
Marcia Salner, Ph.D. Consulting
Services in Education May 1988
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………...v
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1
Beginnings: In-service Education for Teachers (1857-1935)…………………………………...5
Chapter 2
State Colleges: Expansion Beyond Teacher Education (1935-1960…………………………19
Chapter 3
Continuing Education in the State College System (1960-1972)………………………….…43
Chapter 4
Innovation and Change (1972-1977)……………………………………………………………69
Chapter 5
Extended Education (1977-1982)………………………………………………………………..97
Chapter 6
Rethinking Educational Goals (1982-1985)……………………………………...……………117
Epilogue ………………………………………………………………………………………………….135
References………………………………………………………………………………………..………141
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A large number of people on many of the CSU campuses have contributed to this project. First and
foremost has been a small committee of readers, carefully selected because of their long and
distinguished careers in the CSU and their familiarity with continuing education. These readers
reviewed early drafts and made valuable corrections and suggestions. I am deeply indebted to Ralph
Bohn, currently Dean of Continuing Education at San Jose State University and a member of the CSU
Commission on Extended Education; to Leo Cain, Professor of Special Education at San Francisco
State University, formerly President of CSU Dominguez Hills, Chairperson of the CSU Commission
on External Degrees, and Dean of Educational Services and Summer Sessions at San Francisco State
College; to Glenn Dumke, former Chancellor of the CSU, and President of San Francisco State
College; to Donald Gerth, President of CSU Sacramento, former Chairperson of the Commission on
Extended Education, and a member of practically every commission or committee that has discussed
continuing education during his long career with the CSU; and, finally, Ralph Mills, Assistant Vice
Chancellor, Academic Affairs, Research and Development, in the Chancellor's Office, formerly State
University Dean for Extended Education, and Vice President for Continuing Education at CSU Chico.
I also wish to thank two very special people who extended themselves beyond the call of duty when it
was necessary to search for long-buried documents. Helene Whitson at the San Francisco State
University Library, and Georgianne White at the CSU Sacramento Library, are both accomplished
archivists and provided me with considerable help. The special collections at both of these CSU
campus libraries are among the best in the CSU, and constitute valuable resources for historians.
The current deans and directors of continuing and extended education programs on the 19 campuses
were also helpful in providing me with information about their programs, past and present. Similarly,
Donald Fletcher in the Division of Extended Education, Office of the Chancellor, was always willing
to track down both people and documents. I am deeply appreciative of the assistance provided.
Lastly, I wish to thank Harold Haak, Chair of the CSU Commission on Extended Education, and
President of CSU Fresno. His comments on previous drafts were valuable and helpful. Hal Best,
Executive Director of the Commission, and members of the Commission deserve my gratitude as well
for their assistance, support, and patience in waiting for a long project to be completed at last.
INTRODUCTION
Continuing education is a unique field in the profession of education. First of all, the sheer size,
complexity and sprawling nature of its programs give it an openness and lack of definition that can be
either frustrating or exhilarating.
The number of adults in our society who are involved in some form of continuing education programs is
sizable. Estimates during the past twenty years have varied from one in every five adults over the age of
25 to one in three. Continuing education is provided, in some form or other, not only by universities and
colleges but by many corporations, state agencies, the Civil Service Commission, local school districts,
professional organizations, and, more recently, by organizations in the private sector created solely for the
purpose of delivering continuing education to specific occupational groups.
Continuing education has experienced an unprecedented growth during the past two decades chiefly
because of the now legendary "baby boom," those born between 1940 and 1964. The needs over the years
of this particular age cohort have probably had more influence on educational policy than those of any
other group in recent history. In the 1950s and 60s, they swelled elementary schools beyond their capacity
and created the crisis of a major teacher shortage. The prospect of their entry into postsecondary education
triggered a statewide flurry of campus building, renovation, and expansion. In California, the coming of
age of this age cohort and its demand for college education helped to sustain the formation of the state's 70
community college districts, expansion of the University of California, and the growth to 19 campuses of
the California State University.
Throughout the state's history, the Legislature has maintained its early commitment to the principle of
tuition-free higher education for those citizens of the state who have the capacity and the motivation to
pursue a higher degree. Though this commitment may have wavered during periods of financial crises, it
has remained a cornerstone of California higher education policy. The baby boom generation, however,
tested the commitment of the state by its sheer numbers and need for education. The same generation can
also be blamed in part for the that coincided with its passage through the state's higher education systems
as its members protested war, authority, and inferior services. And when they grew older and passed out of
the various levels of the educational system, they left in their wake boarded-up elementary schools,
overbuilt colleges, too many tenured teachers, and a property taxpayers revolt against the cost of it all.
Although it is simplistic to say that the baby boom generation was the sole cause of major upheavals and
change in public educational policy in the United States, the demographic shifts caused by this unusual
number of births should not be discounted as an important influence. The current interest in continuing
education and its rapid growth during the past two decades result, to a large extent, from the fact that the
baby boom generation is now approaching middle age. Currently, this generation has a whole new set of
needs for education and training to ensure upward economic mobility and survival in competition for
scarce resources.
The latter half of this generation, born in the post-war years of economic boom, is now playing a major
role in the nation's economy. Young Urban Professionals, or "Yuppies" as they have been popularly
dubbed, have yet to make their full impact felt politically, but their learning needs and educational
preferences are already well known all across the country in colleges and universities, as well as in
business and the professions. The baby boom generation has very much affected the shape of the history
which follows.
A second reason why continuing education is unique is that its students are adults, "grown-ups," who
have long since left behind their malleable childhood habits.
The adult students of continuing education programs have very definite learning needs and educational
preferences. And, following two decades in which activist politics have been a common method of
making known one's attitudes and values, they are often sophisticated about how to marshal the
political muscle to insure that their needs and preferences are addressed in our formal educational
systems. Continuing education students express their needs and interests, and thus they can provide
social observers with important information about future trends in our society. In short, adult
continuing education is a very important social indicator of what people want and how they are
experiencing life in contemporary America.
A third reason why continuing education is unique is that its philosophy differs substantially from that
of traditional pedagogy -the teaching of children. We tend to think of education as a process that
prepares us, or our children, to begin adult living and which terminates when we reach a certain age or
goal. Continuing education, in contrast, is not just preparation. It is reparation. Itis a form of education
that provides an opportunity to do something over again, or to do something new that has been
previously omitted. In short, continuing education is never ending, a lifelong pursuit of the goal to get
smarter and stay smarter throughout our entire lives. Continuing education is education for people who
have been "prepared" once already, and who now need something more or something different.
The idea of education as reparation rather than preparation suggests that continuing education is a
vehicle through which social system failures as well as personal failures can be addressed. In fact,
continuing education has become increasingly important during the past fifty years because our
national population has experienced an accelerating pace of technological change and increased
economic displacement. Jobs come and go, skills that were once valued become obsolete, new
community problems are thrust upon us. As a result, people find themselves caught up in local
changes and national trends that can destroy their personal roles in the national economy as well as
their comfortable habits and life styles. Continuing education provides the formal opportunity for
individuals to re-tool those obsolete skills, re-think their commitment to old habits, and re-form
occupational and social commitments. It is perhaps ironic, or maybe just a nice kind of social justice,
that the very technology undermining familiar ways of life also provides educational solutions through
the use of television and computers.
What makes continuing education so particularly interesting is that its history reflects the changing
face of the nation's population and the fine vicissitudes of our economy. Nowhere in the field of
education do we find so sensitive an indicator of what is going on in our society. Continuing education
is situated where the teaching profession and our formal systems of education intersect with the adult
members of our society -ordinary citizens who are trying to earn a living, raise children, do their share
in their communities, survive traffic jams, smog, and bad weather, all the while hoping for a better
world. Both sides, the adult student and the educational system, affect the equation which produces
continuing education. For this reason, continuing education programs must be responsive to their adult
students as well as reflect changes and current conditions in the society. On the other hand, continuing
education programs become a major vehicle for developing an adult citizenry that can do what needs
to be done in order to keep the nation's economy moving and our society stable. As such, continuing
education serves the public interest and thus must be accountable, ifnot directly, then at least indirectly,
to the nation's representatives who make public policy. Thus, continuing education has a dual identity
as both a force for social change and a force for social control.
The 125-year history of continuing education in one of the nation's largest public university systems
reveals the intimate and often tense relationship between public policy controls and the adult citizen's
need for change, as mediated by continuing educators. The history of continuing education is one of
conflict and accommodation, inertia and innovation, grand designs and minor revolutions. Moreover,
it is a history of the systemic interaction of a host of forces that shape change in formal postsecondary
education.
the California State University grew from the state's first normal school for teachers to its present
status as a 19-campus statewide system, continuing education has grown in size, scope, and
complexity. In the various labels that the campuses have used to identify the project of educating
adults, from "in-service education," primarily for teachers, through the concept of "continuing lifelong
learning" for all adults in our society, to its present conceptualization as "extended education," that is,
education extended beyond the traditional barriers of campus geography, we can witness the way in
which trends in the state, region, nation, and globe have affected the work of professors and
administrators. The result is a way of thinking about the meaning and purposes of a college or
university education in our society that is dramatically different from what it was forty or fifty years
ago.
There are, of course, problems with the concept of continuing education itself. coin of the realm, it
has suffered from inflation. Unfortunately, the term has been used to refer to any kind of learning
experiences designed for adults except traditional diploma or degree programs offered in traditional
classrooms on a traditional campus. Continuing education has been referred to by Milton Stern, Dean
of Extension at the University of California, Berkeley, as the "Invisible University."
The Invisible University is all those people nobody counts, the millions of people not
included in higher education records because they are not enrolled in "regular" classes but
in continuing education programs . . . Continuing education is untidy, messy, sprawling
over the landscape of the academy, offered not only in evening colleges or extension
divisions,
p. 10) . but often in internal schools and colleges that don't even know they are engaged
upon continuing education. (Stern,
the history of continuing education in the California State University unfolds in the following
chapters, we will see how the campuses sought to bring order to the untidiness of continuing education and not only monitor but improve their efforts during a period in which every kind of formal
education was growing in size and expanding in complexity of operations. It is only within the last
decade that a "steady state" has been reached, bringing with it organizational challenges of a new kind
to educators.
Continuing education in the California State University (CSU) can be seen in particular programs,
some of which -for example, Extension or Summer Sessions -have a history as long as the colleges
themselves. Others, such as External Degree Programs, are more recent developments. This history
covers CSU Extension, Summer Sessions, Special Sessions, Off-campus Instruction, External Degree
Programs, The Consortium, Off-campus Centers, and Instructional Television, which are the major
programmatic labels within the CSU through which the continuing education of adults can be
identified.
Continuing education revolves around a unique relationship between the campuses and a local adult
citizenry with a shifting but constant need to learn. Continuing education programs, by virtue of their
characteristic structure and clientele, are affected by changes in the surrounding environment earlier
than are the more insulated programs within the halls of academia. This being the case, in the future,
the CSU system as a whole may benefit by keeping a close watch on trends at its outer boundaries;
these trends have shown in the past that they can presage both problems and opportunities for
postsecondary education.
CHAPTER 1
Beginnings: In-service Education for Teachers (1857-1935)
Continuing education in the CSU had its origins in the gold rush boom town atmosphere of San Francisco
in the 1850s. The city in that decade was the economic and social hub of California; people were flooding
to it from the East in search of the glorious opportunities for wealth and freedom that were described in
anecdote and news media throughout the country. San Francisco's population was growing quickly as
more and more people settled in to raise families in the frontier state's major city.
Complaints about the low quality of teaching in San Francisco's fast growing elementary schools and
about the need for better teacher education had already been surfacing for several years. On January 15,
1857, The Pacific, a San Francisco religious journal, commented:
Schools of more or less pretensions are being established over the whole State; and that a full
supply of competent teachers may be secured, the voice of Public Opinion is beginning to be
heard, demanding the establishment of State Normal Schools, or Colleges, and a University.
(Gilbert & Burdick, p. 9)
A committee responsible for conducting a semi-annual examination of San Francisco's public schools
recommended in May of 1855 that,
at as early a day as possible, steps be taken for instituting regular weekly normal exercises, to
be attended by all assistant teachers.
Until the teacher's profession is understood and appreciated by the people, there will be a
tendency to foster quackery and empiricism -to continue in place persons who would make
teaching an experiment or sinecure. (Gilbert & Burdick, p. 8)
As a result, a normal school, under the direction of George Minns, was established in San Francisco by
the Board of Education in 1857. This normal school was later to evolve into a State Teachers
.College and eventually to become one of the first state colleges in California. Normal school classes were
held on Monday nights from 7:30 to 10 for a three-month term. Subjects included grammar, writing,
declamation, United States history, descriptive and political geography, physical geography, and mental
and written arithmetic. Local teachers, who were required to attend or risk losing their jobs, naturally
complained that it was very tiring to attend class in the evening after having taught all day and that,
furthermore, they were not very effective in their own classrooms the following morning. These early
efforts at continuing education for teachers, however, proved popular, and the Board of Education voted in
1860 to retain the school.
But even as the Board was making this decision, a movement was already underway to shift the
responsibility for teacher training from the city of San Francisco to the state. Andrew Jackson Moulder, a
former San Francisco quartz miner and newspaper editor, then State Superintendent of Schools, led the
movement. In annual reports of 1859 and 1860, Superintendent Moulder recommended the creation of a
state normal school, and on May 27, 1861, he addressed the first State Teachers Institute, held in San
Francisco, with this plan:
We must have the Legislature educated to more faith in the public schools. When our
legislators believe with Horace Mann that every invasion upon the domains of ignorance is an
invasion upon
the domains of crime, they will not haggle at expending as much upon the schools as upon the
State Prison. (Gilbert & Burdick, p. 19)
Apparently the Legislature bent to this logic, because in May 1862 Governor Leland Stanford signed a
bill creating a State Normal School located in San Francisco, where a well-functioning evening
normal school was already established. However, the new State Normal School was designed to go
beyond continuing education for in-service teachers; prospective teachers were also to be trained. The
law stated that females 15 years of age or older and males 18 years or older were to be admitted,
provided that they promised in writing to teach permanently in the California schools.
The State Normal School's first principal was Abira Holmes, who came to the post with valuable
experience as principal of the "Free Evening School" in San Francisco. This evening school for adults,
the beginning of adult education in San Francisco, had been established in 1856 by the local Board of
Education and the city's first archbishop, and was held in the basement of St. Mary's Cathedral.
Holmes' appointment as first principal of the State Normal School suggests that the founding
institution, which would gradually develop into the California State University system, was to be
firmly grounded in the task of educating mature working adults. The second principal of the State
Normal School, who succeeded Holmes in 1865, was none other than George Minns, the founder of
the first evening school for San Francisco's teachers, whose success in that earlier venture had led the
Legislature to expand his experiment into the first state-supported school in California.
The California State Normal School remained in San Francisco until 1871, establishing itself during
this time as the primary teacher training institution in California. It remained an independent body
despite proposals to merge it with the newly created University of California. When the Legislature
decided to move the school from San Francisco to San Jose in 1871, the effect was to sever the
school's close local ties with the San Francisco school system and to move the school even further
toward its status as a state school in its own right. The California State Normal School at San Jose was
eventually to become San Jose State University.
Within twenty years, the normal school would begin to experiment with summer sessions and
extension education. Both of these educational programs became, at an early date, integral to the way
continuing education for adults would evolve in the development of the CSU system.
Origin of Summer
The idea ofsummer sessions originated in themid-l850s, when summer institutes for teachers began to
become a popular way to upgrade the knowledge of elementary and secondary school educators. The
institutes were somewhat like conferences, running from one day to a week, and were usually
organized by a state or county superintendent of schools. The first real permanent summer session was
probably Harvard professor Louis Agassiz' science "camp" for teachers, which was established in
1873 at Buzzard's Bay on the Atlantic seacoast for the purpose of studying marine biology.
Interestingly, Harvard University, a most influential model in American higher education, had a
summer quarter in its earliest days, but not a winter quarter. The idea was to make it possible for
Harvard students to support themselves by teaching in the common schools, whose calendars
conformed to the needs of agricultural production. Schoenfeld's (1967) history of university summer
sessions notes:
Harvard then gradually joined the trend toward two semesters, with a summer hiatus which
was used only for the non-credit instruction of teachers. But the memory of the old summer
quarter
was to linger on, until in 1900 President C. W. Eliot proposed a three-year bachelor's degree
sequence for Harvard, utilizing the summer term to produce the acceleration. The system operated
until 1912, one of its products being James B. Conant. Yale, Johns Hopkins, Clark, and other
institutions had similar year-round calendars. Gradually the programs collapsed under a variety of
pressures, but the status they lent to the summer term was significant.
It (the of summer session) was shortly to find its most fertile soil on the campuses of the emerging
state universities where public service was a compelling philosophy. (pp. 14-15)
Early experiments in adult education such as the Chautauqua movement made ample use of the idea of
combining summer vacations with inspiration and edification.
Take one part each Bible class, circus, political convention, and laboratory seminar, mix thoroughly
in a large tent, add a touch of library and a dash of college, bring to a boil over the fires of Utopian
planning -and you get a rough idea of Chautauqua. Here was the America of Gladstone, Barnum,
Bryan, and Harper distilled into one draught of uplift and spending itself in an orgy of religious and
educational evangelism ... Originally associated with a specific campground in New York, the term
Chautauqua later became connected, officially or unofficially, with summer tent assemblies across
the country, some at the doorsteps of universities; and some Chautauqua instructors joined the
faculties of distinguished institutions. (Schoenfeld, pp. 10-11)
Mer about 1900, states began counting summer coursework towards the renewal of teachers' temporary
certificates. Methods were devised so that summer study could be compared and evaluated according to
the standards used during the regular academic year. Summer sessions became a major route for teachers
to respond to steadily advancing requirements for certification, and by 1930 there were 250,000 teachers
enrolled in summer sessions nationally. Educational historian John S. Brubacher says summer session was
"probably the greatest mass attempt ever known at professional self-improvement in service" (Brubacher,
p. 525).
early as 1891, San Jose State Normal School's president, Charles W. Childs, noted in his annual report that
teachers were taking courses from the school's faculty during their vacation periods a policy that presaged
future summer sessions. A more formal summer session was proposed in 1903 by President Morris E.
Dailey because, as he reasoned, the San Jose weather was good during July and August and teachers
would welcome theinnovation. More importantly, he noted that only 29 percent of California's teachers
were normal school graduates and only 8 percent were college or university graduates, so the majority of
working teachers could profit by more opportunities for study.
By 1900 four additional state normal schools had been opened -in Los Angeles (1881), Chico (1889), San
Diego (1898), and San Francisco (1899). The April 1903 meeting of the joint board of normal school
trustees unanimously approved a plan to offer a summer session at San Jose from June 29 to September 11
of that year. The plan was also enthusiastically endorsed by the presidents of the other normal schools as
well. By 1905 San Diego State Normal School had also instituted a summer session which continued until
1916 when the campus moved to year-round operations with four 12-week quarters.
Educational administrators will no doubt admire the speed with which a program could be put into
operation in those days. With only two months lead time between the green light from the board and the
opening of classes, the first summer session of the now California State University (CSU) was launched in
June of 1903. The 163 women and 12 men who enrolled that summer could choose from among any of the
courses that were a part of the regular school year curriculum, including educational theories, psychology,
history, geography, science, mathematics, drawing,
literature, manual training, music, and physical training. The regular faculty voluntarily taught during
the summer an additional compensation of $25.
By the following year, enrollment had increased to 541 and the session was condensed to the sixweek period that was to become a standing norm.
In April of 1906 the earthquake that destroyed most of San Francisco and the surrounding area halted
that year's summer session at San Jose, since repairs to classrooms had to be made during the summer
months for the following year's regular students. Summer session took up again at San Jose in 1907
with approximately 275 students from allover California and other parts of the country and world,
including one from Canada and one from China. This time the entire faculty taught, without extra
compensation, as part of their contract.
Later summer sessions in the colleges were to incorporate the idea of foreign travel for study
purposes. The first travel study program recorded in CSU's history took place under the auspices of
the San Jose State Normal School during the summer of 1909, when summer session was suspended
due to a building project. A unique feature of this venture was that its purpose was faculty
development. The faculty of the normal school, at the suggestion of President Dailey, had begun
planning the previous fall for a summer voyage to Europe with an itinerary that included England,
Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, France, and Germany. During the winter and spring, faculty
meetings included "travel talks" by various members of the faculty as intellectual preparation for the
trip. Twenty-nine faculty members actually sailed aboard a steamship on July 3, 1909. Presumably,
the trip was financed by the teachers themselves, and historian B. F. Gilbert comments, "The tour
proved a grand success, instructive to the faculty, and a tribute to Dailey's ability to maintain a
harmonious teaching staff' (Gilbert, p. 123). Travel study for students, as an established campus
feature, did not develop until much later in CSU's history, although field trips were a feature of early
summer session courses.
Humboldt Normal School appears to have been the first to organize such field study. The campus' first
summer session was launched in 1914. It was taught by six members 6f the regular faculty augmented
by four visiting instructors. The courses included psychology, pedagogy, history of education, music,
vocal and stringed instruments, public speaking, typing, shorthand, literature, horticulture, nature
study, and manual training. By 1916 various excursions, such as visits to nearby lumber camps, were
featured. One such was a "trip around the block" of 100 miles over mountains,
JhrQ!1gh canyons, along the ocean and around Humboldt Bay. Another trip featured Little River
Beach.
The largest summer session at Humboldt during the normal school era was in 1917 when more than
100 students enrolled. Extra effort had been made that year to create and publicize a particularly
attractive summer program. The Humboldt State Normal School Letter, which was mailed out to
educators in the region, included attractive pictures of redwood trees and coastline, along with pictures
of students taking part in drama productions and playing basketball. Summer sessions in the normal
schools were residential and provided living accommodations in the school dormitories for visiting
students, vacation attractions that were likely to enhance enrollment. Humboldt also arranged for
outstanding lecturers in 1917, including Edward Hyatt, State Superintendent of Public Instruction;
Edward Hardy, President of the San Diego Normal School;
C. L. McLane, President of the Fresno Normal School (which had been opened in 1911); M. E.
Dailey, President of the San Jose Normal School; and Frederick Burke, President of the San Francisco
Normal School (Davies, p. 47-48).
Fresno Normal School was the first to develop an off-campus summer session. In 1914 Fresno's
summer session was ,held outdoors in the open air of an abandoned utility company construction
camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Cascade. The location was chosen by the school's
President, C. L. McLane, as a way for the school to provide students with an escape from the San
Joaquin Valley heat during the summer without the campus having to invest a great deal of money.
Describing the site, he says,
The abandoned cook-house was still equipped with range and tables; the water system for the camp
was still intact. Everything was crude and in rather a dilapidated condition. There were no available
funds for improving these conditions, but with what help the (Edison Power) Company could give
us, and the possibility of using employees of the School, we decided to go ahead with plans for
conducting a summer school during the coming vacation. Some financial aid was given by the
Fresno Chamber of Commerce, which organization continued for many years to contribute by
money and moral backing to the support of the summer school. (McLane, pp. 99-1(0)
Seventy students registered during this first summer. The purposes of the session were "to afford
teachers who had not had sufficient advantages of professional training an opportunity to complete a
normal school course" and "to give to normal graduates and others an opportunity to specialize,
looking toward certification for special elementary or secondary training" (Summer School Circular
of Information, 1914, p. 1). W. B. Givens, head of the mechanical arts department, was made dean,
and faculty agreed to teach for whatever money could be realized as profit from the fees paid by the
students for room, board and materials. Apparently, faculty salary was a pittance, since no tuition was
charged. That the faculty was cooperative, even enthusiastic regardless of there being so little
remuneration, is evident in the report that faculty also helped put up the cabins that were rented to the
students at a fee of $10 for the six-week term.
San Francisco State Normal School inaugurated its first summer session in a novel way. The session
was scheduled to coincide with the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition, which expected to draw a great
crowd of tourists to the city, including many teachers from around the country. The Exposition gave
the first president of the school, Dr. Frederick Burke, and faculty member, Mary Ward, who had been
active in developing new experimental teaching techniques for individualizing instruction, the
opportunity to create a large audience for their new ideas. Thanks to the presence of the Exposition
and to the school's foresight, a large number of teachers attended this first San Francisco Summer
Session.
Summer session did not become a regularly established feature of the normal schools until 1922. This
ch@ge in the for in 1921 had declared the State Normal Schools to be State Teachers Colleges under
the jurisdiction of a newly established State Department of Education. By this act the local boards of
trustees of the schools were preempted, and the State Board of Education was empowered to establish
the curricula, along with admissions and graduation requirements. A trend toward centralized
decision-making and standardization of policy was begun which would affect summer sessions as
well the regular programs. With the redesignation as colleges, the purvue of the schools was expanded
and they were authorized to offer the B.A. degree in education. Summer sessions became a part of the
established structure of the colleges.
The State Teachers Colleges now numbered seven: San Jose, Chico, San Diego, San Francisco,
Fresno, Santa Barbara, and Humboldt. (The Los Angeles branch of the San Jose State Normal School
had been transferred to the University of California in 1919 and was later to develop into UCLA. The
Santa Barbara Normal School would remain with the state colleges until 1944 when it, too, was
transferred to the University of California.)
The change to State Teachers College status served to stabilize and formalize ongoing programs such as
summer sessions in the normal schools and to create more uniform regulations and procedures. The
increased scope of course offerings that accompanied the offering of the BA degree naturally affected the
offerings of summer session, which likewise increased in scope and variety.
Summer sessions in the State Teachers Colleges were administered as one central program starting in
1922. By 1925 they were advertised together in one brochure which was mailed out across the state to
elementary school teachers still working toward degrees or certificates. Although no tuition was charged
for the regular program, a tuition of $10 was charged for summer session. Additional fees for room and
board were also charged to those students who came to the sessions from out of town.
Summer sessions were also advertised by campus groups such as the drama club or the choral society.
These groups made visits to outlying communities where they gave performances, raising money at the
same time. "In the fall of 1925, students (of Humboldt State Teachers College) raised $1,000 by giving a
play entitled 'The Arrival of Kitty' in a number of Humboldt County towns. The cash was used mostly for
summer session advertising" (Davies, p. 89).
In 1922 the summer session at San Francisco was held off campus at Commercial High School near the
Civic Center, in space provided by the local Board of Education. Thirty-nine people, including President
Frederick Burke, taught in the session; two-thirds were from the college campus faculty. The 12 "visiting"
faculty represented universities, colleges, and public school districts throughout the United States,
illustrating the national orientation that San Francisco State Teachers College had developed.
A description of the philosophy and purposes of the session from the "Preliminary Announcement" states:
The stress upon concrete work and practical demonstration of previous summer sessions will be
extended and further emphasized. Features will be made of constructive reforms based upon modem
educational and psychological conceptions, of special classes and curricula for pupils of superior and
inferior general intelligence, of development of the native talents of the especially endowed, educational
measurements, health and development, correction of speech defects, the teaching of foreign children to
speak English, the training of foreign language teachers in foreign phonetics, promotions, examinations,
standards of attainment, units of credit. In the theoretical and professional field varied courses will be
offered in social science problems, in modem psychology stripped so far as of technical phraseology and
applied to educational problems, in and in biological conceptions which are fundamental to scientific
comprehension of educational processes. (p. 7)
Both in-service teachers and pre-service students who were enrolled in regular sessions were eligible to
take classes in order to gain a specific credential, to improve their knowledge, or to develop a teaching
specialization, such as health, music, Americanization, or world history.
Income from summer session fees was placed in a central fund administered by the State Director of
Education. Allocations for operating expenses were made to the various campuses on the basis of previous
years' enrollments and special one-time needs. Assessments for employee retirement and state
administrative charges were made against the fund as a whole. Rowland says:
The policy was to carry a very small, almost negligible, surplus from year to year. The plans for each
year had, therefore, to be made upon the basis of estimated enrollment, which policy
required that there be kept a careful record of the trends of all factors that appeared to influence
enrollments. Since the summer sessions of all the colleges were handled as a unit from the standpoint of finance, their operation required very close cooperation among the college presidents and
also between the presidents and the State Director of Education....
Since the income depended entirely upon enrollment, all arrangements and contracts had to be
tentative. In order to better visualize the prospects of each summer session, the presidents of the
state teachers colleges decided, in 1933, that the director of each summer school should notify the
State Department of Education of the actual amount in fees derived from such enrollments, and of
the estimated income to be derived from the entire summer school. When a session received fees in
excess of its quota, the surplus was distributed to those summer schools which had incurred deficits
in proportion to the amount of the deficit. (Rowland, pp. 259.260)
By 1928 some summer sessions had grown enough to require their own administrative directors on
the campuses. One of the first was Mary Ward at San Francisco State, who took on the position in
addition to her role as Dean of Women. From that time on, the position of Director of Summer
Sessions appears with more frequency on the administrative rosters of the colleges.
By 1934 the college presidents as a council had emerged as the effective policy-making body for the
colleges, although they were responsible individually and collectively to the State Department of
Education. Minutes of the Council of College Presidents, kept formally from 1933, record the
evolution of summer session policy.
The Minutes (Dec. 11, 1933) state:
Each college shall on the basis of its allocation draw up a tentative summer session budget. Extreme
care must be exercised to allocate sufficient amounts for each and every non-teaching function,
which must, according to law, be supported from the summer session income....
The compensation for summer session instructors shall range from $50 to $60 per unit....
Each college may prepare and have printed modest folders announcing its summer session
offerings, the cost of printing such folders to be defrayed from the summer session fund. (pp. 6-7)
Curriculum was to be coordinated among the colleges. The campuses were grouped regionally for the
purpose of allocating reponsibility for course offerings; one group was comprised of San Francisco
and San Jose, a second of San Diego and Santa Barbara, and a third of Chico, Humboldt, and Fresno.
Each campus was to offer a core of certain basic courses, with permission to offer special courses
given on the basis of estimated enrollment and the relative size the session.
Meanwhile, student tuition for the six-week session had doubled in eight years from $10 in 1925 to
$20 in 1933.
Origins of
The concept of extension education developed initially in England, where the term was coined. As
early as 1867, a fellow of Cambridge University named James Stuart accepted the invitation to
deliver lectures in towns and cities of northern England, far away from the intellectual advantages of
established universities. The idea caught on and, twenty years later, was introduced in America by
Herbert B. Adams of Johns Hopkins University.
The first American extension programs were organized independently of the universities, the earliest
being held in public libraries in the cities of Buffalo, Chicago, and St. Louis. However, many of
the lecturers came from campuses. An American Society for Extension Lecturing was established in 1890
and the of 23 centers at approximately the same time as the California State Normal Schools were
developing as a local force in teacher education. State money for. extension was first made available in
1891 in New York, by which time 28 states already offered some kind of extension work. The University
of California established an autonomous extension department in 1902.
Fresno State Normal School appears to have been the first of the normal schools to begin extension
services in the same year that it opened its doors. Beginning in 1911, classes for in-service teachers were
held at the YWCA and high school buildings in Fowler, Hanford, and other San Joaquin Valley towns.
"Instructors served without pay provided their railroad fares were taken care of by the local community"
(Hogan, p. 44). However, extension services were conceptualized even then as being broader than just the
continuing education of teachers. Community improvement and entertainment were a concern of the
colleges as well. For example, an arrangement was made between Fresno's President McLane and the
Patterson Dick Company for the school to provide motion pictures and entertainments such as choruses,
dramas, and exhibitions "to any town evincing interest in them" (Hogan, p. 44). These activities frequently
raised money for the college.
Humboldt organized a correspondence extension department through which students could earn one
quarter of their certificate credits by mail. By 1917 21 courses were offered by this arrangement and the
cost was $1 per course. About 80 students were enrolled. The following year, in a program initiated by
Margaret McNaught, Commissioner of Elementary Education in California, the Humboldt Normal School
faculty began "field work" supervising in-service teachers in rural schools.
Somewhere between 30 and 40 schools were supervised at the of the county superintendents in what
Davies has referred to as "missionary work for the development of better teaching" (Davies, p.50).
Following a visit to Humboldt Normal School by A. E. Winship of Boston, editor of the Journal of
Education, the May 8, 1919 issue of the journal contained this comment on the success of McNaught's
venture:
Miss Margaret McNaught has accomplished more than we have ever known anyone in a state or
federal position to achieve in direct improvement of rural schools. Her bill for the extension of
normal school influence and aid to rural and village school teachers in service has already
worked miracles in ten counties through the Arcata Normal School, and San Fresno, and San
Diego have-begun similar activities under p.5()
In fact, much of early extension was apparently conceptualized as faculty consultation and demonstration
teaching. Humboldt Normal School held Saturday morning demonstration sessions on the campus, each
followed by a discussion period, to which all elementary teachers in the county were invited. Lunch was
served "and a wholesome social period followed" (Davies, p. 81).
Extension courses at San Jose first appeared in 1921. Greathead's history of the college says:
In 1921 an extension course was inaugurated for the benefit more particularly of city teachers.
Educational measurements and allied subjects were offered as well as some of the more common
branches.
These extension courses have proved popular and are now an established feature of the college
curriculum. (Greathead, p. 52)
Beginning in 1922 or 1923, general enrollments in the teachers colleges began to increase rapidly and
the campuses were hard pressed to provide for the demand. For example, at San Jose in the fall of
1925, President Herman F. Minssen had planned for an enrollment of 1,100, but ended up with 1,420.
This overflow apparently stimulated the development of extension courses.
Extension was first offered at San Francisco in 1928-29 as part of the late afternoon and evening
program of classes. Sixteen instructors were involved in extension teaching, of whom 11 were from
the campus. The "visiting" instructors included one from University of California, one from Mills
College, and three from nearby school districts. Alexander Boulware, a mathematics professor, was
appointed Director of Extension, and held the post until the administration of extension was
reorganized throughout the state colleges in the 1950s. San Francisco State's Announcement of
Courses, 1928-29 describes its Extension Division as follows:
The courses given by the Extension Division are open to students regularly enrolled in the college, as
well as to those who are not. Though planned primarily for teachers in service, these courses are popular
among regular students, for they offer certain kinds of training not provided for in the curriculum of the
college proper. Another advantage lies in the fact that some of the extension instructors are from outside
the regular college faculty; this permits students to make broadening contacts with other viewpoints.
All extension courses lead to the AB degree. Many have been specifically devised to prepare candidates
for the various kinds of special credentials offered by the State Department of Education. In addition to
Education and Psychology, the extension curriculum includes English, Social Science, Natural Science,
Mathematics, Art, Music, and even Mechanical Arts.
Classes are scheduled at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, at 6 and 7:30 in the evening, and at various hours on
Saturday morning. Though most of the classes are held at the college, several each semester are given in
Oakland and other nearby cities. The regular state fees have been set at $4 a unit.
(p. 44)
During this same period, Humboldt took a somewhat more passive approach. Extension classes
would be offered at the college whenever a sufficient number of teachers or members of the
community requested one. At least 20 people were necessary if a class was to be offered away from
the campus. However, the citizens of the community were invited to make use of the campus
auditorium, which seated 400, for "conventions, conferences, or assemblies of an educational or
cultural nature" (Humboldt State College Circular of Information, 1932-33, p. 18) .
Chico an division algng eXcept that regular students on the campus were prohibited from taking
extension courses except by special permission. However, a series of public lectures to which both
students and townspeople were invited was given free of charge each January and February as part of
Chico's extension service. By 1932 Chico had a Director of Extension, Hugh M. Bell, and was one of
the first campuses to institute a standing faculty committee on extension, composed of Mr. Bell and
four faculty members.
Late afternoon and evening on campus were arranged in the first years of the normal schools.
C. L. McLane, the first president at Fresno, recalled that immediately after the opening of the school,
"classes were organized for Saturday and evening sessions, and more than one hundred teachers in the
Fresno City and other nearby schools enrolled for serious work with the hope of ultimately graduating
from the Normal" (McLane, p. 111). From this statement we can infer that in-service education was a
well-integrated function of the normal schools from their very inception. For example, San Diego did
not develop an identifiable extension program until the 1940s. Instead, in-service teachers were served
by the campus through the late afternoon and evening program.
Apparently, extension, once it came to include coursework and was not identified exclusively with
faculty consultation or special community events, was conceptualized in the California normal schools
as regular courses scheduled on late afternoons, evenings, and Saturdays, often in locations convenient
to in-service teachers. As such, it overlapped or "extended" the regular programs of the campus. At
Fresno fees were charged to in-service teachers coming to the campus for afterhours classes "as the
(Fresno) Normal at this time was without adequate funds" (McLane, p. Ill), a condition that
presumably affected other of the normal schools as well. These fee-paying students were de facto
extension students, but their coursework carried full credit and "scores have thus been able to complete
a college course while actively engaged as regular full-time teachers" (McLane,
p. 112). By 1933 students enrolled for five or less units of coursework were classified as "limited"
(Le., part-time) students and those enrolled for six or more units as "regular" (full-time) students.
At sites in outlying towns, extension instructors' salary and travel expenses were met not by the
students themselves but by the school districts which employed them. It was in the district's interest to
have the skills of its public school teachers upgraded through attendance in classes of higher learning.
The regular faculty of the normal school usually did the teaching in the extension classes and full
college credit was given for those classes, although extension students were required to fulfill a
residency requirement at the normal school in order to receive a diploma.
Besides teacher education, extension classes of a general nature were offered to the local population,
some, but not all of which, carried credit. The purpose of extension in this case was to respond to
legitimate requests from the community for the services of a faculty member. However, faculty
entrepreneurship did not constitute the bulk of extension offerings. Most courses were related to
teacher training and were offered in cooperation with local school districts for teachers on emergency
or temporary credentials.
Extension was initiated at San Jose by President William Kemp sometime during his tenure (19201923), at which time a position of Director of Research and Extension was apparently created. James
C. DeVoss may be credited with being the first formal extension director in the CSU, appointed to that
role at San Jose most probably in 1921 by President Kemp, who also had him heading the Psychology
Department and the Bureau of Research. It may be that DeVoss' appointment as Director of Extension
was designed to capitalize on his interest in research, since a goal of extension services was to bring
the latest in educational research to practicing teachers.
Regarding the salaries of extension faculty, Rowland's history states:
instructors served without pay and-with only their railroad fare taken_care of by the local
communities, by the time of Governor Richardson's administration the instructors must have been
paid, for there is mention that the shortage of appropriations during the first two years of his
administration made necessary the charging of fees in order to insure the salaries of extension class
instructors. In 1926-27, an instructor estimated how much he had to charge in order to cover a total
composed of three dollars an hour travel time, five and one-half cents mileage, and five dollars an
hour lecture time. Thus the distance determined the expense, which was then prorated. . . . As the
state provides no funds for extension classes, they must be selfsupporting until such time as the state
policy may change. (Rowland, pp. 163-164)
By 1933, the Council of College Presidents and the Department of Education had set some general fiscal
guidelines for extension. Tuition was set at $5 per unit with $4 to be paid to the instructor as salary and $1 to the
campus administration to cover overhead and registration costs. Travel allowance to instructors was set at five
and one-half cents per mile and this cost was passed on to the students as a service charge. Similarly, any charges
for room rental were pro-rated and
passed on to the students. Extension, in other words, was clearly established as self-supporting. All off-campus
were to be handled as extension courses, except that tuition was not to be charged for English A or
"fundamentals courses" (Minutes of the CCP, October 19, 1933, p. 3). A maximum teaching load in extension
for regular campus instructors was set at two units in excess of a full day-time load, "but four units may be
taught on not more than two days per week by special permission" (Minutes, p. 3). Credit for extension
coursework taken in another institution was to be allowed only up to 10 percent of the total course
requirements.
Within about twenty years time, then, extension was consolidated as the off-campus arm of the teachers
colleges. It still included faculty consultation and supervision, but the early reliance on faculty "road
shows" began to diminish as formal coursework began to take precedence.
The first two decades of the twentieth century provided a difficult environment for the normal
schools/teachers colleges. Campus fires, major earthquakes, and an influenza epidemic, which closed all of
the normal schools except San Jose, all made enrollments and operations somewhat unpredictable. World
War I caused a particularly powerful disruption of college operations. Wartime industries paid better than
teaching and, because during the war years of 1914-1918 manpower was scarce, people who might have
been drawn to the teaching profession went into other kinds of work. Thus, enrollment in the teachers
colleges fell precipitously during the war years. World War I depleted teacher ranks allover the country to
an alarming degree, and trained teachers became very scarce. Furthermore, the business world began
drawing off the best trained because of their management skills. "In the whole United States, there were
13,681 teachers graduated in 1916, and but 9,514 in 1919" (Pangburn, p. 8).
However, after 1922 with the increased attention to the serious need for properly trained teachers by the
State Legislature, the eight state teachers colleges became increasingly stable and growth began to move
apace with demand. The colleges' scope of academic offerings increased to include the B.A. degree in
Education as well as the first two years of general college work previously offered by the normal schools.
While summer session was the earliest continuing education program to become institutionalized in the
state teachers colleges, extension quickly followed. It was easily accepted since off-campus
---classes for in-service teachers-hadbeen a regalar featul'e of--the-normal schools very earliest days when it was
unusual for the schools to have enough space to house all of their students. Summer sessions operated both on
and off the campus for both pre-service and in-service students simultaneously, with courses usually identical to
those offered during the regular school year session. Because of the need to meet state credential requirements,
standard methods were developed to guarantee equivalency between summer and regular session courses.
Summer sessions in the state teachers colleges were clearly an essential part of California's effort to expand and
upgrade its public school systems.
However, summer session early developed a singular fiscal status as a self-supporting, tuition/fee charging
program. This may have occurred partly because school administrators needed to stretch short
appropriations as far as they could go and partly because in-service teachers were willing to pay for
coursework that would help them to retain their jobs and to advance their prospects. Presumably the
rationale for tuition and fees was that summer school students were either employed adults who were
merely on a self-improvement "vacation" and thus did not have the same claim
on state funds as did other students, or that they were regular students making use of summer sessions for
adding '.'extras" (acceleration, specialization, enrichment) to the basic program and should thus pay more.
This thinking about the role of summer sessions was probably consolidated during the Great Depression
years of the early 1930s. Schoenfeld's history of American summer schools states:
The Great Depression was a time of trial. Initially student registrations slumped. Colleges,
pressed for funds, insisted that summer schools be self-supporting or even turn a profit. Faculty
members had to contribute their services or accept miserable salaries and contingency clauses
by which appointments were cancelled if classes failed to "fill." Then, even as the depression
reached its depth, the student tide turned, largely because unemployed school teachers came
back to the campus to improve their competitive positions by taking graduate work. Some states
even supplied special summer scholarships for the indigent. Enrollments for credit, which had
dropped (nationally) to 303,754 in 1931, rebounded to 370,026 by 1935. (Schoenfeld, pp. 2526)
In 1932 the state teachers colleges budgets were reduced by 10 percent. As a result, student tuition in the
regular program went from $1.50 to $6.50 per semester, and summer session tuition rose from $15 to $20.
The Humboldt, Chico, and Santa Barbara colleges were threatened with closure in a January 1933 report
from the State Director of Finance. A study by the State Department of Education's Division of
Schoolhouse Planning, released the following month, was successful, however, in providing a rationale for
keeping the colleges open, which staved off the threat.
Fiscal conditions improved markedly after 1935 when the teachers colleges were made state colleges by
state policy-makers to whom California's need not only for trained teachers but for other educated
professionals had become clearly evident. They prepared themselves after this date to support the future
development of the state colleges even beyond the previously limited mandate of the teachers colleges.
State budgets, however, were not inexhaustible. Tuition charges for extension education were assessed on
the basis of a logic similar to that governing summer session -that working adults in the community could
afford to pay modest fees for their continuing education and did not have the same claim on the state as did
children in need of basic literacy and youths in preparation for their vocation. One finds in the various
descriptions of extension services on the campuses a considerable amount of confusion between the
philosophy of the "extended day" program which operated in the late afternoon and evening as well as
Saturdays, and extension, which operated according to a similar schedule, but which charged tuition.
Davies, commenting in 1947 on
__Humboldt'sprograms, says:
Townspeople at this time (the 1920s) were encouraged to enroll in classes. Many housewives
enrolled for such courses as wood working, jewelry, or pottery. Extension classes, beginning in
1926, were conducted at the college on Saturday or evenings, whenever a sufficient number of
teachers or members of the general public made requests for courses. Business men became
interested in public speaking classes held in the evening beginning in January 1926. (p. 90)
During this period, the distinction between those courses and programs for which the state should pay and
those for which the students should pay, either fully or in part, did not seem to revolve around any clear
philosophical or educational rationale. Rather, the colleges offered what they could, given their resources.
When there was a need to stretch the budget further, tuition. and fees were imposed where practical. Issues
of geographical location, equivalency with courses in the regular curriculum, or academic credit were not
very clearly linked to the distinction between state fiscal support or self-support (i.e., tuition charging)
educational programs. For example,
16
summer session courses were the same as those of the regular program in terms of credit toward the
degree. They were taught by the same faculty as in the regular program in most cases. And yet, summer
session charged tuition.
Extension was more ambiguous in definition. Itincluded courses equivalent to the regular program, along
with activities that were non-instructional in nature, such as drama productions, concerts, or conferences.
Faculty were sometimes regular instructors on the campus; at other times they were professionals from the
community. As was the case with summer sessions, community demand dictated the location of the
courses.
The rationale for charging tuition for summer or extension classes seems to have grown out of the easy
distinction that could be made in the early days of the normal schools between in-service and pre-service,
"yet-to-be-employed" versus "employed" students. But even this logic was undermined by the presence on
the campus of in-service teachers who attended regular classes scheduled in the late afternoon and
evenings. In the early years at Fresno, because the Normal School was without adequate funds, these
teachers were charged fees not charged to regular students. But by the 1930s this practice seems to have
been discontinued, and teachers who could get to the campus for late afternoon and evening classes were
simply considered "limited" (i.e., part-time) students. They did not pay tuition as was required of their
colleagues in extension classes. As late as 1940, the San Francisco State College Catalogue contained a
little reminder in its descriptions of extension offerings: "Incidentally, teachers in service may take
advantage of late afternoon, evening, and Saturday classes by registering as limited students" (p. 36).
Thus, the distinction between "employed" and "not-yet-employed" students, and between part-time
"limited" students and extension students, became increasingly blurred.
The ambiguities that we see today in California's public policy governing the organization of continuing
education and its fiscal basis are, then, natural outgrowths of the history of the state colleges. However,
these ambiguities did not become seriously problematic until the 1970s when "in-service" students became
a more substantial population. By that time, students with ongoing vocational commitments who sought
further education were hopelessly entangled in a morass of antiquated educational habits and campus
regulations that had their origins in a less complex period of the colleges' history. In these early years of
the 1920s and 30s, the teachers colleges had the relatively uncomplicated mandate to serve the public
school systems of the state in whatever ways seemed practical and feasible. Thus, the working adult
population, made up mostly of women, was the colleges chief source of students up until the years directly
following World War II.
and the diversity of-the students the teachers eolleges-beganto-increase considerably once the campuses became
California State Colleges and were authorized to offer liberal arts undergraduate majors in subjects other than
education. By the academic year 1935-36, the eight state colleges enrolled the equivalent of 7,422 full-time
students. Summer sessions had about 2,900 students and were the major continuing education program of the
campuses. The growth rate of summer session would exceed that of the regular sessions until 1950.
Extension remained a small enterprise, with only about 100 students distributed across the six campuses
which offered extension activities during 1935-36. Extension developed no well-defined educational
philosophy of its own but served primarily as a practical fiscal mechanism for "extending" education to
the community and for raising additional funds to support the colleges' commitments. Extension's growth,
as a unique form of education, would come later in the economic boom times following World War II.
CHAPTER 2
State Colleges: Expansion Beyond Teacher Education (1935·1960)
What is striking about the early days of the normal schools and state teachers colleges is that they
began as enterprises to educate working adults; this was their chief function. Working teachers were
the primary constituency of the early colleges. There were, however, community pressures to broaden
this constituency by having the colleges provide professional training in other fields, such as business
or engineering. There was also an interest in undergraduate preparation for graduate school in fields
such as medicine and law. Beginning in 1935, with the redesignation of the teachers colleges as state
colleges, a broader baccalaureate curriculum began to be developed which increased the diversity and
numbers of students and faculty. By 1940 enrollments in the then nine campuses stood at 11,787.
The years of World War II, however, were a period of major retrenchment. By 1944-45 enrollment
had dropped to 5,034 -little more than half the pre-war level. The faculty were also reduced as many
entered military service or war-related employment along with former students.
But the war years also saw the beginning of an unprecedented economic expansion in California as
the federal government poured money into defense industries. Even though California had less than 7
percent of the nation's population, it received almost 10 percent of the federal appropriations -an
.amount of approximately $35 billion. With war industries carne migration as people followed the
jobs. For example, the city of Vallejo on the northern end of the San Francisco Bay increased its
population from 20,000 in 1941 to 130,000 by 1944 because of the development of its Navy base and
shipyards.
Once World War II ended, the campuses entered into a growth and expansion period that replicated
the early days of the state normal schools. In 1946 the Legislature authorized the campuses to grant
baccalaureate degrees not related to education, and the following year, master's degrees as well. The
expanded functions of the colleges alone would have swelled enrollments, but added to that were the
large number of returning veterans with financial support from the G.1. Bill and a need to find a new
niche in the workforce.
The G.1. Bill was a singular effort by the federal government in the post-war years to provide public
support for the continuing education of adults. Moreover, this was a period during which
-------Commission issued a report in 1948 entitled Higher Education for American Democracy, in which it
took the position that "every American should be enabled and encouraged to carry his education, formal and
informal, as far as his native capacities permit." (quoted in Rockhill, p. 126)
The state's fantastic economic and population growth between 1945 and 1952 resulted in crowded
college classrooms, full day and evening operation, and the utilization of whatever community space
could be committed to the college's purposes. Between 1945 and 1952, total regular enrollment
increased from a little over 7,900 students to more than 31,000. A high percentage of these students
were working adults. Teachers continued to be strongly represented, but a greater diversity of adult
students was supported by the provisions of the G.1. Bill.
Extension and summer session programs became part of the frantic effort on the part of the colleges to
keep up with demands as campus efforts to meet the educational needs of adults merged with
efforts to provide for young recent high school graduates. Both kinds of students could, and did, avail
themselves of classes in late afternoon and evening, summer session, and extension. Students in their late
twenties and thirties, or even older, were a familiar presence on state college campuses following World
War II.
in 19408
Extension education in California grew extraordinarily during the decade of the 1940s. University of
California Extension grew from 60,000 class registrations in 1944-45 to 155,000 in 1946-47. There seemed
to be no end to the possibility and necessity for adult education. However, the state colleges made much
less use of the extension format than did the University of California. In 1947-48 the total number of
students enrolled in extension courses on the five state college campuses which offered extension courses
was 831, as compared to a "regular" enrollment on the nine campuses, which was the equivalent of 20,753
students. (By converting part-time enrollments into the equivalent of full-time enrollments, the colleges
arrived at a figure that was clearer for budgeting purposes than an actual body count of students. However,
the figure masks the number of parttime students who attended state college classes scheduled in the late
afternoon, evening, and on Saturday -an option that did not exist in the University of California except
through its University Extension.)
The largest extension program was at San Francisco, enrolling 400, or about half of the state college total.
The college's self-support programs had grown under the administrative supervision of mathematics
professor Alexander Boulware, and in the late 1940s, an associate, A. William Cowan, was added to serve
as Director of Extension throughout the 195Os. Extension classes were conducted both on and off the
campus, with about 25 students required in order to guarantee a class. Regular students were not admitted to
extension classes except with special permission, and any students who could get to the campus were
encouraged to enroll as "limited" students and to take advantage of the plentiful late afternoon, evening, and
Saturday classes that were routinely offered. It was the general practice in the state colleges for much of inservice teacher education to be conducted as part of the regular campus program, with the classes
scheduled, for the most part, in the late afternoons, evenings and Saturdays when teachers were able to
attend.
For almost a decade, San Francisco's extension courses were presented as part of the late afternoon and
evening program. What would today be called "contract courses" were a predominant feature. For example,
the announcement of the Extension Division in the San Francisco State College Catalogue, 1947-48
states:
of__ study
groups. The Director of Extension will cooperate with school officials in the selection of staff and the
arrangement ofa program. Study groups may be organized for short, intensive periods or for longer
series. Arrangement may be made for off-campus summer sessions. (p. 9)
If single individuals were looking for particular courses, they were encouraged to utilize the late afternoon
and evening offerings of the campus. For example, the San Jose State College Bulletin of 1940-41 states:
Teachers in service and other properly qualified individuals who are unable to take regular
programs may register as "limited" students. Limited students may register for as many as 5 units
at a rate of $1.65 per unit. (p. 38)
The "limited" student fee of $1.65 per unit was considerably cheaper than the extension fee of $6 per unit
which had been set by the Department of Education for state college extension programs.
We can probably assume that extension course fees or tuition were often paid by the school districts or
teachers' organizations which requested a special course rather than by individual teachers themselves.
As a result, extension enrollment was but a tiny percentage of adult enrollment of the colleges; adult
continuing students were encouraged to make use of the regular program. Leo Cain, who succeeded
Alexander Boulware at San Francisco State College, recalled in a recent interview that it was not
uncommon to take regular course offerings off the campus if there was a large enough group of
teachers in a particular locale to make it worthwhile and the appropriate instructor was willing.
But growth for state college extension was in the wind. Fresno's program serves as an example of the
growth spurts that would begin to occur with regularity. Fresno's program was operated under the
direction of a campus Dean of Professional Education, who was responsible for coordinating inservice teacher training. The dean at this time was A. R. Lang. Between 1947 and 1948, extension
revenues increased by 216 percent. In the spring of 1948, the campus offered 16 extension courses
with separate classes -9 in Visalia, 3 in Bakersfield, 2 in Wasco, and 1 each in Arvin, Delano, Fresno,
Madera, McFarland, Merced, Porterville, Ridgecrest, Shafter, and Tulare. All of the courses were
related to teacher education: 16 were in education, 5 in speech, and 1 each in industrial education,
physical education, and psychology. Enrollment numbered 388 for 1947-48.
Before World War II, Chico, Humboldt, and San Diego had small programs with less than 20 students
enrolled in extension at each campus, but after 1945 the number of course offerings and enrollments
began to increase. The San Diego campus Bulletin and Announcement oj Courses, June 1940 contains
the following description of extension:
An extension program covering a wide range of offerings is made available each semester. Members of
the regular college faculty and other experts in special fields instruct extension classes. The extension
program is designed to serve the needs of San Diego and neighboring communities for courses on the
college level that are not available on the campus, or offered at times and places more convenient to
special groups. Extension courses are considered the equivalent of campus courses and the amount of
credit available to anyone student in one semester through extension courses or a combination of campus
and extension courses is subject to the same study load limitations that apply to students regularly
enrolled for campus courses. Fees may somewhat with the place where the instruction is offered, but will
not exceed $6 per unit for the year 1940-41.
(p. 22)
Humboldt and Chico continued to operate their small extension programs much as they had earlier,
with some variations.
Chico remained, into the 1940s, the only campus to record a standing faculty committee on extension.
This committee, established in the 1930s, continued to be composed of faculty members and was
chaired by the director of extension. During the 1940s, it was Guy West who held this post, entitled
Director of the Bureau of Research and Extension, in addition to his post as campus registrar.
Afewyearslater,WestwastobecometheChairmanoftheDivisionofEducation,and since no position for
director of extension is listed in the campus bulletin for that year, it is probable that West took his
extension duties with him to his new post. In 1947 Guy West moved from Chico to the new campus at
Sacramento where he became the first president. West was not the only continuing education
administrator to eventually become a state college president. Leo Cain of San Francisco State later
became the first president of the Dominguez Hills campus.
By 1948 extension had become a program in need of more administrative attention. For example, the
campuses did not have policies which placed an upper limit on class size, or guided the
selection of class locations, or determined the kinds of students who should be enrolled. Since faculty
taught extension as a way to make extra money, the maximum number of classes that a faculty member
could teach needed to be monitored. Salary and travel reimbursement policies needed updating. Salaries
and fees needed to be based on a tally of the actual costs of extension operations. As a result, better
accounting procedures were needed for producing reliable data.
A troublesome issue, which illustrates the ad hoc quality of extension operations in this period, was the
conflict of interest situation created when school district personnel were hired as extension instructors and
then found that the teachers whom they supervised on the job were also their students in classes. This was
apparently a common occurrence, particularly in the small communities where there were few qualified
instructors in the field.
Policies also varied among the campuses. Some campuses permitted both regular and nonmatriculated
students to enroll in extension courses (San Francisco, Humboldt, and San Diego), while one campus
restricted extension to non-matriculated students (Chico). Two campuses offered extension classes only on
the campus (Fresno, Humboldt) at least up until the early 1940s, while other campuses offered extension
both on and off campus (Chico, San Francisco). Two of the seven campuses offered no extension at all
during this period, although they had done so earlier in their histories (San Jose and California Polytechnic
at San Luis Obispo). There was also considerable variety in who was administratively responsible for
extension. At Fresno, a Dean of Professional Education administered the program; however, an identical
position at San Diego had no responsibility for extension. Instead, extension was the responsibility of San
Diego's Dean of General Education, Donald R. Watson. At Chico, in the early 1940s, extension was
handled by the registrar, Guy West, but later disappeared as a formal administrative assignment. Extension
administration sometimes was handled by a faculty member, as was the case at San Francisco and Chico in
the 1930s, and later in the 1940s at San Diego and Humboldt. It is likely that the post of administering
extension went to whoever was willing to do it and had the time in addition to whatever other roles he or
she performed within the campus administration. This flexibility may have added to the development of
extension by ensuring that the person who took on the responsibility was committed to it, but it also
suggests that little systematic thought had been devoted to how best to incorporate extension into the
structure of the fast-growing campuses.
Harold Seyfurth, an early coordinator of extension at San Jose State College, recalls that his salary was
funded as though he were an associate professor on a 12-month rather than a 9-month contract. He says of
his job:
I contacted All the superintendents of schools in the nine counties of the area, and began developing
We contacted the military, cities and other public agencies. We also contacted the major businesses
and industries in the area.
We obtained permission from the State to establish a branch campus year around at Parks Air Force
Base in Pleasanton and for summer session at Hartnell aunior) College in Salinas. To the best of my
knowledge these were the first of this kind in the State College System.
We tried to give every course in the catalog, except laboratory courses, when and where we could
obtain a qualified instructor approved by the appropriate college department head.
When there was sufficient demand we enjoyed a good relationship with the faculty, since the
minimum pay for a class was $150 and in those days, and at the then pay level, that was a lot of
money. Some very popular instructors who were willing to work and travel did quite well indeed.
(personal communication to the author)
In view of the fact that there were incentives for the growth of extension, the Council of Presidents
recommended in 1949 to the State Superintendent that a committee to study issues related to extension be
convened. "It was unanimously agreed that extension courses serve useful purposes, particularly to public
school teachers, and should be continued and strengthened" (Minutes of the Council of College Presidents,
September 15, 1948).
Meanwhile, the Council of Presidents made a number of decisions affecting extension policy in the state
colleges. In March of 1950, the Council agreed that up to 12 units of extension course credit could be
applied to the bachelor's degree. More far-reaching in its implications was their November 1950 decision
that
as a contribution to the present military effort, credit earned in regularly organized and
established centers operated on the extension course basis be accepted as residence credit for of
meeting graduation requirements. (Minutes, Nov. 28, 1950, p. 77)
This opened the way for the campuses to extend their regular degree programs off campus while utilizing
extension as the administrative vehicle. San Francisco would lead the way in "military education," as these
off-campus degree programs came to be called. A similar arrangement linking residence credit and
extension would be reconstituted twenty years later when the CSU designed its first external degree
programs in the 1970s.
For state college extension, however, the major issue to emerge during the 1940s was the disentangling of
self-support continuing education for adults hom regular credit late afternoon and evening classes. Given
the small number of students enrolled in state college extension during this period (as compared, for
example, with University of California Extension), one might conclude that continuing education was not
an important function of the colleges. However, the ease with which adults could register as limited
students in the regular programs of the college, and the very large variety of courses offered in the late
afternoon and evening, point to accessibility for working adults, particularly in the urban areas. Through
the limited student option, continuing education courses for adults were funded by the state.
19408
In contrast to the small enrollment and ad hoc quality of extension in the state colleges during the 1940s,
summer sessions were a major educational program in terms of both size and stability of operations. By
1945 summer sessions had become part of the regular operations of the campuses, unlike the 1930s when
summer sessions had been administered as a separate state-wide program
by--the-state superintendent_arulhis. staff in the Department of Education with erratic state fiscal support. After 1945
indirect costs of the summer sessions of the budget allocation to each campus, although tuition fees continued to be
charged to students. In addition, salary ranges for employees of summer sessions were subject to approval by the State
Director of Finance in the same manner as salaries for other positions on the campuses.
There are five categories provided for on the schedule, which was approved by the state college
presidents in December of 1945: teachers, director of six-weeks summer session, director of
workshop or demonstration school, teacher of demonstration class, and summer session special
lecturer. The schedule is based on a full time, six units or equivalent for six weeks session. The
salaries of teachers range from $360 to depending upon their status; the salary of the director
ranges from $780 to $900 ... , a summer session special lecturer's salary is determined by the
president. This is a far cry from the first session of the Sierra Summer School (of the Fresno
State Teachers College) in 1914 when the salary of faculty members was $50, or the second year
when it was raised to $75 with $25 being charged each faculty member for living In the cabins
he had helped to build the previous session. (Rowland, pp. 263-64)
In 1946 summer session salaries became tied to faculty rank. From this point on, faculty salaries in summer
session rose steadily, in general paralleling regular session salaries. Regular salaries in these years were
rising with the growth of the economy. As the campuses grew, the faculties became more professionalized.
As a result, tuition charges to students for summer session were driven steadily upward as well. Throughout
the minutes of the Council of Presidents during this period, the annual review and incremental raising of
salaries and fees appears as the major issue discussed by the Council regarding summer sessions.
In spite of the continuous fee increases for students, summer sessions grew rapidly. In 1940 total enrollment
in state college summer sessions was 3,365. By 1948 it had grown to 13,735 with 693 instructors. The San
Francisco and San Jose campuses had well established and relatively large programs. More modest
programs (under 500 enrollees) were offered by the Chico, Fresno, Humboldt, and San Diego campuses. In
1948 the campuses at Sacramento and Los Angeles, along with California Polytechnic at San Luis Obispo,
added summer sessions, so that by the end of the decade all nine state colleges offered summer sessions.· .-
The percentage of summer session students who were also enrolled during the regular school year increased
during the 1940s (from 34 percent in 1944 to 47 percent in 1948), suggesting that summer session was
increasingly viewed by students as an opportunity for accelerating progress toward a degree or credential. In
1948 58 percent of the summer students were candidates for the AB degree, and about 43 percent were
candidates for a teaching credential. On the other hand, a large percentage of summer enrollees were
continuing education students, with 28 percent already holding a bachelor's degree and 38 percent already
holding a teaching credential. Forty-two percent were employed. Overall, women summer students
outnumbered the men (52 percent as compared to 48 percent), but of the employed students, the vast
majority were women, due to the emphasis in summer sessions on courses for public school teachers.
Fresno offered several summer sessions at different locations under the direction of Mitchell Briggs, who
was also the campus dean of men. Locations included the Fresno campus as well as Huntington in the
Sierras, and later Visalia and Bakersfield. Scheduling was arranged so that students could attend more than
one session. For example, students could attend a four-week session on the campus and then attend the sixweek session at the Sierras mountain location. Enrollments zoomed upwards from fewer than 500 in 1945
to over 2,000, with 107 instructors in 1948.
Other campuses also held summer sessions in a variety of off-campus locations: Chico, for instance, with
faculty member Marsden Sherman as Director ofSummer Sessions, offered a summer workshop
1946 a
field school was set up at Eagle Lake, 18 miles north of Susanville, for the study of biology and other natural
sciences. Students camped out in cabins for which they paid rent of $20 for the session. Chico also offered
summer courses in a rotating succession of communities, including Susanville, Westwood, Weed, Alturas,
Redding, Mount Shasta, Yreka, Tule Lake, and Granada. In 1948 553 students were enrolled in Chico's summer
session.
Humboldt described "ten special features of summer session" in the campus's summer catalogue: 1)
kindergarten training; 2) teaching speech correction; 3) workshops in elementary education; 4) bachelor's
degree courses for teachers on emergency credentials; 5) courses for the general secondary credential; 6)
administrative and supervisory credential courses; 7) a conservation workshop; 8) arts, crafts, and industrial
education; 9) freshman courses for students entering the college the following fall; and 10) regular college
courses. Three sessions were offered (a six-week session, a four-week session, and a four-week post
session) which ran from June 21 through August 27, 1948, enrolling 420 students.
San Francisco State was the largest of the summer sessions, with 3,372 students in 1948. Glenn
Kendall was the director, in addition to his position as Chair of the Division of Education. Courses
were held in the cities of Santa Rosa, Modesto, Vallejo, and various places in Contra Costa County. In
addition to a large list of regularly taught during the fall and spring terms, special summer features
included courses for teachers in the education of exceptional children, music workshops for
elementary and secondary school children; the Schmitz Summer Master Session for Pianists (in
conjunction with summer session music courses); and a summer recreation camp for two weeks in
Mendocino County. This camp was sponsored by the Physical Education and Recreation Department
of the campus, using some outside grant money. State college students paid tuition, and regular
faculty were available for consultation and supervision of some of the camp activities. A small fee
was charged to the families of the children who attended. It is clear that San Francisco State's summer
clientele included members of the general community, young and old, as some of the summer session
programs functioned both as community services and as an educational opportunity for pre-service
teachers to get some experience working with children.
By the 1940s San Diego had abandoned a year-round calendar of operations and returned to a selfsupporting summer session which enrolled 2,520 in 1948. The director was Ivan McCollum, an
associate professor of psychology. Special features included a three-week long Conference on
Counseling and Guidance, and the Sixth Annual Institute of World Affairs, which was held on the
campus for four days during the month of August.
'.
San Jose featured a demonstration school where summer session students could enroll their children.
This was undoubtedly a boon to women public school teachers with children who needed childcare or
who came from out of town and did not want to be away from their children for the duration of a
session. San Jose also featured driver education and intercultural education. A Summer Theater
School, directed by Hugh Gillis, put on a new play for the community each week for the six weeks of
the summer session. Enrollment in the entire San Jose Summer Sessions was 2,502 in 1948.
By 1948 the position of Director of Summer Session on the campus became recognized as a yearround job. Formerly, the director had only been paid during the time the actual session was running.
However, most of the work of summer session was in the preparation for it, for example, planning the
program of classes, hiring instructors, scheduling, and liaison with the communities in which the
classes would be located. In recognition of the growth of summer session enrollment, the director was
allowed release time from regular session duties, with time to be charged to the summer session
budget. Other employees of summer session were to have the same arrangements.
Between 1940 and 1950, the total number of students enrolled in the regular programs of the publicly
supported institutions of higher education in California increased by 61 percent from 90,304 to
145,710. Public expenditures for these students increased from just over $19 million in 1940 to $92.5
million in 1952 -an increase of 386 percent. Such rapid growth resulted in legislative authorization for
three new state college campuses. Los Angeles State College was founded in 1947 on the campus of
Los Angeles City College, a two-year junior college. Sacramento State College was founded in 1947,
and Long Beach State in 1949.
With the wave of postwar veterans entering California colleges and universities came major logistical
problems and challenges. There was an obvious need for better long-range planning for higher
education. In addition, competition was increasing as the various educational systems in the state became
larger and more complex. Rockhill comments:
Efforts at coordination of adult education were a part of larger attempts to stay the competition
among public institutions of higher education throughout the State, and should be viewed in that
context. Intense rivalry among different sectors of the State for their local junior or state college was
augmented by the drive of established colleges to expand their educational purview. Thus, two-year
colleges sought the right to offer four-year programs and four-year teachers colleges strove first to
become general four-year degree granting institutions, and then to offer graduate instruction, initially
at the master's, then at the doctoral level. (p. 136)
In 1947 the Legislature authorized a study of the state's higher education needs, and the Strayer Report,
named for its chairman, George D. Strayer, was issued the following year.
Analyses and reports on California higher education were nothing new, but the Strayer Report was
particularly influential. It was the first study to attempt a delineation of functions among 1) the University
of California, with its very large, very diverse, and very independent University Extension, 2) the
California State Colleges, still associated primarily with teacher education, but putting more pressure on the
Legislature for a more extensive role, and 3) the junior colleges, which were also increasing rapidly in
number during the postwar period. Eventually, all but one of the Strayer Report's fifty recommendations
were actually adopted.
The Strayer Report urged greater independence for the state colleges and recommended the creation of a
central office beyond the person of the state superintendent and his staff in the Department of Education. In
1948 a Division of State Colleges and Teacher Education was set up within the State Department of
Education to carry out coordination and planning for the state colleges.
The Strayer Report reinforced the historical association of the state colleges with teacher preparation and
continuing teacher education. Extension programs at this level were to emphasize teacher education,
whereas University Extension was far more broadly conceptualized as far as programs and actual
coursework were concerned. On the other hand, University Extension was to restrict itseH to upper division
and graduate level coursework -a more financially risky assignment because this level required higher
instructor qualifications and the classes appealed to a smaller, more specialized audience. The concept of
service areas for each campus was initiated as a means for creating some geographical delineation;
however, the service areas were primarily used for making enrollment projections. Extension and summer
session programs were largely unregulated in any
sense:· ------.--_._------------.--.-------.
Competing with the state colleges and universities for continuing education students was adult education in
the local elementary and secondary school districts.
During the 1920s and 30s, adult education had expanded beyond its original role in fostering the
Americanization of immigrants and was becoming increasingly involved in the delivery of basic education
and community services. As the birth of community college districts continued, sometimes with boundaries
co-terminous with elementary and secondary school districts already offering adult education classes, the
scene began to take shape that would later, in the 1970s, blossom into a serious crisis of competition
between these two segments for adult students and state funds. Already by 1953, the junior colleges had 58
percent of their total enrollment in classes for adults. Local adult courses of all kinds had only 9 percent
fewer units of Average Daily Attendance (ADA) than did junior college programs for regular students in
grades 13 and 14 (freshman and sophomore years).
During the postwar period of rapid growth in every segment of education in California, the general
philosophy was that education was a shared state and local responsibility and that every resident of the
state who desired to learn should have the opportunity. There was, in general, a tremendous attitude of
optimism about the possibilities of education to produce economic gain, personal satisfaction, and the good
life for all the citizens of California.
But there were also not entirely successful attempts to impose limits. The 1948 Strayer Report
recommended a ceiling of 6,000 students at each state college which the campuses were exceeding by the
mid-fifties. These limits were undermined by a 1953 ruling by the California State Attorney General,
Edmund G. Brown, which made it legally binding on the state colleges to accept all qualified students. As
a result, the campuses were over-enrolled and often chaotic.
There was no alternative but to raise entrance requirements, which the Council of State College Presidents
did in November of 1953. Even this move, however, did not reduce the pressure very much, and large
classes, tight space, and overloaded faculty continued to be a part of the college experience. Extended day
and evening classes increased and with the increase, Coordinators or Directors of Evening Divisions
appeared as positions in the administrative rosters of the campuses. At San Jose, President John T.
Wahlquist launched a full scale program of regular courses to be offered between 4:30 and 10:00 p.m. in
which both regular and limited students enrolled. Arthur Price became the coordinator, and the result was
the first "after-hours" degree program in the state.
Gilbert and Burdick, writing about the San Jose campus during the fifties, say:
By 1958 the enrollment was double that of 1950 and, in fact, equaled the total number of
students attending all of the state colleges in 1940. The masses created unprecedented
congestion as huge registration lines wound endlessly around the campus. In the registration
process itself there was cause for impatience as well as genuine danger to life and limb. the
teeming crowds surged back and forth through the men's gymnasium, they drove the
registration tables back to the walls, physically threatening the administrative personnel behind
them. Likewise the population explosion exhausted available parking places, crowded rooms
beyond the limits of fire safety, and created ugly crowd scenes in the halls. Classes met in the
most incredible places -old houses, rented churches, temporary military Quonset huts,
conference rooms. Teachers were often jammed six to an office and never suffered a lack of
student visitors. Required lecture courses filled the vast Morris Dailey Auditorium to capacity.
The tenor of the campus was exciting, active, and expansive. (p. 158)
During this decade the campus resounded to the thunder of pounding drills, banging cranes, and
gigantic earth-moving lIlachines. The noise level in some classrooms was almost unbearable.
Everyone learned to negotiate innumerable detours day's path would tomorrow. Building
openings became major non-events in the college community. (p. 164)
This scene was typical of other state colleges as well. Predictably, such hectic growth was poorly
coordinated across the state and the policy provisions put in place by the Strayer Committee's work in 1948
were quickly antiquated.
In 1953 a restudy of California's higher education needs was initiated by the Legislature. The report was
issued in 1955 and is itself a physical representation of the kind of concern and fiscal support that the state
was willing to provide to higher education at this time. A bound and professionally printed book, published
by the State Department of Education, the runs to 473 densely written pages with dozens of supporting
tables of quantitative data. The Restudy Committee was composed of members of the Regents of the
University of California and the State
Board of Education. They employed 19 researchers, amplified by a professional advisory committee,
plus nine more advisory committees. The office staff alone included 26 people.
Throughout the Restudy report, which was issued in 1955, the state colleges are viewed primarily
through the lens of their role in teacher preparation, although their expanded functions are noted. In
addition, the colleges are seen as adjuncts to the University of California -a perception that rankled
state college faculty and administrators who objected to the implied elitism. The Restudy report states:
Unlike universities in many states, the University of California has been highly selective in its entrance
requirements, thus giving greater purpose to the existence of state colleges in a commonwealth with a
tradition of tuition-free education extending as far as a youth can succeed. The state colleges have kept
open to youth in the State opportunities for four years of college work, leaving the University free to
concentrate on undergraduate, graduate, and professional education with high academic standards, and on
research in academic and professional fields. (pp. 64-65)
The report briefly notes that the role of state college extension was to provide upgrading of
professional skills for rural teachers.
In addition, the colleges offer many courses, whether in occupations or in the liberal arts, at times
convenient for employed persons. These late-afternoon and evening programs have allowed some adult
students to acquire degrees or credentials and have afforded all of them opportunities for additional
education. The adult programs are often developed in close cooperation with county superintendents, local
school districts, various industries, and government agencies and employee associations in the college
service areas. (p. 70)
A recent study at Los Angeles State College showed that 80 per cent of the "limited" students
those taking six units of work or less -were or more years old, and that 58 per cent of the
"regular" students -those carrying seven or more units of work -were also 25 years of age
or older. Eighty-five percent of the limited students said they planned to continue their studies
in the late afternoon extended-day programs, during evenings, or on Saturday mornings. (p. 65)
These statements suggest that continuing education for adults was so much a part of the regular
ongoing operations of the state colleges that it scarcely needed special remarks by the Restudy
Committee, except for praise of the colleges for their accessibility and of the state for including
continuing adults in regular budget appropriations for the colleges. In actual fact, considerable conflict
around continuing adult education was brewing behind the scenes. In a letter dated
August 16, 1954, T. C. Holy, to the RestUdy to Dr. --Nisanger of Ohio State University, "It has been my
observation that there has been more friction about the adult education program than any other segment of
education here in the state. Consequently, we are now considering whether we should include a section in the
report on that area." Rather than reflecting the absence of problems, the limited treatment of adult continuing
education issues in the report actually reflected a profound lack of consensus.
Continuing education was still not conceptually distinguished from adult education at this time.
The Restudy staff attempted to arrive at a policy statement that would delineate the roles of the
various providers of adult education, which included all four segments of education in the state
local school districts, junior colleges, state colleges, and the University. The Council of State College
Presidentsraised anofficialobjectiontotheconceptualizationofstatecollegeextension as..adult
education" because much of extension was offered for degree credit. However, the Council's
objection was not incorporated into the Restudy report.
The Restudy Committee was unable to arrive at any suitable delineation policy and simply
recommended that ,responsibility for control of competition between the segments should be
decentralized to the local school district level. To aid delineation and control of competition, the
Restudy Committee supported an expanded membership and a larger role for the State Advisory
Committee on Adult Education. This committee originally created in 1944 for the purpose of
"coordinating" adult education between the local school districts and University Extension, was
hampered, however, by its lack of authority and by the autonomy of the various segments offering
adult education. The University was governed by the Regents, and the state college campuses were
quite independent in actual practice, even though they were nominally coordinated by the State
Department of Education. The junior colleges had their own local governing boards, as did the public
school districts. Competition rather than cooperation between segments was a reality.
However, the State Advisory Committee perservered through a welter of correspondence and
prolonged debate and discussion to arrive at a set of statewide guidelines which, by 1958, were agreed
to by representatives of all the public segments. The "Guiding Principles for Adult Education in
California Publicly Supported Institutions" delineated junior college and adult schools from
University Extension and State College Extension by distinguishing between lower division and upper
division courses, The four-year colleges and universities were not to offer courses appropriate to the
first two years of instruction when a junior college could effectively meet the need; if there was no
junior college nearby, or in areas of urban lower division courses could be offered. There were some
problems as the policy evolved. In a handwritten note from Manfred Schrupp at San Diego State
College to his Dean of Educational Services, Ernest O'Byrne, dated May 16, 1958, he says:
It appears the original statement meant we could not offer lower division courses if either the junior
colleges or University Extension offered them. The new statement removes the University
Extension item and gives us additional latitude even if the junior colleges offered a course.
Therefore, it may be an improvement. I find myself relatively calm in face of it all.
The guidelines, unfortunately, did not really differentiate the extension programs of the University and the
state colleges. While both were authorized to offer courses in any subject areas for which they also had a
regular on-campus program, the University was virtually unrestricted in the kinds of postgraduate and noncredit offerings that it could deliver. In addition, teacher educa. tion ceased to be the exclusive function of
the state colleges, for it was included as one of the responsibilities of University Extension as well.
Furthermore, there was no real delineation of programs between the adult schools and the junior colleges
except to distinguish between high
-----schooHevel and gI in the
~no delineation at all.
The stage had been set for louder and louder complaints from public officials about uncoordinated and
fiscally wasteful programs; the complaints would swell to a chorus later in the 1970s as the number of
adult students began to grow substantially in relation to the post-adolescent college population.
the 19508
The 1950s saw considerable development of the rather loose extension policy in the state colleges. The
colleges were concerned about the relationship of extension to the extended day program and to the
category of limited (under 6 units) student -a concern shared by the State Department of Finance,
legislative committees, and campus administrators. Periodically, it was suggested that limited students in
late afternoon and evening classes should be charged extension fees, harkening
back to precedents set at the Fresno Normal School. However, no action along this line was taken, and
toward the end of 1952, the Council of College Presidents went on record to affirm the policy that extended
day classes were part of the regular program, not extension.
A study committee (chaired by Glenn Kendall, chairman of the Division of Education and Director of
Summer Session at San Francisco State College) recommended that extension become an exclusively
off-campus program in order to distinguish it from the extended day program which was primarily on
campus. This model was already well established by University (of California) Extension and thus gave
the policy additional credibility with state college faculty, administrators, and state policy-makers.
Much later, state college extension students would come back onto the campuses under the category of
"concurrent enrollment." However, in the 1970s, they pay tuition fees for the regular state-supported
courses -a policy opposed by the college presidents in 1952.
The largest state college extension programs at this time were at San Francisco and San Jose. Fresno
and Sacramento had average sized programs, with those of San Diego, Humboldt, and Los Angeles
somewhat smaller. Chico had a relatively small program.
Service area boundaries were not firmly observed at any of the colleges; classes were delivered
wherever it was feasible for a campus to get a faculty member to the location. For example, San
Francisco State had extension courses in 10 counties and 58 cities during the 1950s and into the 1960s
before the Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Hayward campuses were fully developed. In fact, it was San
Francisco State's sprawling extension operation that originally drew legislative attention to the need for
some service area delineation in statewide guidelines for adult and continuing education.
San Francisco State College Extension was more or less the model for the state colleges since it was
the largest and the most diversified. Its prominence was largely a result of President J. Paul Leonard
extending the expertise of San Francisco's very highly regarded School of Education to outlying areas
of the state. San Francisco State College Extension differed substantially from the model of University
Extension, in that it was made up primarily of undergraduate upper division courses identical to those
taught in the regular degree programs on campus. Extension courses were announced as part of the
catalogue entitled San Francisco State College Late Afternoon and Evening Classes, thereby
suggesting that despite efforts by the college presidents to differentiate extension and extended day
programs, the habitual ways that the campus communicated with its students remained the same. San
Francisco State Extension did not have a separate brochure ,when a made on request from the office of
the Dean for Educational Services and Summer This list indicates that most of the courses were
"contract" courses with school districts and were offered in public school locations in ten different
counties. San Francisco State even had an extension course in Ukiah, which was presumably within the
service area of Humboldt State College.
As the decade wore on, the need to delineate extension operations geographically became more
marked, but in the early fifties, San Francisco State operated virtually all over northern California. Leo
Cain remembers his days as an extension instructor, driving all the way from San Francisco to Ukiah,
teaching from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., sleeping in a motel, and then driving on the next day to teach in Fort
Bragg"":"" a round trip by car of about 280 miles.
Few general education courses were offered by San Francisco State Extension in local communities.
The few exceptions to teaching methods courses recorded in the 1954 schedule were "Folk and Square
Dancing" offered at the high school in the town of Pittsburg, "Political Geography" in
Oakland, and "Special Problems in Psychology" in Burlingame. Most of the general education courses
were given at the two military bases where San Francisco State offered residence degree credit
courses through extension. These "military education" courses included "Human Biology and Health,"
"The Western Scene" -about social and economic development in the American Far West, "Public
Opinion and Propaganda," "The American Novel," and "Geography of the United States and Canada."
This last course was also offered in the city of Richmond. Courses for teachers focused primarily on
their immediate needs for information. "Elementary School Arithmetic," "Principles and Practices of
Guidance and Counseling," "Remedial Reading," "Behavior Problems of Children," and "Eye Health
and Vision Screening" are a few examples of the kinds of extension courses that San Francisco State
was offering at this time.
Regular campus faculty rather than a separate group of extension instructors provided most of the
teaching. A special Field Services division handled continuing education for teachers by working
closely with local education agencies throughout the state. This service was pretty much a fulltime job
and was performed at San Francisco by A. William Cowan.
Leo Cain, who became the state college's first Dean of Educational Services and Summer Session
when this new position was initiated on the San Francisco campus in 1951, recalls that his position
included administrative responsibility for Summer Sessions, late afternoon and evening classes,
Extension, the campus library, and the campus audiovisual center. Funding for the position came from
a combination of state support for administering the late afternoon and evening classes (l/4),
Extension revenues (1/4), and Summer Session revenues (l/2). The dean's job was a potpourri of
duties, but a role tied together nonetheless by the fact that each of its functions played a part in
"extending" learning and teaching beyond some kind of geographical or scheduling boundaries.
Precedent for the later development in the 1980s of the role of Dean of Extended Education might be
seen here in the way that both state and self-supported programs were integrated under one person
who had responsibility for campus outreach.
In 1952 another new administrative position -Coordinator (or Director) of Extension -was created by the
Department of Education in recognition of the growing workload being generated by extension in the state
colleges. At San Francisco, A. William Cowan, who had been performing this function since about 1945,
became the formal director, responsible for setting up centers for teacher in-service education. Major
centers were in Stanislaus and Sonoma counties, but there were smaller operations in rural areas all over
northern California. The campus simply responded to whatever interests for courses were expressed by the
numerous educators throughout California with whom Cain and Cowan were in contact on a regular basis.
The centers, set up originally
extensio
n and summer session C()urses to other clientele, such as
business executives, as well. ------An interesting aspect of San Francisco State's Extension during the 1950s was that it offered offcampus degree programs at Hamilton Air Force Base and the San Francisco Presidio under policy
approved by the college presidents in 1950. William Golden, who succeeded William Cowan as
Director of Extension, served as coordinator of these off-campus degree programs, which were
exclusively for people in the armed services and were supported logistically and financially by the Air
Force and the Army. "Operation Bootstrap" provided that any student in the service on either of these
two bases who came within one semester of graduating would be granted time off with salary by the
military to attend the final semester toward the degree in residence on the campus.
Ray Doyle, who succeeded Leo Cain as San Francisco's Dean of Educational Services and Summer
Sessions in 1957, recalled in a personal interview that the task of serving these military students
involved trying to help them put together a motley collection of educational experiences into a
degree program. Because military students moved regularly allover the country and the world, they had
accumulated transcripts from several colleges here and there, correspondence courses, and extension
Without some active involvement and assistance from campus administrators and faculty, it would
have been impossible for them to ever achieve a degree objective because of problems transferring
courses from one college to the next. The purpose of San Francisco State's ""military education"
programs, as they were called, was to provide just this degree opportunity in General Social Science.
The programs at Hamilton Air Force Base and the Presidio were administered through extension and
continued through the 1950s and into the 1960s. Doyle recalls that men in military uniform were a
regular feature of June commencement exercises.
Off-campus Centers
In 1955 J. Paul Leonard, President of San Francisco State, requested permission at a meeting of the
Council of College Presidents to include a new budget item in the campus's request for state funds:
support for the off-campus center operated by San Francisco State extension and summer session in the
city of Santa Rosa. Discussion by the college presidents included questions about the implications for
teacher education policy and, more controversially, for policy regarding the establishment of new
campuses. Leonard's proposal was referred by the presidents, without a recommendation, to both the
state superintendent and the State Board of Education for consideration, since it was not clear who was
actually responsible for such a decision. The Santa Rosa proposal would have, in effect, established a
mini-campus, something never before attempted by a state college in California. Despite reservations,
San Francisco State College was granted the necessary funds to support degree and residence credit
courses at a site in Santa Rosa, establishing the state colleges' first fully functioning year-round offcampus center.
George McCabe became the first director in 1956. The center was part of the administrative structure
of San Francisco State College Extension, and McCabe reported to Leo Cain, Dean of Educational
Services and Summer Sessions. All courses offered in Santa Rosa carried residence degree credit.
More off-campus centers followed the San Francisco model: Fresno established a center in Bakersfield
in 1957, and San Diego developed the Calexico Center in the Imperial Valley around the same time.
Other centers were to follow. Some would later become the state colleges of Bakersfield, Stanislaus,
Fullerton, Hayward, Sonoma, and Northridge.
In general, courses at the centers replicated courses that were offered on the campus, primarily those
that were part of teaching degree and credential programs. Extension and summer sessions classes were
not part of Santa Rosa Center's actual offerings since these programs had been operating Santa_Rosa
area many years already. However, an occasional course that did not have enough enrollment to be
offered was changed to an course since often willing to pay tuition rather than lose the class. Summer
sessions were offered at the center site, and fees/tuition were charged for these courses.
There was always a chronic shortage of funds for the Santa Rosa Center because budget appropriations
could not keep up with enrollment demands. Courses were delivered to the surrounding geographic
area via any fiscal or administrative mechanisms that seemed feasible, including extension, summer
session, or late afternoon and evening classes. McCabe remembers that it was necessary to use
whatever policy loopholes one could find to get the job done and deliver the classes that students
required. State-supported courses were offered side-by-side with extension courses and every
conceivable geographic site was considered.
""Going to college" had become part and parcel of the American dream in the 1950s. Leo Cain recalls
that it was catch as catch can to find enough places in the community to offer classes. A
library was set up for students of the Santa Rosa Center by raiding the San Francisco campus library and
locating books in the Santa Rosa Elks Club. Churches were willing to provide space for classes but there
were complaints about the students smoking on the premises. An administrator's life was one of endless
public relations, entrepreneurship, and tactful persuasion as community resources were assessed and
mobilized to deliver classes as needed.
During the spring 1954 semester, extension courses via television were initiated from San Francisco State.
One such course was English e61: "Basic Communication." The cost to the student for the course (if credit
was desired) was $17. An auditor was charged $2.50 for the cost of the written materials that accompanied
the course.
In 1958 a Downtown Center was acquired by San Francisco State College in a trade of building locations
negotiated with the University of California by campus president Glenn Dumke. The building housed
administrative offices and student advising facilities as well as 30 classrooms. The Downtown Center was
set up along lines similar to the Sarita Rosa Center. State-supported classes in both the day and evening
operated side-by-side with extension courses. Summer session courses were held there as well.
As a result of the decision by the state college presidents in 1950, there were no longer extension courses
given on campus, so the Downtown Center became San Francisco State College Extension's home,
particularly after it was made clear that the Santa Rosa Center was on its way to becoming a campus in its
own right. The Downtown Center was also home to two special off-campus degree programs, one in
business and other in world business. The downtown location was particularly useful in providing access
to older adults already in the business community who wanted to pursue either of these two undergraduate
degrees.
Ray Doyle recalls the anomaly of being confronted by adult students at San Francisco who often asked
embarrassing questions about some of the irrationalities that had found their way into continuing education
policy in the state colleges. For example, if adult students were able to get to the campus in the late
afternoon or evening, or to one of the off-campus centers where residence courses were funded by the
state, they did not have to pay tuition. They could register as limited students (provided that they were able
to meet the requirements for admission) and a small fee allowed them to register for up to five units of
coursework. If they had to wait for the same course to be offered in the summer, they had to pay tuition. If
the very same course was offered by extension, usually by the same instructor who taught it in the regular
program and possibly also
_____in the sUIIllller, again student had to pay tuition, although it was not the same tuition as for the course in the sin
than took several of them. If the student intended to take only one course, it was cheaper to take it through extension.
Naturally, this fiscal policy was not easy to defend since, by this time, the mixture of mature and young
students, continuing and first-time, working and not employed, part-time and full-time, tuition-paying and
"regular:' within the various educational programs of the campus was so complete that it was no longer
possible to say that extension served in-service students and the regular campus programs served preservice students.
As applications for enrollment in the state colleges increased, extension seemed to be filling in as a vehicle
to carry some of the spill-over. While teacher education remained a strong, historically rooted function of
extension, the capacity of extension and summer sessions directors was being tested by other clientele who
were gradually broadening the scope of extension's purview.
By 1959-60 most of the campuses were getting more adventurous in their extension course programming, with San Francisco State leading the way with its range of programs at the Downtown
Center. There, non-credit courses began to appear more regularly and courses designed especially for
the continuing education audience became more common. For example, the Music Deparnnent offered
"Survey of Jazz," the Philosophy Department offered "Far Eastern Philosophies," and the Physical
Science Department offered "Atomic Energy and Man." The other campuses were a lot more staid and
stuck closer to the tried and true teacher education fare, but there were signs that state college
extension programming was becoming more independent of the regular campus program and more
attuned to the demands of the adult market for interesting and relevant education.
Television courses began to appear with more frequency. For example, Los Angeles State College
Extension, administered by John Morton, offered two courses, one on the history of ideas and
American civilization, the other on the twentieth century American novel. Morton wrote to Ernest
Q'Byrne (who, as a member of the State Advisory Committee, was collecting information from the
campuses for a statewide report on extension) that Los Angeles State was becoming more aggressive
in its extension programming. Rather than waiting around for requests for courses, extension
administrators were stimulated to action by UCLA's University Extension setting up a center five
miles from the state college campus at Rosemead High School. This gesture made it clear to the Los
Angeles campus that the need for extension courses was greater than they had thought. The spectre of
competition galvanized the state colleges into taking more initiative.
Travel study also began to grow. At Sacramento, under Hubert ("Mac") McCormick, extension
courses included a fall 1959 Hawaiian Industry Tour and trips to San Francisco to study the films of
the annual film festival as well as theater productions. In spring of 1960 there were study trips to
Northern Arizona Indian Monuments, Europe, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Grand Canyon, the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and New York City theaters.
Somecampusesweredeveloping blocksofcoursesfor aparticularprofessionalclientele. Forexample, San
Diego State College Extension, administered by Manfred Schrupp, began a program of public health
courses for nurses. San Jose State Extension, with Frank Willey as director, offered engineering
courses in response to the expanding technology-oriented organizations proliferating in what would
become known as the Silicon Valley.
Extension courses were even offered in the summer at some campuses (Chico, San Jose). In spite of
the policy of offering extension only off the campus, Chico State's Coordinator of Extended Services,
Victor Houston, reported a small number of extension courses on the campus. This was
----not unique resources were declmngfactors and how a course was offered, and the campuses held out for as much
flexibility in policy as they could.
Salaries for faculty were increased, effective September 1, 1960. A memo from the personnel officer in
the State Department of Education to the state college presidents announced that for a lecture class of
twenty students or less, the instructor would receive per student, and for each additional student over
the number of 20. For activity courses, the fee was to be $10.40 per student, with $3.90 for each
additional over the number of 20. For laboratory courses, faculty would receive $16 per student, with
for each additional student up to a maximum salary of $470. Apparently there was little effective
administrative coordination of policies governing salary, tuition fees, and operational costs because it
took a letter from Vic Houston at Chico State to the accounting officer in the Division of State
Colleges and Teacher Education at the State Department of Education to point out that student tuition
of $10 per unit was not going to be sufficient to provide for these salaries at the highest levels. The
wage-price spiral in self-support programs had begun.
34
Summer Sessions in the 19508
State college summer sessions were growing. In 1953 enrollment was 21,878. By 1955 it was 29,631.
And by 1959 unduplicated enrollment had grown to 44,274. The sessions continued to offer residence
credit courses for which students paid tuition fees. Teachers were a major clientele since they had the
summer months free from employment. The number of summer students who already had a teaching
credential remained high (48 percent in 1959) as did the percentage who already had a bachelor's
degree (39 percent in 1959). In 1950, master's degree courses were added to summer session
offerings, and by 1953, 18 percent of summer enrollees were MA degree candidates. By 1959, 6
percent of the summer session students already had the master's degree.
Regular students also used summer session classes to accelerate their progress. These were usually
the same students who were making use of late afternoon and evening classes during the regular
session because they held down jobs while going to school. Regular students continued to make up
between 45 and 50 percent of summer enrollment. In 1959 almost 14 percent of summer students
were veterans.
Summer session classes were offered on campus, off campus and in special centers like Santa Rosa
and Bakersfield in much the same pattern as in the 1940s, although with burgeoning enrollment. In
1952 the Council of College Presidents determined that off-campus summer classes should be run in
the same manner as on campus with regard to residence credit.
Travel study had been developing as both a summer session and extension activity. Leo Cain at San
Francisco State had initiated tours as early as 1950. He recalls that college president J. Paul Leonard
was one of the earliest study tour leaders of a summer trip to Europe. In 1952 the Council of College
Presidents established a policy of granting credit for travel study when the student was enrolled in a
course with specific requirements; no credential credit was to be granted, however. Soon, travel study
courses began appearing at other campuses, such as Sacramento and San Jose, and were taken up by
extension programs as well.
Ray Doyle introduced the idea of a resident summer session abroad at foreign universities. He
developed summer programs for San Francisco State College in London, Edinburgh, Paris, Madrid,
and Tokyo. The students met for classes from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon in the mornings during the sixweek session and then spent the afternoons on field trips. Doyle claims that San Francisco State was
the first California college to begin summer foreign study at universities abroad. UC Extension later
copied San Francisco State's model for its Oxford and Cambridge summer programs
Meanwhile, the concept of the "third year abroad" as part of study for the bachelor's degree was
developing nationally as a legitimate dimension of undergraduate education, and California colleges
incorporated it into their degree programs as well. Schoenfeld's (1967) history of American summer
sessions attributes this innovation in undergraduate education to the creativity of summer sessions
administrators. He says:
It is not too much to say that the summer session was the cradle of the overseas study movement. Some
early summer programs, it must be admitted, were more than Cook's tours, with the real initiative coming
from a travel bureau.... Fortunately, however, a number of pioneer overseas programs in summer were
very solid projects, at least as demanding as residence instruction, and thoroughly integrated with the
domestic curriculum. Out of these programs has grown today's proliferation of foreign study programs, in
which the summer university continues to participate and experiment. (p. 183)
By 1959 eleven state colleges had summer sessions enrolling more than half the number of students
enrolled in the regular sessions.
Several points about continuing education in the state colleges during this period from 1935 to 1960 are
interesting. First, the importance of late afternoon and evening scheduling on the larger campuses is
significant. These "after-hours" courses served as a major way for the state colleges to provide educational
access for working adults. Leo Cain recalls that after-hours classes were sometimes held off campus if there
was a group of interested students. For example, one section of a course might be offered in a school
district administrative office for a group of teachers. There was no policy which necessarily restricted statesupported courses to the geographic boundaries of the campus.
Second, summer session operated residence courses, fully comparable and transferable to the regular
degree programs of the campus, in both on-campus and off-campus locations. After 1950 and the
recommendations of the Kendall committee, extension began to become more and more an offcampus
phenomenon. However, the policy of charging tuition to students in summer session and extension courses
but not to those in the regular late afternoon and evening courses created enormous confusion and conflict
around budget decisions. The geographical separation of extension from the regular instructional programs
of the campuses, and the temporal separation of summer session from the regular fall through spring
campus calendar, emerged as the means for delineating state fiscal support from self-support. The tradition
of charging tuition for summer and extension courses even in a publicly supported college has its roots in
the assumption that summer sessions and extension provide continuing education for working adults
(mainly teachers) who are willing and able to pay for their education even though it is offered by public
institutions committed to the principle of free tuition.
On the other hand, the state colleges were serving large numbers of working adults as limited students on the
campuses. These adults were not paying tuition. In 1958 there were 80,091 students enrolled in the state
colleges, of which 35,563 (44 percent) were part time. Apparently, the original mission of the state normal
schools and teachers colleges -to serve working adults -remained alive and functional in the state colleges even
as enrollment pressures mounted. The G.1. Bill had made it respectable for adults to go to college even though
family and financial responsibilities
-----oompeted
possible. New building of classrooms and
laboratories took precedence over dormitories and, as a result, the urban campuses in particular never did have a conventional
residential student body with whom they could contrast their continuing education clientele.
The 1950s saw the peak of interest in state college teacher in-service education. Local boards of education,
county offices, and local districts looked to the "experts" on the campuses for leadership in the field of
education. College credit was important to teachers because most local boards incorporated provisions for
salary increases which were tied to continuing education. Teachers flocked to extension and summer
session courses, and they constituted the single largest professional group served by state college continuing
education programs. Once the 1960s were underway, faith in the expertise of college professors diminished
as a result of a general anti-authoritarian movement, spearheaded by college students protesting over free
speech, civil rights, and the Vietnam War. In addition, federal policy in the 19605, reflected, for example,
in the Great Society programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson, began to make federal and state money
directly available to local
36
school districts and counties, who began mounting programs of their own for the continuing education
of their teachers. As a result, college and university teacher in-service education would begin to
decline in the 1960s; however, throughout the 1950s, it was a major way in which the state colleges
contributed to the task of improving public education in California.
By the end of the 1950s, the colleges were serving a very mixed student body in which people of all
ages, motivations for attending, and means of livelihood were turning up in the different programs of
the campuses -regular day programs, late afternoon and evening, summer sessions, and extension. The
tidiness of the original conception in which pre-service and in-service teachers could be easily
distinguished broke down as the colleges diversified their offerings, grew in size, and developed a
more anonymous student body. The seeds of debates over who is entitled to a higher education at state
expense were being sown while the State and the colleges were more visibly concerned with oncampus enrollment growth and the physical construction that this enrollment entailed.
During this period, enrollment pressures on the campuses led to a policy move that was to have a
major impact on the growth of extension in the state colleges. The category of limited student was
eliminated because it had become problematic on some campuses, particularly the large urban
campuses like San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego. San Diego State created a campus committee
to look into the problematical relationship of extension, extended day, and summer session, and the
committee sent a report to the Council of Division Chairmen in February of 1956. The report reveals
that the only genuine way to distinguish between these various programs at San Diego was to already
know whether the course was offered as part of the regular budget or was supported by student tuitionI
Many adults were clearly using the part-time study option of the limited student category to take
occasional after-hours courses without ever being formally committed to earning a degree or ever
thinking seriously about graduating. The student" was becoming a visible embarrassment to educators
who were being hard pressed by parents to find places on their crowded campuseS for young adults
fresh from the state's high schools and community colleges transfer programs. The State Legislature
was also becoming concerned about the budget implications of open access and unrestrained
enrollment growth in the colleges.
By 1959 the state's Governor was to say in his Budget Message:
Large state expenditures for adult education must be weighed against the more pressing needs
of the school system for additional funds to educate children . . . In a time of ever increasing
----
free
adult education to those who have already had an opportunity to take advantage of a very generous educational system.
(Quoted in Rockhill, p. 153)
The climate of political opinion about state support for adult and continuing education began to get
increasingly suspicious about what schools and colleges were doing. For example, an unidentified
newspaper clipping appears in a file of correspondence and notes kept by Reginald Shephard, Director
of the Division of State Colleges and Teacher Education in the State Department of Education during
the 1950s. The article, entitled "Tighter Control on Education Funds Urged," says:
The state should have tighter financial controls over money given to school districts for adult
education, Senator Dilworth (R -Hemet) said yesterday.
"Any school board can dip into the state treasury at will," he complained, "by establishing adult
education classes."
The senator spoke at a meeting of the Senate Adult Education Committee after committee consultant
Earl Waters said many of the courses offered have little or no educational value. . . .
With the adult students, he said, Berkeley (School District) got $515,423 from the state and without
them it would have drawn $274,740. The adult classes, he explained, jumped Berkeley's classification so it drew more money for regular school students.
Statements like this prompted the State Advisory Committee on Adult Education to issue a "Policy
Statement of Public Financial Support of Education for Adults," developed at its meeting of May 22,
1959:
This committee views with grave concern the present tendency to reduce the public financial
support of education for adults. The survival of democracy in competition with totalitarian systems
demands a higher level of education for all citizens of all ages. In the changing pattern of culture, of
technology, of new inventions, of the space age, it is imperative that the present levels of support for
all education by the state not only be maintained but extended. This holds particularly true for
California which faces tremendous problems of population growth and change in its basic
economy. Therefore, this committee unanimously opposes the curtailment of public support for the
education of adults, which will compel the extension of student fees.
Apparently, accusations of wasteful spending on trivial instruction were to be matched with rhetoric
invoking the spectre of America losing the Cold Warl By 1960 the battle lines were being drawn up in a
configuration that would keep adult and continuing educators on the defensive vis-i-vis state government
for the next several decades.
The state colleges came in for their share of scrutiny as part of the increasing concern over what was going
on with adult education programs. The Department of Education enacted revised matriculation policies for
the state colleges which resulted in a 5.3 percent drop in the number of limited students by 1960.
Regardless, an Assembly committee recommended that the state colleges should immediately investigate
"the quality and quantity of the extended day programs . . . and immediately develop policies to divert
students in the extended day program who are not pursuing a regular degree objective into the State
College Extension" (Report of the Assembly Interim Committee on Education, p. 2).
The Assembly subcommittee also challenged the idea that state college extension was truly selfsupporting. The
report pointed out that some of the administrative costs of the programs were being charged to the regular campus
budgets, and, furthermore, the decentralized nature of the slale colleges and their made
--were no standardized procedures. The subcommittee
also commented on the "unfortunate competition" between state college extension programs and those of the
University of California.
Such competition was not an imaginary figment in the minds of legislators or simply the result of relying
on biased testimony from enemies of adult education or from warring factions within it. For example, a
memo from Joe West, Dean of Educational Services and Summer Sessions at San Jose State to his fellow
deans, dated November 4, 1960, states his strenuous objections to solicitation of state college instructors by
the University of California:
I am enclosing a copy of a mimeographed letter which was sent by UC Extension to our
mathematics teachers this week ... It seems that University Extension plans to move in and take
over this field (of science teaching) entirely ... We also feel that we have been more active in the
new programs in mathematics than the UC group. We have had more consultant:$ and writers
working on the S.M.S.C. (School Mathematics Study Croup) materials than Cal has. Incidentally,
our math faculty seems to be unanimously against the UC proposal. They prefer to work for their own
college.
This UC program interferes seriously with some of the long range programs which we are all probably
working on. We are planning a TV program in the Spring in the Monterey area, to be followed by some
extension courses next Fall. UC can move in with their institute and wreck the whole deal.
It seems to me that this is a move that we should fight and fight vigorously.
At this time, the state colleges were not receiving any direct subsidy for extension, although the University was.
However, in 1959, as a result of the Assembly's investigations, University Extension had to accept a 50 percent
cutback in the state's budget provision. This meant that University Extension received a support level which was
based on 9 percent of its operating budget at a time when the comparable average national figure for extension
support was 25 percent. Extension in the state colleges received no direct support, nor had they since 1931, but
indirect support in various forms· was provided from the annual state budget allocation to the campuses -a fact not
overlooked by University of California spokespersons who were eager to hold on to their own state subsidy for
extension. The cutback of the University Extension subsidy, along with increasing interest in how the state colleges
were accounting for their extension costs, signaled state college educators that a new era in policy toward the
continuing education of adults was beginning, one in which much greater fiscal accountability would be required and
in which the general insistence on full fiscal self-support would increase.
This change was not accomplished without substantial protest from state college personnel who argued that the
distinction between extended day and extension was not properly understood by legislators. Hubert McCormick,
Dean of Educational Services and Summer Sessions at Sacramento State College, wrote in a February 16, 1961
memo to Reginald Shephard in the State Department of Education:
There is considerable question as to whether the oft-repeated, but quite arbitrary distinction between parttime and full-time students, constitutes a valid basis for determining degrees of State support. A given
part-time student may well be successfully pursuing the same objectives as the full-time students, yet due
to financial circumstances beyond his control he finds it necessary to continue with higher education on
a part-time basis.
The Deans of Educational Services and Summer Session discussed the Assembly committee's report as a group and
realized that their best defense was to generate better information about what was in fact going on so that they could
better represent the intent and accomplishments of their various programs. They were particularly upset by
implications in the report that state college programs were ofquestionable
ewas the preferable structUre, and that college courses were inferior to those of University Extension. The deans felt that
the Assembly committee had paid insufficient attention to the objectives and regional orientation of the state colleges, to
the concern of the college administrations with assuring a high standard of quality, and to the actual diversity of
extension offerings in the state colleges.
Once again, there was a need for better state educational planning, given the escalating demands being made on the
state's financial resources. California had over the years put in place an outstanding educational system which was
looked at with interest by other states and countries around the world. By the mid-1950s, its postsecondary systems
included a tripartite arrangement of about sixty local junior colleges, eleven state four-year colleges, which also
offered master's degrees in some fields, and a fully diversified graduate level research university with six campuses,
including the Hastings College of Law. The public cost of supporting these three growing systems was beginning to
fuel public reaction, however. Duplication, waste, and uncontrolled proliferation of programs began to surface as a
public concern. The Soviet Sputnik
was launched in 1958 to be followed by an intense examination, in California as well as other states, of
education all levels. Questions were raised about what these systems were producing for the money
invested. A less liberal feeling began to emerge, stimulated by the hearings of the House Un-American
Activities Committee of the U.S. Congress, and reflected in the 1962 California election of a political
archconservative, Max Rafferty, to the position of State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
In 1959 a survey team was created by the Legislature and charged with drawing up a California
Master Plan for Higher Education to include California's four higher education segments: junior
colleges, state colleges, university, and private colleges. Arthur Coons, President of Occidental
College, a private institution, was appointed chairman. Glenn'Dumke, then President of San Francisco
State College, was one of eight members appointed to the team and the-only one from the state
colleges.
The Master Plan process involved hundreds of people who contributed data, opinion, research, and energy over a
period of seven months to what was a major effort in California toward the design of public policy for higher
education. The Master Plan has remained the state's primary blueprint for higher education since 1960 and its
provisions still serve as the conceptual basis for the development of state policy. Recommendations of the
Master Plan Survey Team were adopted by the Legislature as the Donahoe Higher Education Act, so named in
memory of Bakersfield Assemblywoman Dorothy M. Donahoe, who had authored the original resolution to
establish the
Master Plan Committee.
One of the most important outcomes of the Master Plan for the state colleges was that the colleges
became for the first time a system no longer tied to the State Department of Education. By creating a
Board and a statewide Chancellor's Office to carry out Board policy, the Master Plan mandated new
roles for continuing educators. Extension and summer sessions administrators would be accountable to
a new body with a new set of policy assumptions.
Secondly, the creation of a statewide Coordinating Council for Higher Education meant that during
the next several years, more effort would be made to develop coherent educational policies, including
policies regarding the continuing education responsibilities of the various segments of higher
education in the state. For example, two Assembly Resolutions were passed in 1961 requiring the new
Coordinating Council to prepare reports on extension and continuing education, specifically regarding
intersegmental competition and fiscal accountability.
Plan Survey say abouf it concluded its report. Like the Restudy Committee of 1955, it found the issues
surrounding adult and continuing education resistant to easy policy agreement. The team's recommendations
focus chiefly on coordination of adult education, which was to be the task of the State Advisory Committee on
Adult Education and the new Coordinating Council. The Master Plan report does indicate, however, that state
support should be directed toward "those enrollees who are pursuing a stated, planned program with definite
occupational or liberal education objectives" rather than to those "who are enrolling in a single course for
which matriculation or prerequisites are absent" (p. 145). Thus, the Master Plan emphasized a distinction
between matriculated and non-matriculated students, and, presumably, between regular degree programs and
extension courses. The traditional commitment of California to the principle of free tuition for all residents of
the state who qualify for admission to the colleges was reaffirmed by the Survey Team, thus intensifying the
emphasis on matriculation as the basis for state support. However, there was no policy
-
40
recommended by the Master Plan Survey Team report to address the issue of the appropriate
geographical location of courses. The distinction between on-and off-campus instruction was scarcely
relevant to the issues that preoccupied the Survey Team in the late 1950s.
In conclusion, it is possible to see by 1960 many of the issues that will dominate the history of
continuing education in the state colleges during the next two decades. The statement by the
Legislative Analyst in the 1961 Analysis of the Budget Bill, to the effect that "extended day programs
for members of the community who wish to pursue part-time study, however desirable on several
grounds, must be classified as a form of extension," summarizes the position that government policymakers had begun to adopt. The Legislative Analyst went on to recommend that "all who have
previously obtained a bachelor's degree or teaching certificate who are not full-time graduate students
should be charged the prevailing extension fee."
The confusion and resistance that were produced within the state colleges from this well-intentioned
thinking about cost effectiveness in state finance is captured in a letter from Hubert McCormick, at
Sacramento State College, to Manfred Schrupp, Dean of Education and Extended Services at San
Diego State College, dated February 27, 1962, in he says:
For example, should the Colleges conduct self-supporting extension programs in "extension centers"
in their immediate communities or on campus to serve non-matriculated or non-resident students at
the upper division or post-graduate level as does the University? ...
Should State College extension "programs" consist only of "courses" for credit? . . . State Colleges
provide great numbers of people with significant educational services each year by means of
conferences and special events. Traditionally these have not been thought of, or administered, as
extension (rather, under the fiscal administration of the campus foundations in cooperation with
campus departments or schools) . . .
Would we have extension classes on the campus? If so, would they be mixed -that is, permit
attendance by extension students and resident students in the same class with the only differential to
be the fee? If so, would matriculation be required of those in "extension" status? Would attendance
of those in extension status count toward resident and provide resident credit if desired? Would
extension "fees" be credited to extension accounts? Would instructors of mixed classes or on-campus
extension classes be paid extra as extension teachers or be required to teach some students in the
extension status as a part of the normal teaching load?
I just might agree if you feel I am "far out" in asking such questions at this time. (SJSU Office of
File on Interim Committee)
As we will see in the following chapters, "Mac" McCormick was not "far out," and his questions to
which there were no ready answers began to take on greater significance and urgency during the next
decade.
CHAPTER 3
Continuing Education in the State College System (1960-1972)
With the implementation of the California Master Plan in 1960, the state colleges faced the task of
developing an organization, under a new Board of Trustees and a Chancellor, that would weld the
then fourteen autonomous campuses into a coherent system of colleges. The times were favorable for
higher education, which both nationally and in California had experienced enormous growth in
enrollments and in new building. Public confidence in academia was high, and economic growth was
generating adequate increases in tax revenues to support the financial requests made by educators. By
the end of the decade of the 1960s, all of this was to change as a result of dramatic national
developments in which California campuses figured prominently. However, in 1960 state college
educators had every reason to be optimistic and confident.
As the decade continued, growing enrollments and growing budgets were the norm. During the 1960s,
enrollment doubled and budgets for higher education tripled nationally. The portion of the Gross
National Product (GNP) going to higher education increased from one to over two percent. In the
California State Colleges, enrollment grew every year. In 1960 total systemwide enrollment was
95,081. By the middle of the next decade, it would grow to more than 186,000.
In 1960 three new CSC campuses were opened: Stanislaus, Hayward, and Sonoma. Each of these
campuses had developed from off-campus extension and summer session centers originally operated
by San Francisco State College.
Even with the addition of new campuses, enrollment pressures became so extreme during the 1960s
that the new Chancellor's Office appointed a series of study groups to look at admissions policies.
The task was how to limit enrollment at campuses that already had their maximum, while redirecting
students to those campuses that were still small and developing. The state colleges needed to find ways to
relate students to programs more effectively. In addition, the Master Plan called for a reduction in the
percentage of state college students at the lower division (freshman and sophomore years) to 46 percent by
1969 and to 40 percent by 1975. Lower division students were
. to be redirected to the junior and community colleges.
Under the new Board and Chancellor, a major task facing the system was the development of
____an,ning that could
faculty hiring and new building. Administrators and
faculty on the individual campuses had been accustomed to lobbying legislators on their own behalf, a procedure
which led to inefficiency and competition among the campuses. Although fears about loss of individual campus
autonomy were prevalent, in fact, as a system, the state college campuses had the potential for greater political
leverage.
The system's first Chancellor, Buell Gallagher, remained with the state college system for only a brief
eight months. His successor, Glenn Dumke, became Chancellor in 1962 and continued to hold the
post until his retirement in 1982. Under Dr. Dumke's leadership, the Chancellor's Office staff grew to
more than 100 people by the mid-sixties. By 1971 the Chancellor's staff numbered almost 300 people.
Gerth, Haehn and Associates (1971) comment:
As the chancellor's staff grows ever larger, each campus administrative officer has a counterpart, or
sometimes several counterparts. Administrative organization on the campuses is approximately
43
standardized, for the line item budgets yield particular administrators on the basis of campus size,
and for administrative staffing have been enacted by the board and accepted by the Department of
Finance. (p. 214)
In keeping with this administrative structuring, a field coordinator for continuing education was
appointed by the Chancellor in 1962. Ray Doyle, then Dean of Continuing Education at San Francisco
State College, filled this statewide role while continuing his campus responsibilities. The new role was
vague; Doyle recalls that it was primarily a title. Doyle convened campus Deans of Educational
Services and Summer Sessions, including Directors of Extension, three or four times a year, to discuss
fiscal management, the setting of student fees, faculty salaries, and the general problem of competing
with University (of California) Extension -a large diversified program operating all over California. '
A second aspect of Doyle's role as statewide coordinator was to act as spokesman for state college
continuing education programs (extension and summer sessions) to state agencies, chiefly to the new
Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE) established by the Master Plan.
In the early 1960s, simultaneous with the emerging role of the state colleges' Board of Trustees and
Chancellor's Office, the new Coordinating Council was also developing. Among its many tasks was
the design of statewide policies for bringing order and coherence into the sprawling world of
continuing education programs. The number of schools, colleges, and universities offering adult and
continuing education programs of some sort was growing wildly and the need for state policy to
regulate enrollment and program growth was obvious. The Coordinating Council reported that
California population growth
has great significance in the field of continuing education, for adult and elderly populations are
increasing in record numbers. By 1980 the 25-64 age group will increase 43 %, and the over-65 age
group will increase 61 %...
Population growth in the United States and California is compounded by the fact that Americans are
moving north and west and from rural areas toward the cities. Not only did one-fifth of the growth
in the United States from 1950 to 1960 take place in California, but also to be taken into account is
the expectation of a 50% increase in California's population between 1965 and 1980. (CCHE, 1965,
p. 14)
esc Extension in the Early 19608
____courses and nrevenues,
of which a surplus of $50,900 reverted to the State General Fund.
About 25 percent of the surplus came from San Francisco State College, the largest state college extension
program, which enrolled 8,197 students in 232 courses offered in 13 counties with 54 locations, including two
military bases.
San Jose had the next largest extension program with 5,300 enrollees in 170 courses. As at the San
Francisco campus, courses were well diversified over several fields and professional groups, including
aviation, business, engineering, government, manufacturing, and medical services in addition to
teacher education.
enrolled 2,636 students in 81 courses, three of which were taught by television to 129 students.
Sacramento enrolled 2,486 students in 81 classes. Fourteen of these classes were in eight different
travel study programs enrolling 433 students. Two television sections of "Child and Youth Development" enrolled 83 students. Los Angeles enrolled 1,710 students in 53 classes. Of these, 202 students
were enrolled in television classes. San Diego offered mostly teacher training courses to 1,693
44
enrollees in 59 courses in 12 communities. Eight students were enrolled in TV courses. Humboldt had
1,018 students in 45 courses covering 16 subject areas in 9 communities. Chico enrolled 784 students
in 35 courses, and San Fernando Valley State (founded in 1958 and later to become CSU Northridge)
enrolled 336 students in 14 courses, of which 87 percent were in professional education. Alameda State
College (founded in 1960 and later to become CSU Hayward) took over four locations in Alameda and
Contra Costa counties formerly operated by San Francisco State. The campus extension program
enrolled 218 in 5 classes in Spanish, Art Education, and Mathematics. Long Beach reported that,
although it did not have an extension program, it offered private music instruction for which tuition
was charged.
In 1962 the student fee for a state college extension course was $10 per unit, of which $8 went to the
instructional pool (mainly for instructors' salaries) and $2 went to the administrative pool for all other
costs. This meant that an extension student paid $60 for two 3-unit courses in comparison to the
$19.50 fee paid by a matriculated student who enrolled part time for six units or less. Fulltime students
taking more than six units paid $46 per semester'.'
In 1962 the CSC produced two reports on adult and continuing education under the supervision of
Ernest O'Byrne, Vice President of San Diego State College and a representative of the State Colleges
to the State Committee on Adult and Continuing Education. The purpose of these reports was to
provide background information for Coordinating Council studies, but they also summed up existing
policy and issues from the perspective of the state colleges. Instruction for adults was divided into 1)
pre-service (post-twelfth grade through the baccalaureate); 2) summer session, both for pre-service
students and in-service teachers; 3) extension, for in-service and non-degree continuing education; and
4) extended day.
As the reports made clear, extended day scheduling had by 1960 become a routine aspect of the CSC's
regular academic programs. All students who enrolled in on-campus courses were required to
matriculate whether they were part time or full time, and, by 1962 the terms "limited student" and
"extended day" were abolished by the Council of State College Presidents. This policy change was
important in that it had the effect of stimulating the growth of extension courses. Formerly, students
who were not interested in pursuing a degree program, who did not wish to go through the regular
admissions process of a campus, or who were not eligible for admission could still enroll as limited
students. Now, these students were directed away from the campus to extension classes.
In 1963, and again in 1965-66, the Coordinating Council issued major reports that provided a more
integrated perspective on adult and continuing education in the state than had been previously
While the
of questions (above) that were on educators and policy-makers minds, the
reports provided a conceptual organization along with descriptive data about the activities of the various segments that
served as the foundation of adult and continuing education policy in the state for the next fifteen years.
By 1963 the CCHE had adopted a set of policies, including a minimal delineation of functions
agreement which specified that the CSC should restrict its off-campus extension offerings to upper
division or graduate level courses so as not to compete with junior colleges. Also, the CSC was to
restrict its off-campus offerings to the geographical service area assigned to it by the Board of
Trustees. On-campus extension classes were not restricted, and despite policy adopted earlier by the
Council of State College Presidents, some were offered on several campuses, including Fresno,
Humboldt, and Los Angeles.
The State Committee on Adult and Continuing Education was reorganized to include representatives
from all of the various continuing education providers plus a full-time executive secretary,
45
who would also be a member of the CCHE staff. Ray Doyle, of San Francisco State, followed Ernest
O'Byrne as CSC representative on the State Committee and served until June of 1965 when he was
replaced by Russell Riese of the Chancellor's Office staff. The role of the state committee was to
provide better inter-segmental coordination, to hear and act on jurisdictional disputes, to direct data
gathering, and to make recommendations to the CCHE.
The CCHE reports of 1963 and 1965-66 also contained recommendations regarding the financing of
continuing education programs. University (of California) Extension was to continue to receive a state
subsidy, although the CCHE recommendations did not specify either an amount or a percentage of
revenues that could serve as a basis for policy. Rockhill (1983) says,
Based upon the 1962-63 (University) Extension budget, it was estimated that the State might be
responsible fOr'supplying 21.4 percent of Extension's income. In fact, the 9 percent state support
policy went unchanged until drastic cuts under Governor Ronald Reagan's economy-minded
administration saw the change to a 0 percent support policy in 1968. (p. 162)
CSC extension was to continue to be self-supporting. Both segments were asked to improve their
fiscal accounting procedures and to work toward making them as comparable as possible for planning
purposes.
The CCHE recommendations of 1962-63 did not take on the controversial issue of how indirect costs
of self-support programs were to be determined, but the Council did recognize that the fiscal structure
of CSC continuing education programs was inadequate. The development of new CSC extension
programs and the expansion of continuing education to other professional groups besides school
personnel required funding support that was not available under the system's then current fiscal
operating procedures. Since the campuses were obliged to return any excess revenue to the General
Fund, no money could ever be accumulated to finance new and untried ventures that involved initial
start-up costs that would take time to recover. Furthermore, if one campus extension or summer
session program failed to generate enough revenue to cover its expenses in a particular year, there was
no way that excess funds from other campus continuing education programs could be used to make up
the deficit. Deficits had to be made up from the campus regular budget.
The CCHE took the position, in its 1965-66 report, that "the Trustees of the California State Colleges
should be permitted to retain surpluses developed in the operation of the various State College
Extension programs; such funds to be apportioned on a statewide basis to areas of greatest need"
(p. 48). It was not until 1967, and Senate Bill 408, however, that the Legislature acted on this
recommendation to establish the State College Extension Programs Revenue Fund This fund,
administered separately from the General Fund and other state funds, assured that all fiscal surpluses
derived from extension programs could, without regard to fiscal year, be utilized by the Trustees for
support and development of extension programs in the California State Colleges. When the bill was
implemented, the Chancellor's Office established that each campus was permitted to retain 75 percent
of its fiscal surpluses for local use, while 25 percent was reserved for systemwide determination in
support of innovation and contingencies.
The enactment of this legislation marks the beginning of a major change for CSC continuing
education. For the first time, a self-supporting program was permitted to keep surplus revenue and use
it to fund educational ventures that required investment. The result was that esc continuing education
gained a great deal of flexibility and capacity for entrepreneurial development. However, it would take
the campuses several years to adjust their operations so as to take advantage of this new opportunity.
Some campuses had aggressive continuing education administrators who were eager to move into new
ventures. Sometimes the campus president was supportive, sometimes not.
On other campuses, a more passive attitude prevailed, which kept the continuing education programs
oriented in traditional directions toward teacher education only.
There was a delay between the CCHE recommendation regarding the creation of an Extension
Programs Revenue Fund in 1963 and its subsequent enactment in legislation in 1967 which brackets a
period of some embarrassment to the CSC. The system's overall accounting procedures came under
intense legislative scrutiny because of a serious accounting error that resulted in budget shortages so
severe that temporary salary cuts for administrators and faculty members were necessary. Lack of
budget flexibility coupled with an unwieldy political process created a serious crisis that indicated the
need for major reform of the state colleges' fiscal structure. As a result, the State Legislature requested
a full-scale study of fiscal controls over the CSC, with a report by January 1966. A CSC Committee on
Fiscal Responsibility was established and organized into a series of task forces to address various areas
of operations. Task Force Number Eight dealt with summer sessions and extension. Its chair was
Donald Gerth, then Dean of Students at Chico State College. Members of the Task Force from the
ranks of continuing education administrators included James Enochs, Dean of Educational Services
and Summer Session at Sonoma State College; Forrest Mayer, Associate Dean of Summer Quarter and
Summer Session at CSC Hayward; Hubert McCormick, Dean of Educational Services and Summer
Session at Sacramento State College; and Frank Willey, Coordinator of Extension Services at San Jose
State College.
In the July 1966 letter of transmission that accompanied the final report of the Task Force to the
Chancellor's Office, Chairperson Donald Gerth remarked:
Early in the work of the task force, the members concluded that the concepts of summer session and
extension are ones which in many ways have outlived their usefulness, both in terms of the needs of
our society for a broadly based program of continuing education and in terms of the move now
underway toward year-round operation on the California State College campuses. Thus, the
members of the task force concluded that we should recommend adoption of the concept of
continuing education programs in the California State Colleges.
The Task Force Report described the problems that existing budget procedures created for selfsupport programs.
The present schedule of budgeting presents some specific problems for the summer session and
extension programs. Budgets from the colleges for any given fiscal year are submitted to the
Chancellor's Office in the spring of the year preceding the fiscal year -almost a year and a half ahead
of the period when the budget will actually be operative. Due to the difficulty of projecting potential
student enrollment in the programs, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to project a budget
which will with great accuracy reflect the actual income, and therefore, the actual expenditures. In
recent years, this problem has been complicated by the fact that fees and salaries have been adjusted
after the budget has gone to print, only shortly before the programs actually become operative.
Because of the self-support concept, any budget must always be revised to keep expenditures within
the actual income received. Information on income is not completely certain until classes have met
and students have registered and paid their fees.
Under these circumstances, budget revision is almost an inevitability. This requires the preparation
of necessary documents on the local campus, submission of these documents to the Chancellor's
Office, then referral to the Department of Finance for final approval; this is the procedure despite the
fact that these are programs supported locally by student fees. The process of such budget revision is
complicated and time-consuming, so much so that some colleges have had the experience of waiting
almost a full year for final approval. Meanwhile, expenses have had to be met, and the college
administration is faced with the necessity of making payments against unapproved
budgetary accounts. The choice is that, or face the ire of a faculty member not being paid for
duties performed.
With the present fiscal structure, management and accounting problems are further
complicated by the fact that the summer session and extension budgets are separate items,
with their different fee and salary schedules, and their distinctions regarding expenditures.
Separate account books must therefore be kept on telephone expenditures, postage costs,
travel expenses, and all other items related to the operation of the two programs. This kind
of bookkeeping operation requires time in the business office, which in all likelihood has
not been given consideration in computing its staff. (p. 15)
The report of Task Force Number Eight concludes with a number of recommendations designed to
alleviate this kind of procedural stress. The ultimate positive result of the work of the Task Force,
after much debate and struggle, was greater budgetary flexibility for CSC continuing education
programs, and greater autonomy for the Chancellor's Office to approve budget revisions.
The establishment of the State College Extension Revenue Fund marked the beginning of a change in
relationship between the campus continuing education administrators and the Chancellor's Office
because, as the fund grew, decisions about how it should be spent were made by "the system" rather
than by the individual campuses. In addition, diversification and expansion of extension programs
throughout the state colleges created a need for a systemwide perspective which the Chancellor's
Office tried to provide. The establishment of the Fund spurred the development of an administrative
structure and more complex policies for CSC continuing education.
A CSC Continuing Education Advisory Committee, consisting of four Deans of Extension Services or
Continuing Education, four full-time faculty members, and three staff members from the Chancellor's
Office, was appointed by the Chancellor in 1969 to advise him regarding continuing education policy
and programs. A similar committee had been recommended by Task Force Number Eight.
The new CSC Continuing Education Advisory Committee took on the task of recommending how
monies accumulated through the Extension Revenue Fund should be allocated by the Chancellor,
and this became the major activity of the committee. In addition, a Chancellor's Office position
Coordinator of Continuing Education (in the Division of Academic Planning) -was created.
Initially, there was no staff position within the Chancellor's Office specific to continuing education.
What needed attention was handled on a part-time basis by Jack Baird, the Deputy Dean of one
members.
"coordin
ator" for a time, as did Russell Riese. By 1970,
however, the need for a permanent assignment
resulted in the appointment of Richard Barbera as
full·time Coordinator of Continuing Education in
The Coordinator was part of the Division of Academic Planning,
and Barbera
was initially charged
the Chancellor's
Office.
with the development of plans for continuing education and extension in the various colleges. Several
of the campus deans of continuing education recall that Barbera went about the task with more zeal
than was warranted since the autonomy of the campuses in relation to the Chancellor's Office was
jealously guarded. Barbera himself complained to his superiors in writing about a lack of authority in
his role.
Barbera drew up a written plan for CSC continuing education that created considerable furor both
within the Chancellor's Office and on the campuses. The plan was ultimately abandoned
because there was little consensus, either within the Chancellor's Office or among the campus deans,
that there sufficient consensus to support its ideas. Getting the campus deans of extension or summer
sessions to row together toward some common goals of the "system" as a whole required enormous
finesse, and the Coordinator's role within the Chancellor's Office was not really clear in terms of its
powers and prerogatives vis-a-vis the campuses -a problem generally shared throughout the system as
the new role for a central administration began to be carved out for the CSC.
Leadership in continuing education programming and marketing had traditionally come from the
campus deans of continuing education themselves, who were used to working through their own
campus presidents in order to get things done. With the advent of the Chancellor's Office, new
decision-making channels were gradually created. The Legislature's increased interest in ensuring
fiscal and legal accountability supported centralization rather than local autonomy. However, the
trend toward centralization, with the Chancellor's Office as an administrative unit, was slow.
Continuing education, relatively independent because of its self-support fiscal structure, was even
slower to oblige the Chancellor's Office staff than the state-supported academic programs. In its 1965
report, the CCHE described CSC continuing education as "decentralized," which, while not
theoretically the case, was probably so in actual practice.
The chief means for policy cooperation by the campus deans and directors of continuing education
programs, when such was necessary, were their group meetings. After 1968 they made more use of
the Advisory Committee for Continuing Education which made recommendations to the Chancellor
through his staff. By 1970, the campuses had more or less adjusted to the fact that they were members
of a statewide system and accepted the fact that the Chancellor's Office was there to stay. However,
political pulling and tugging at decision points remained a familiar and inevitable dynamic of the
emerging CSC bureaucracy.
The internal politics of the developing CSC system during the 1960s, as it sought consensus among
an enormous number of people, were played out against an extremely tense external political
background. The decade ofthe 1960s saw the high water mark in political activism in the United
States, and both California and its higher education institutions figured prominently in that activism.
In 1964 the Free Speech Movement on the Berkeley campus of the University of California startled
both the public and educational administrators with its vehemence. With that movement, the era of
student activism was launched. Three years later, the CSC became similarly politicized
a.strike by and, scale confrontation with police, resulting in the campus being officially closed for several months. Protests
spread to the other CSC campuses. Although the most serious disturbances were concentrated in urban areas, none of the
campuses remained entirely conflict-free in the next years;
In the short period between 1964 and 1968, the United States had to come to grips with and integrate
a series of events that no one had predicted: the emergence of the hippie movement within the
generation then in its twenties, with its emphasis on psychedelic drugs, expanded consciousness,
electronic music and love; an escalation of the war in Vietnam which provoked the younger
generation into abandoning its original philosophy of free love and peace in increasingly violent
confrontations with officials, police, and the National Guard; the growth of the Civil Rights
movement, beginning in the American South and spreading rapidly across the country; and the
assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, followed within a few years by that of his
brother and presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, and of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King,
Jr.
A confused public reeled in the face of so much violent change. By 1968 a conservative feeling, tinged
with a punitive consciousness, provided support for a national President, Richard M. Nixon, and a
California Governor, Ronald Reagan, both of whom promised to get tough with political radicals and
the younger generation. The campuses of California were the focus of national media attention
showing unruly, provocative students demonstrating against war, campus policies, even the quality of
food in the cafeteria. What was disturbing to the thoughtful was the emergence of widespread
dissatisfaction on the part of the most intelligent and privileged members of a generational cohort with
the society and educational systems in which they had come of age. This in itself indicated a real need
for change in the status quo. The emergence of student protests on the college campuses of California
provoked a period of intense political and social self-examination in America.
Itis extremely hard to assess the overall impact that the period of campus dissent, which culminated
tragically with shooting deaths in 1970 at Kent State University in Ohio, had on American higher
education. Positively, a great number of reforms were instituted in curriculum, student affairs, and
administration. Innovations were spawned that, as we will see in the next chapter, irrevocably changed
the face of higher education in the United States. However, there was a terrible price paid for positive
change. Public outrage, fueled by vivid televised pictures of the nation's youth out of control while
campus administrators stood helplessly by, provoked a backlash of feeling that undermined public
trust in educators, and fueled a stingy attitude about public fiscal support for higher education.
In 1968 the fiscal situation for California's colleges and universities underwent a major shift, as
budget cuts and acrimonious charges of institutional ineffectiveness became commonplace. In a
certain sense, the year 1968 can be seen as a turning point for California higher education. At no time
since has higher education regained the credibility it once held with public policy-makers. Although
economic factors such as inflation and demographic factors such as a fall-off in the numbers of high
school graduates need to also be considered, it is probably safe to say that the political climate of the
1960s was central in triggering long-term changes in California higher education policy.
----
CSC extension and summer sessions programs operated within the same political, social and
economic climate as did the rest of higher education. Questions about relevance, social change, and
liberation for oppressed minorities surrounded decisions about curriculum, course offerings, and
faculty hiring. These were tense and difficult years on most campuses. However, the general
mood of questioning authority and standard ways of doing
it opened up possibilities for experimentation.
The CSC deans of continuing education had become critical of state education policies even before the
campuses were gripped by demands for change. Throughout the sixties, some of the deans were
fighting for more recognition of the actual facts about older, part-time students and the implications
that their attendance and interests held for higher education in general and continuing education in
particular. They felt that the CCHE reports and recommendations reflected an inaccurate and out-ofdate definition of CSC continuing education. For example, a definition of continuing education based
on the idea that it is "beyond the years of formal full-time college attendance" was not reflective of the
numbers of older adults who were seeking degrees and pursuing their "continuing" education in a
serious manner. The deans also objected to the preferential treatment provided to the University of
California in the recommendation for continuation of a state subsidy for University Extension. This
latter issue was eventually taken care of by Governor Ronald Reagan, who in 1968 struck UC
Extension's 9 percent subsidy from the state budget. This
50
move was to become a permanent state policy with the result that neither UC nor CSC self-support
educational programs have again received state funds directly.
The deans were perhaps unaware, however, of how much movement there had been by the CCHE and
its staff in its perceptions of CSC extension. The December 1962 minutes of the CCHE indicate that
there was debate in the Council about how CSC continuing education functions would be delineated.
Initially, CCHE staff had recommended that the state colleges limit their off-campus extension
offerings to teacher training courses. a result of protest and discussion raised by Chancellor Glenn
Dumke, who was serving as a a member of the Coordinating Council, the wording of the final
recommendations in the 1963 CCHE report broadened the mandate of the CSC to include upper
division credit and non-credit courses "as needed," with graduate credit courses "designed primarily
for ... teachers." This did not end the matter, however. No sooner were the CCHE recommendations
published than proposals for changing them were made by representatives of the University of
California and the CSC. Ultimately, delineation of continuing education functions between the
segments was to become an intractable issue that reappeared with regularity during policy discussions
in the coming decades. No solution ever seemed quite satisfactory; temporary agreements were soon
abrogated in practice.
CSC continuing education programs were growing and diversifying all through the decade of the
1960s. In 1965/66, extension enrollments totaled 39,786 persons (57,021 actual course registrations).
By 1966/67, enrollment had increased by 11.8 percent, another 20.9 percent by 1967/68, a further
17.3 percent by 1968/69, and by the end of the decade in 1969170, enrollment included 69,226
individuals with 114,245 course registrations. Some of this growth was due to the addition of new
campuses which started up extension programs. CSC San Bernardino started its extension program in
1967, CSC Dominguez Hills in 1968, and Cal Poly at Pomona in 1969. However, each of these
campuses began with less than 200 course registrations in the initial year of operation, so that growth
was not accounted for here. Furthermore, the spurt in enrollments could not be accounted for by
growth in teacher in-service education either. In fact, teacher education was beginning to wane by the
mid-sixties as the products of the baby boom who had crowded the elementary and secondary schools
were now reaching college age. Local school districts were no longer hiring new elementary and
secondary teachers as fast as possible. School district personnel began to stabilize. budget cutting
measures were required, the districts began to discourage teachers from seeking salary raises through
continuing education. a result, extension directors and deans in the CSC began to look to other student
clientele besides teachers.
-------Those aWe of Education in 1964, stated that adult education was probably the fastest growing, most challenging and
most unexplored area of education in the country. Similarly, Chancellor Dumke reported to the Board of Trustees in April
of 1966:
By 1981, continuing education will have become a close second to undergraduate education
as a matter of major concern to the State Colleges. Accelerating developments in science
and new concepts and procedures in other fields are forcing the modern day business
official back to school as frequently as the medical doctor. As colleges close to our
communities, we must be prepared to meet this need, and in this connection our potential is
evident for confronting and solving many of the overwhelming problems of urban
concentration of population. (Quoted in CCHE, 1965-66, pp. 1, 2)
At the time, the state colleges expected to meet this need via their continuing education programs extension and summer sessions.
51
Summer in the 19608
Task Force Number-Eight, chaired by Donald Gerth, provided the following description of CSC
summer sessions in its 1966 report:
In the summer 1965, a total of 5,277 courses were offered, 1,212 at the lower division level, 3,171 at
the upper division, 894 at the graduate level. Of the total number of courses offered, approximately
one-fifth were in Education, the remainder distributed throughout the fields of study, from
Anthropology and Art to Sociology and Zoology. Many special programs were offered such as music
workshops, the 13th Pacific Coast Writer's Conference (CSC Los Angeles), Improving the Creativity
of Gifted Children (San Fernando Valley sq, and the 23rd Annual Institute on World Affairs (San
Diego sq. Forty-nine federally supported institutes were held during the 1965 summer sessions,
includingNDEA (National Defense Education Act) institutes, NSF (National Science Foundation)
institutes, and programs under the Manpower Training Act and the Economic Opportunity Act. Even
with all these special offerings, the bulk of the offerings in the summer programs are the regular
academic courses to meet the needs of the majority of the students, the ones seeking degrees. (p. 8)
The majority of courses offered in CSC summer sessions were also listed in the regular academic year
catalogue, although there was some campus variation. At San Francisco State, for example, 477 of the
565 summer courses were also listed in the 1965-66 General Bulletin; at Sonoma State College, only
half of the 68 courses in the summer session were regular year catalogue courses.
Travel Study had spread to nine of the campuses. Sacramento, San Francisco, and Sonoma State
Colleges were the most active with between six and ten different worldwide and US study tours each
summer. San Diego, Long Beach, Fullerton, San Fernando Valley, and Stanislaus also offered between
one and four travel study tours during the summer of 1965.
Although CSC summer sessions continued to grow, there were issues related to their status that
seemed to remain unresolved, including quality, financing (including the possibility of state support
for year-round operation of the campuses), and off-campus instruction.
Quality. In March of 1965 Forest L. Whan of Kansas State University addressed the Annual North
Central Conference on Summer Schools in Chicago. He said:
I am certain that each of you has heard repeated aspersions, questioning Summer School as an
academically respectable unit. From administrators to teaching members of your faculties, you have
heard slighting remarks. Even at our Conference last year one of our members claimed that
is of poorer WInter, ana so poor has been the image of the Summer Session, that our catalogues feel called
upon to defend it. My own catalogue reads: "The Summer School is an integral part of the educational program
at Kansas State University ... Credit earned in K-State summer sessions is transferable to other institutions in
the same manner credit earned in other terms is transferred." That our catalogues feel it necessary to so state,
suggests that our top administrators believe that doubt exists. Nowhere have I been able to find a university
catalogue reading: "The fall semester is an integral part of the school program." (Quoted in California State
Colleges: 1965 Summer Sessions, p. 28)
The California State Colleges were not exempt from these kinds of sentiments as the campuses moved
further and further away from their origins in teacher training toward full-fledged university status.
During the 1960s, the faculty of the state colleges began to organize itself as a professional group.
Summer session salaries were among its concerns, for there were faculty who believed that if salaries
for summer courses were lower than for the regular year this meant that the quality of instruction was
inferior. Itwas a widely held assumption, by both faculty and administrators, that comparable salary
scales for summer and regular term teaching were desirable.
A systemwide Academic Senate, whose formation was recommended in the Master Plan, was
formally instituted in 1963, following efforts by the local campus senates, by Chancellor Dumke, and
by State Senator Albert Rodda. With legitimation and recognition of faculty's rights and of the formal
role of the faculty in campus and systemwide governance, the CSC faculty became a more formidable
factor in the evolution of the state colleges.
Summer session salaries were on the agenda of the first year of meetings of the systemwide Academic
Senate. In addition, faculties became more generally concerned with gaining and maintaining their
decision-making prerogatives -a trend from which continuing education programs were not exempt.
The faculty had interests and concerns that were not always compatible with those of summer sessions
deans and coordinators. For example;-faculty tended to assume that any course that was intellectually
defensible should be offered in the summer session ifthe instructor wanted to teach it. Since experience
had shown the deans that not all courses could attract sufficient numbers of summer students to cover
their costs, it was up to the summer session director tactfully to convince a faculty member or the
academic department that a major area of academic expertise wouldn't "sell" to a summer audience
and that the self-support nature of the summer program precluded subsidizing courses that drew only a
small enrollment. Itwas this tension between academic criteria for program planning and the realities
of a self-support market that could occasionally develop into disputes and angry feelings between
regular faculty and continuing education administrators. But on the whole, summer sessions and
extension directors and deans enjoyed good relationships with faculty because the academic
departments played a major role in approving continuing education offerings.
------could.
Finance. Concerns about quality control in summer sessions were linked to financial considerations.
The self-support structure of summer sessions required continuous fee increases, a major factor in
those increases being salary costs. faculty became more demanding and powerful, salaries in summer
moved in the direction of comparability with regular academic year salaries. This was manageable
fiscally as long as some costs of summer sessions could be charged to the state support budget, but
once the Legislature made up its mind that more fiscal vigilance on its part was warranted, state
support for the indirect costs of summer session and extension became a subject of increasing conflict.
The Legislature, along with the Department of Finance, wanted as few costs as possible charged to the
regular campus budget, while the deans of summer sessions tried to gain as much indirect support
from the campuses to support summer sessions as they possibly
All CSC summer sessions followed the same faculty salary policies. They also funded a portion of
salary for the dean or coordinator of summer session along with clerical support. Beyond that, there
was little consistency from campus to campus in terms of fiscal policy. The 1966 report of Task Force
Number Eight says:
There is wide variation in the specific items for which expenditures are made. Some of the colleges
provide help to the student affairs staff, the library, and the business office; other colleges do not. Some
are able to supply time for departmental administration; others not. Building rentals are paid for offcampus facilities by some colleges; others pay no rental costs. Cost for some portion of utilities is paid by
some of the colleges, not by others.
In general, it seems to be clear that the extent to which the colleges are able to pay costs beyond those for
teaching salaries varies directly in proportion to the size of the summer session program;
as the number of students grows larger, so does the income and the assumption of administrative and
operating
General policy and practices regarding expenditures result in an overall excess of income over
expenditures. The amount of this excess varies greatly from one college to another. In a few
instances, colleges have actually run in the red on their summer session and extension programs. On
a systemwide basis, however, the excess income has been a considerable amount.... (p. 14)
Summer sessions continued to be profitable for the campuses throughout the 1960s. Naturally, the
smaller programs were less insulated against financial losses that could occur unexpectedly as a result
of enrollment drops, poor choice in the courses to be offered, and changes in the general economic
picture. The larger campus programs, however, had excess funds available to support new ventures
and could take more risks. However, excess revenues from summer sessions operations were returned
to the state's General Fund, as a form of reimbursement for the indirect support provided by the
campus for summer programs. Unlike CSC extension, summer session was not able to retain its
surpluses from year to year.
Meanwhile, in a system the size of the CSC, economies of scale were always being considered.
Enrollment pressures during the 1950s, continuing into the 1960s, increased legislative interest in
moving the state colleges to year-round operation (YRO). To accomplish YRO, a campus would move
from an academic calendar with two semesters extending from September through May to a calendar
with four quarters. Summer session then became a regular quarter term supported from the state
budget allocation to the campus rather than from student tuition fees.
The idea was not new and had been discussed on and off for more than a decade. A memo from Ivan
C. Milhouse, Coordinator of Summer Session at Humboldt State College to the Deans of Educational
Services and Summer Sessions, dated November 30, 1953, indicates that the Council of State College
Presidents had considered the possibility of folding summer sessions into the regular state support
program in the early 1950s. They looked at "probable gains or losses in flexibility, employment and
payment of faculty, independence of offerings, etc." There was little enthusiasm, though, on the part of
the campus presidents. A possible reason was that profits from summer sessions were sometimes used
to fund things on the campus that were not getting enough state support. Summer sessions thus
provided the presidents with some discretionary money that they would have been loath to lose.
However, by the decade of the sixties, and increasing control by the state and the Chancellor's Office
over how funds were utilized, the subsidization of the campus by summer sessions (and extension) was
frowned upon. In spite of this "official" attitude, continuing education programs tended to viewed as a
financial bonanza on many campuses. Farnsworth, Continuing Education Dean at CSC Stanislaus
during the 1960s, recalls that continuing education regularly paid for the fleet of campus automobiles,
including a bus for the science department to use for marine biology expeditions. Task Force Number
Eight felt constrained to state that "any expenditure must be justified by a fairly direct relationship to
the functions of summer session and extension. In other words, funds from these sources should not be
used to provide services and supplies for programs, the needs of which have presumably been funded
from the State General Fund appropriation." (p. 14)
By 1963 the University of California was moving toward YRO and the state colleges were being urged
by legislators, the Department of Finance, and some internal supporters to do the same. A quarter
system for both segments was recommended by the Coordinating 'Council (CCHE).
Within the CSC campuses there was major opposition to the idea because of the potential disruption of
academic and administrative procedures and major unresolved logistical issues. Furthermore,
funds for the conversion process had not been guaranteed by the state. Newer campuses, like Dominguez
Hills and San Bernardino, having no investment in the status quo, as did older campuses such as Fresno,
San Jose, San Diego and San Francisco, began their operations on the quarter system. The larger
established campuses resisted, and the process of conversion dragged on, slowed by the lack of state funds
to support 12-month contracts for faculty and staff, until eventually, the whole idea of systemwide
conversion to YRO was scrapped in the budget cutbacks that occurred after 1968. Meanwhile, only three
CSC campuses had converted to YRO -Hayward, Los Angeles, and Cal Poly at Pomona, which was
established as a separate campus in 1966.
Interestingly, YRO did not completely supplant self-support summer sessions. A small six-week summer
session program ran simultaneously with the summer quarter at Hayward. Classes were available to nonmatriculated students, primarily teachers, who were willing to pay tuition fees. In effect, this program
operated like extension.
Despite efforts to integrate them into the regular state-support budget; self-support summer sessions
continued to be an established feature of the CSC. Their enrollment growth continued until the mid-1960s
but after 1965 the growth rate began to slow with the declining numbers of teachers seeking in-service
education. By the time the decade of the 1970s arrived, CSC summer sessions began to see serious
financial problems ahead because fee increases to students were being outstripped by rising costs.
Off-campus lnstroction in the 19608
In previous chapters, we have seen that a central problem for the CSC was to ensure that statesupport and
self-support programs were distinguishable from each other in terms of educational goals, type of students,
and fiscal accounting. In the 1950s it also became common policy in the CSC to separate extension
geographically by limiting it to off-campus locations in order to differentiate it from state support
"extended day" classes on the campus. Extension's goals differed also in that they were focused on the
needs of in-service professionals. As a result, only a certain number of units of extension coursework
could be transferred toward degree credit. The magic number that had become general policy by the 1960s
was 24 semester units.
In contrast, summer sessions presented a different picture. First, summer session courses were offered both
on campus and off, the location depending on enrollment demand and resource availability. Second, all
courses in summer session were fully transferable to a degree program. There was, in fact, little
educational distinction between summer courses and courses offered at other times
_____The major difference was that there was a tuition for summer courses, unless, of course, the campus offered a
summer quarter on a YRO calendar.
The difference in the applicability of courses to degrees between extension and summer sessions was soon
to lead to some major obstacles for the CSC as it tried to accommodate an increasingly complex demand
for adult education. For example, in April of 1971 Chancellor Dumke received a letter from S. J.
Robinson, a military officer at Naval School Command on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. The
letter complained that courses offered at the naval base by San Francisco State College in June, July and
August carried residence credit toward degrees, while the same courses offered during the rest of the year
did not. Mr. Robinson wanted to know if anything could be done about this, inasmuch as there were many
servicemen and women who were interested in furthering their education toward a college degree.
Chancellor Dumke was, of course, aware of this anomaly, but, as of 1971, nothing could be done about the
problem because of legal restrictions that had become part of the State Education Code.
The CSC had gotten itself boxed in. "Regular" (state-supported) courses could be offered off campus,
but only at centers approved by the Coordinating Council. Extension courses could be held anywhere
provided that they were self-supporting from student fees. However, only 24 units of residence credit
could be earned in extension courses. Summer session was an exception to this general rule, but
operated only June through August. These legal restrictions were explained to Naval Officer Robinson
in a May 12, 1971 letter from William Langsdorf, the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.
Getting disentangled from these restrictions was to occupy the CSC for most of the decade of the
1970s, as we will see in the next chapter. The story of how policy became this rigid involves the
evolution of off-campus instruction in the CSC and its role in the development of new campuses.
Higher education was desperately needed in outlying areas of the state during the 1940s and 50s. It was
a common pattern for state colleges to establish a base in a town or city from which to offer extension
and summer courses. As demand in these communities increased, the number of courses and the
commitment of the college increased as well. Soon, the communities began to think about having their
own permanent tuition-free facility, and political agitation began in order to persuade the State
Legislature that a new college campus was necessary. Local legislators saw that the accomplishment of
this objective was a very good way to make political friends in their districts and hence to ensure reelection. As a result, several state colleges were founded in this way after having first been extension
and summer sessions outposts of a parent CSC campus Hayward, Bakersfield, Sonoma, San
Bernardino, Fullerton, and Stanislaus. But soon the community demand for new colleges outstripped
the actual need for them. By the early sixties, the political free-for-all that had often characterized the
decision process was somewhat constrained by the provisions of the Master Plan, by the deliberations
of the new California Coordinating Council for Higher Education, and by the CSC Board of Trustees.
Nevertheless, the question of how many new campuses should be built and of where they would be
located continued to remain
Meanwhile, the state colleges continued to offer courses in various off-campus locations. In 1965, for
example, CSC Chico offered a summer session in Redding; the Fresno campus had a session in Visalia
and one in Bakersfield (while the new college there was under construction); Sacramento held a
session at Lake Tahoe; San Francisco was operating a session at its Downtown Center; and San Jose
conducted a Hartnell (junior college) Branch program. Similarly, extension courses were offered in
201 cities in 49 counties. Enrollment in extension courses for credit was more than 57,000.
The official hiatus on new campus development, naturally, did not necessarily stave off local
The campuses, however, were educating large crowds of young
undergraduates -so much so that it was difficult to persuade faculty members that,the "baby boom" would not last forever
and that the situation could change. Faculty did not see the necessity to go off campus to teach students when their classes
were overcrowded on the campus. At the same time, continuing educators were preoccupied with the spread of continuing
professional education, a subject that will be described in more detail further on. What was not so evident in the midsixties was the extent to which off-campus degree programs would become a popular demand.
The interest in off-campus degree programs, not just extension offerings, was first made evident by the
military, which had large numbers of people who were too geographically mobile to stay in residence
in a college through a four-year undergraduate program. San Francisco State College had operated
military education programs at the Presidio and at Hamilton Air Force Base from 1952 until 1966.
Thus, there was a precedent established in the CSC for allowing more than just 24 units of extension
course credit to apply to a degree.
56
Similarly, a policy of providing state-supported off-campus courses in designated centers was initiated in
1956 with the establishment of San Francisco State's Santa Rosa Center. Later, the Calexico Center
followed this pattern.
Land for the Calexico Center was donated to the CSC by Imperial County in 1963. The Center might have
developed along the same lines as other off-campus centers, such as those at Bakersfield and Santa Rosa
which were later upgraded into full-fledged four-year colleges. However, by the late 1960s, demographic
and fiscal projections led the CCHE and legislators to impose limits on the state's capital investment in
higher education. The Calexico "campus" remained a Center.
The Downtown Extension Center of San Francisco State College represents another kind of offcampus
center in the CSC. It housed the entire SFSC extension operation, but it soon became an all-purpose center
where not only extension and summer courses were offered, but special programs for matriculated
students, such as the Experimental Freshmen Year Program, were offered as well. State-supported courses
were offered at the center side-by-side with courses requiring tuition fees.
By 1963 the CCHE had recognized the Downtown Center, along with University of California Extension's
Hill Street Center in Los Angeles, as "general extension centers." The CCHE also specified that any
further plans to establish or upgrade general extension centers should be studied by the State Committee
on Continuing Education and results submitted to the CCHE for consideration. Thus, the SF Downtown
Center enjoyed a peculiar status within the CSC that was unlike that of any other off-campus center. It was
in fact a mini-campus operated by extension administrators.
In 1969 the San Francisco Downtown Center building was declared unsafe by the state fire marshal
because it was a State building used for educational purposes and public assembly. San Francisco State
had neither the will nor the way to bring the building up to code, nor to acquire a suitable new facility, and
it was vacated. In 1971 San Francisco State College Extension moved back to the campus.
The CSC had additional patterns in place through which off-campus courses were offered; travel study was
one of them. Gerth and Grenier (1981) reported that in 1962 the Board of Trustees "adopted a novel
overseas student study program in which state colleges operated learning centers at established foreign
universities, rather than create their own; 'I think we have set academic history by this pioneering of new
approaches,' the Chancellor said" (p. 40). The courses connected study tra',el state-supported and students
were regular matriculated students who wished to include study in a foreign country as part of their CSC
degree program.
In a similar vein, off-campus centers were established for special purposes, such as the Moss Landing
Marine Biology Laboratory, opened in 1967 and operated by San Jose State College on the shores of
Monterey Bay.
Thus, there was a precedent in the CSC for offering state-supported courses off campus in specifically
designated places and centers -some of which, but not all, later became full-fledged campuses.
In June of 1963 the Board of Trustees considered as an agenda item "an increasing demand from various
communities and organizations for establishment of upper division off-campus courses which will yield
normal degree credit" (Minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting, 1963, p. 583). The agenda item had been
triggered by a request to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, from Vandenberg Air Force Base. According to Leo
Cain, Vandenberg personnel found out about the possibilities
of Cal Poly awarding residence credit for courses given on the military base from personnel at the San
Francisco Presidio, where San Francisco State College had been operating residence credit courses as part
of its extension operation under a special policy.
The Board of Trustees approved the idea of off-campus residence credit courses in a resolution passed
at their meeting on June 12, 1963. The resolution stated:
RESOLVED, That at specified locations a state college may offer courses and course sequences
to meet normal major and degree requirements, provided that all the following conditions are met:
1
There exists a need which is recognized by the college and the Trustees as critical and
acute.
2
The need cannot be met satisfactorily by existing campus and local programs.
3
The area of instruction is strictly limited, probably to (me major.
4
Standards equivalent to campus offerings and required for accreditation shall be
maintained.
5
Qualified faculty members are available.
6
Required facilities, including classrooms, library, and laboratories shall be provided at no
cost to the State.
7
The community to be served will defray all or nearly all of the cost of staff salaries.
8
Staff salary rates are equal to salaries paid on campus (pp. 592-93).
A second resolution followed which specifically authorized Cal Poly to implement a program at
Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc, of upper division courses in engineering, science, and
mathematics that would fulfill normal major and degree requirements.
The following year, a bill was introduced to legitimize this program, because technically CSC
extension could not grant residence credit toward a degree. The language of the original bill, put
forward as a result of initiatives on the part of the Chancellor's Office, included the Presidio and
Hamilton Air Force Base along with Vandenberg Air Force Base. When a later version of the bill was
subsequently approved by the Legislature, however, it omitted mention of Hamilton Air Force Base or
the Presidio and limited the program to Vandenberg. The Education Code was revised accordingly.
The Vandenberg program was authorized in terms similar to those adopted by the Trustees' 1963
resolution, but added the proviso that the Coordinating Council must give prior approval to any
programs operated by CSC in the area of military installations. Keith Sexton, Dean of University (of
California) Extension, was then a member of the CCHE staff. He recalls that the private colleges had
expanded their activities to military bases in a major way and they feared the incursion of the CSC into
this domain. Their opposition in the Coordinating Council to CSC's military education led to more
regulation of new educational program development for military clientele.
Subsequently, the Coordinating Council decided that San Francisco State's special programs at
Hamilton and the Presidio were illegal since they had not had prior CCHE approval. When CSC
administrators pointed out that the programs pre-dated the existence of the Coordinating Council by
almost a decade, the Council was not persuaded. The systemwide CSC Academic Senate also got
involved and took a strong stand in opposition to the idea of off-campus residence courses unless they
were offered in established centers, international programs, or summer sessions. The faculty
were concerned about quality control and about the role that they might have to play if they became
itinerant instructors: Added to this was the fact that Hamilton Air Force Base was going to be closed.
The military education programs did not tap any strong vested interests on the San Francisco State
campus, so there was little incentive to turn the CCHE's interpretation of events into a major fight. As
a result, the degree programs operated by San Francisco State College Extension at Hamilton Air
Force Base and the Presidio were terminated in 1966. At that point, almost 600 baccalaureate degrees
had been awarded to personnel at the two military installations.
The irony of the story is that the degree program at Vandenberg Air Force Base, which precipitated a
major state policy discussion, was never actually implemented. Thus, without really gaining anything,
the CSC lost two self-supporting off-campus degree programs that it had been operating successfully,
and saddled itself with both Trustee and Education Code policy that would limit it in the future. In the
next chapter, we will see how attempts to respond to increasing requests for off-campus degree
programs led to the formation of a CSC Commission on External Degrees. Had this so-called
"Vandenberg policy" not been in place, the work of this commission would have been considerably
easier.
in the Late 1960,
1967 and the establishment of the Extension Programs Revenue Fund, surpluses began to accrue in
sufficient amounts to permit some major program development in CSC extension. In 1970 another
Senate Bill (1419) was enacted which expanded the Extension Programs Revenue Fund to include
summer sessions as well. The new Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF) covered all selfsupport programs in the CSC, and the end result was a much greater potential for fiscal independence
on the part of CSC continuing education programs.
By October 1970 the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Continuing Education was able to approve
expenditures of $290,000 of accumulated surplus for the support of innovative extension programs
at 11 colleges. The largest grant ($76,000) went to the San Diego campus for a two-year research'
project on the adaptability of the English Open University model to courses offered through CSC
extension.
The remaining grants were primarily in the $10,000 to $12,000 range. The Chico campus had a project to
support community programs for the mentally retarded. Dominguez Hills was seeking ways and means by
which the college could better relate to the specific needs of Japanese-Americans. CSC Hayward had
three projects funded: an educational needs analysis of adult Asian immigrants in Oakland, a teenage
youth project in Union City, and a research project on administrative in-service programs in the Oakland
Public Schools. CSC Los Angeles project for ing campus police officers and a new non-credit course to
prepare women for re-entry to jobs outside the home. San Fernando Valley State College had a threephase study of the motivation and educational needs of adults not seeking degrees. San Francisco State
developed a Chinese Extension Project and a program for professionals on the diagnosis and treatment of
child abuse. Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo had three projects: proper insecticide and fertilizer use; closed
circuit instructional television for industry; and a cultural enrichment program. Stanislaus conducted an
educational needs analysis in its service area. Sacramento sought two small grants (under $2,500) to
support the First Annual Business and Economic Outlook Conference, and a special program on women's
liberation. Finally, Sonoma State requested funds to establish a humanistic psychology institute for
graduate level training.
By 1970 five more campuses implemented extension programs (the State Colleges at Long Beach,
San Bernardino, and Bakersfield; California Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo; and San
Fernando Valley State College -later California State University, Northridge). Service area boundaries
for extension programs were redrawn to include them, a negotiation in which the Chancellor's
Advisory Committee on Continuing Education had a hand. Members of the Advisory Committee at
this time included continuing education deans Roy Dull from Bakersfield, Gerhard Ehmann from
Fullerton, and Hubert "Mac" McCormick from Sacramento. At the close of fiscal year 1970, more
than 3,700 classes were being offered throughout the system as compared to 779 ten years earlier.
Enrollments had grown from a little over 24,000 to more than 118,000 in the same period. Total
revenue exceeded $3.6 million (as compared to $598,000 in 1960).
With this general growth in numbers and dollars, several new ideas were emerging in CSC extension
programs. First, the concept of concurrent enrollment was pioneered at Sonoma State College during
the mid-sixties. Concurrent enrollment is an administrative device whereby extension students (who
are not matriculated) can take advantage of courses that are offered on campus as part of the regular
program of instruction. The reasoning is that if there are empty seats in regular classrooms, it makes
good sense to fill them with interested extension students. The extension students pay extension fees
for the course and the revenue from these fees is shared in some negotiated manner between the
extension program, which publicizes the courses and tends to the administrative arrangements, and the
department in which the course is taught. This arrangement worked well enough at Sonoma so that
other campuses gradually adopted the idea. It gradually became clear to faculty members, who had
suspicions that extension students would be underqualified, that adult students were not interested in
paying for a course from which they were in no position to benefit. Adult students, who had to
sacrifice both time and money to take extension courses, were in general found to be more motivated
to fulfill the demands of instructors than were younger students. Despite initial reluctance, concurrent
enrollment was adopted as formal policy by the CSC system in 1972 chiefly as a result of the finding
that, on the campuses where concurrent enrollment was being tried, the majority of the students taking
the on-campus class went on to matriculate as regular students. Later, when the campuses began to
experience enrollment fall-offs, concurrent enrollment proved to work well as a means for recruiting
older students who were considering going back to school for a degree but who were unsure about
how they would feel in a classroom. Concurrent enrollment permitted these potential students to "try
out" college to see how things went for them.
An area where there was considerable growth in extension during the 1960s was in non-degree
and non-credit education. In the state colleges, most non-credit activities were organized in a very
decentralized by faculty members and/or an academic department using the campus Foundation as the fiscal
agent. The Foundations usually operate the college bookstore and cafeteria, hold and disburse scholarships,
such primarily were often the preferred avenue in the CSC for developing non-credit education because they
offered greater fiscal flexibility than did extension or summer sessions which are more tightly linked to the
regular degree programs and to established fee and salary policies.
In the mid-sixties, the CSC undertook a survey of non-credit activities on the campuses because it had
become apparent, in Coordinating Council studies and policy initiatives, that the full scope of CSC
continuing education was being misunderstood and misrepresented by the absence of reported
enrollment figures in non-credit activities. Such activities were normally reported by University (of
California) Extension, which appeared to be a much larger program than CSC extension as a result.
For example, in the Coordinating Council's major report on continuing education (1965), UC
Extension enrollment is recorded as 225,936 in 1963-64, of which 48 percent (108,929) was in noncredit activities, such as short courses, workshops, conferences, discussion groups, and other special
programs. Furthermore, UC Extension reported that it was shifting emphasis away from degree credit
instruction toward non-degree professional and postgraduate
education. A similar trend was less evident in the CSC, but some of the deans were already talking
about the emergingimportance of professional continuing education for the future of CSC extension
and summer sessions.
A report issued by the CSC Division of Academic Planning in December 1966 found that 14 of the 18
colleges reported non-credit activity as follows:
Non-Credit Activity
Conferences
Institutes
Short Courses
Lecture Series
Seminars
Workshops
Discussion Groups
Film Series
Peace Corps
Number
Registration
224
39,334
81
6,727
105
3,702
75
22,187
116
7,252
90
9,812
15
1,477
62
9,064
1,128
22 TOTAL
790
100,683
The report notes that probably allChico
activity
hasCollege,
not beenthe
reflected
in thesecollege
figuresproviding
inasmuchservice
as some
State
only four-year
to the Sacramento V
non-credit activity may 'have not
been
known
to
the
particular
campus
office
doing
the
tallying.
The
• of Sacramento, established special extension programs in urban affairs to serve the res
survey indicates that the amount ofthe
non-credit
being carried
in thePlumas,
CSC at Shasta,
this timeSiskiyou,
was
counties education
of Butte, Glenn,
Lassen,out
Modoc,
Tehama, and
on a par with that being offered by UC Extension. However, little of it was integrated with CSC's
extension programs. By 1969-70, however, campus extension programs had begun routinely reporting
• it remained a small percentage of overall enrollment. In 1969-70
non-credit enrollment, although
Fresno State College, in a consortium with the University of California Extension/San
credit enrollment in CSC extension
is reported
as 101,658;
enrollment
as to the migrant M
and systemwide
Fresno City College,
offered
consumernon-credit
and community
education
12,587. Five campuses with extension
programs
reported
no non-credit
activities
American
farm worker
population
in West
Fresno. at all (Fullerton,
California Polytechnic at Pomona, San Diego, Sonoma, and Stanislaus). The largest non-credit
Humboldt
Collegeofinitiated
the "Manila
Community
Development Project" desig
enrollment was at Fresno, with •5,402
or aboutState
43 percent
the campus'
total extension
enrollment.
serve low-income residents of Manila, California. This project involved participation b
volunteers in improving the economic, employment, and environmental conditions of
An example of the kind of non-credit
programs
that were
offered
by the
campuses
at this time is and
a use of governm
citizens
of the district,
with
particular
emphasis
on understanding
series of two-day conferences onresources.
criminal justice held at San Diego State College. Community
response was good with about 125 participants at each monthly offering. Enrollees were quite
diverse, including students, servicemen,
clergy, police, social workers, parents, and former convicts.
•
San Diego
State
in cooperation
with the University of California, San Diego;
The enrollment is not reported, however,
as part
of College,
San Diego's
extension enrollment.
States International University; and the City of San Diego, established the "Urban Obs
a center for the
studybyofthe
the Sacramento
problems of campus
low-income
in southeast San Diego a
Another example is the series of conferences
offered
underfamilies
the sponsorYsidro
and
their
possible
educational
solutions.
ship of the Planned Parenthood Associations to assist youth, parents, social workers, and welfare
recipients in understanding birth
• control and prevention. About 100 participants attended each of the
Sanprogram
Fernando
State College
provided
educational
and vocational
counseling to
monthly three-day conferences. This
wasValley
considered
an extension
program.
The difference
in
and part
Blacks
the northeast
Sanhad
Fernando
andthe
Pacoima.
whether the activity was considered
of in
extension
or not
less to Valley
do with
educational
content or purpose and everything to do with the particular fiscal mechanism employed for collecting
•
San Francisco State College established a Center for Coordination of-Community Res
fees and disbursing funds for expenses.
serve the needs of Asian-Americans within the city of San Francisco. This center offer
disciplinary
academic
programs,
professional
The main point here is that as community
interest
in various
forms ofprovided
continuing
educationcounseling
grew, statetoward the solution
community
problems,
and
encouraged
unified
efforts
by
college personnel were scarcely aware of the scope of response that was being made right ondiverse
their community organizat
own campuses. CSC continuing education was divided into extension and/or summer session, on the
one hand, and Foundation activities on the other. As the clientele for non-degree
and non-credit education grew, there would be increasing dissatisfaction on the part of continuing
education administrators with what they perceived as tight fiscal and bureaucratic controls on
extension and summer sessions. The deans who were interested in being more entrepreneurial and
innovative pointed out the need for more flexibility in policies so as to allow for a speedier response to
a community demand. the deans, who were actually doing the liaison work with their local
communities, were finding out, continuing education was becoming a potentially lucrative, but volatile
and risky business enterprise with a diverse clientele whose demands and needs changed rapidly.
Marketing savvy rather than an understanding of academic traditions was more likely to make the
difference between surplus revenues and budget deficits.
The emphasis, however, in the CSC,. of making continuing education courses as nearly comparable as
possible to the regular academic programs of the campuses, operated against a free-wheeling market
model of continuing education. When compared to UC Extension at this period, CSC extension was
remarkably conservative in the kinds of courses it offered and the types of clientele to which it
appealed. This conservatism constrained the speed with which the CSC adapted to the changing
market for continuing professional education. On the other hand, it could also be viewed as an
advantage, as it would be later when the academic quality of many educational innovations in
continuing education began to be critically scrutinized toward the end of the 1970s. A sampling of 200
credit extension course offerings in the CSC during 1969-70 indicates that approximately 80 percent
were identical in content and instructor with courses in the regular degree programs of the colleges.
Teacher education was still very important with a little over one-third of extension courses designed
for in-service teachers seeking credential credits. Fully 53 percent of all CSC extension classes were
offered for upper division or graduate level credit. Fewer than 40 percent of courses were offered on
campus. This, coupled with the high percentage of courses that were comparable to those in the
regular degree programs, made CSC extension a good candidate for provider of off-campus degree
programs, as we will see in the next chapter.
Meanwhile, continuing education for various professional groups, such as real estate agents and
nurses, was increasing in scope because more state licensing and consumer protection organizations
began to mandate continuing education as a condition for renewal of state licenses. In California there
were 43 such licensing agencies in 1971, and an estimated two million people were subject to
licensing requirements. The state Legislature began to take more interest in continuing education as a
vehicle for ensuring quality control in the professions and, in 1971, Senator George Deukmejian
introduced a Senate Resolution that required all state licensing boards to file
_____nplan with the Senate Committee on Business and the Professions by Iune 1 1972.
__
The CSC saw that out of this interest on the part of state lawmakers, the need would develop for more
information about what the colleges could be doing to respond to the requests for continuing education
courses. A survey project, supervised by Shepard Insel, the Dean of Continuing Education at San
Francisco State College, was funded by the Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF) for this
purpose. The survey looked specifically at seven professional groups: civil engineers, insurance
agents, licensed vocational nurses, psychologists, registered nurses, pharmacists, and realestateagents.
AsubsequentreportbytheInselresearchgroupindicated thatseminarmeetings of fellow professionals in
off-campus work settings, taught by a practicing professional with the needed expertise and
knowledge, was the preferred format for professional education. The report listed courses that the
campuses could develop that had been suggested by respondents to the survey. The results of the
survey were of considerable practical utility to the deans of continuing education as they contemplated
new program development.
62
With the advent of serious formal interest in professional continuing education on a massive scale, the
diversification of esc extension that had begun on a few campuses in the early 1960s intensified. The
workforce of California was becoming increasingly professionalized as a move toward a postindustrial economy progressed and, as a result, several factors were becoming clearer to continuing
education administrators in the CSC system. First, greater flexibility in the awarding of credit was
needed since professional groups varied in the extent to which they were interested in further college
degrees. For example, nurses were quite interested in opportunities to complete a bachelor's degree,
whereas pharmacists and psychologists, most of whom already held degrees as a condition of
licensing, were less interested. However, some form of credit or recognition was needed to ensure
instructional quality and standardization. The national move toward the development of the CEU
(Continuing Education Unit) reflected this effort to bring some standardization and comparability into
non-degree education by setting guidelines for the number of instructional hours in relation to the
number of units that a college could award as credit.
Second, the geographic dispersal of professionals throughout the state who were in need of ways to
get the continuing education mandated by law made it clear that educational technologies, such as
instructional television, needed to be explored and considerably expanded in the CSC.
Finally, the student constitutency which was going to receive the instruction was clearly a group that
had to be involved in the planning of the educational experience. This meant that curriculum
development by faculty committees -the model that was customarily used on the campus for
development of regular academic courses -was not going to be a suitable model when working with
adult professionals who expected a much larger share of control over how they were going to spend
their continuing education time and dollars. Two forms of education -one a facultydriven model, and
the other a student-driven model -would soon begin to come into closer contact and, at the same time,
into more conflict. Students demands during the protests of the 1960s for more relevance in their
education, more student input into decisions about what was taught and how, and less elitism on the
part of faculty were echoed in the structure of continuing professional education. Adult professionals
were not about to accept an educational model based on the old maxim, in loco parentis. Continuing
education adminstrators and teachers discovered this fact long before the message was driven home to
more traditional academics.
It was during the decade of the 1960s that continuing education began to become the focus of national
concern. The shifting demographics and age composition of the US population produced a brief period of
interest in federal support for "lifelong learning." For example, President John F. Kennedy's Aid to Higher
education. He stated:
Education need not and should not end upon graduation at any level. An increasing number of
Americans recognize the need and the value of continuing education. The accountant, the salesman,
the merchant, the skilled and the semi-skilled worker, all interested in self-improvement, should all
be afforded the opportunity of securing up-to-date knowledge and skills. Only one American in
eight has ever taken as much as one college course: Yet the state universities and landgrant colleges
which offer the majority of extension or part-time courses enroll less than 500,000 people. Due to
inadequate finances and facilities these colleges can offer only a very limited adult education
program.
I recommend legislation authorizing Federal grants to states for expanding university extension
courses in landgrant colleges and state universities. (Quoted in
Within Continuing Education, September, 1965, p. 67)
esc
report, Extension Activities
63
Subsequently, Title I of the Higher Education Act of 1965 provided states with funds to support community
services ,and continuing education activities by colleges and universities. The activities were to be specially
targeted toward the economically disadvantaged. In California the funds were allocated by the Coordinating
Council on the basis of competitive proposals. In 1970-71 six state colleges were participating in projects funded
by Title I money:
Non-Credit Activity
Number
Registration
Conferences
Institutes
Short Courses
Lecture Series
Seminars
Workshops
Discussion Groups
Film Series
Peace Corps
224
39,334
81
6,727
105
3,702
75
22,187
116
7,252
90
9,812
15
1,477
62
9,064
1,128
22 TOTAL
790
100,683
Chico State College, the only four-year college providing service to the Sacramento Valley north
• of Sacramento, established special extension programs in urban affairs to serve the residents of
the counties of Butte, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity.
•
Fresno State College, in a consortium with the University of California Extension/Santa Cruz
and Fresno City College, offered consumer and community education to the migrant MexicanAmerican farm worker population in West Fresno.
• Humboldt State College initiated the "Manila Community Development Project" designed to
serve low-income residents of Manila, California. This project involved participation by student
volunteers in improving the economic, employment, and environmental conditions of the
citizens of the district, with particular emphasis on understanding and use of government
resources.
•
San Diego State College, in cooperation with the University of California, San Diego; United
While all of these
projects
did notUniversity;
necessarilyand
meetthetheir
a tremendous
amountthe
of "Urban
enthusiasm
States
International
Citygoals,
of San
Diego, established
Observatory,"
a center for the study of the problems of low-income families in southeast San Diego and San
eraGerth
of political
though it may
haveand
been,
waspossible
not entirely
negative
for the CSC.
and Grenier (1981) sum
Ysidro
their
educational
solutions.
up their impressions of the CSC's positive accomplishments in this difficult decade:
•
San Fernando Valley State College provided educational and vocational counseling to Chicanos
(The years 1967-70)
were aintime
consolidation,
completing
the process
of building the largest
and Blacks
the of
northeast
San Fernando
Valley
and Pacoima.
system of education in the United States. A process of mutual socialization was going on between
•
the Board and the
procedures awere
established
for consulting
students
Sancampuses.
FranciscoMore
Statespecifically,
College established
Center
for Coordination
of-Community
Resources to
more closely in serve
curricular
and personnel
decisions. A new
set ofthe
student
disciplinary
procedures
the needs
of Asian-Americans
within
city of
San Francisco.
This was
center offered interadopted (1970).disciplinary
A new Educational
Program went
into effect
in September,
academicOpportunity
programs, provided
professional
counseling
toward1968,
the solution of
which increasedcommunity
from two problems,
to four percent
the
number
of
students
who
could
be
admitted
and encouraged unified efforts by diverse communityas
organizations.
exceptions to normal enrollment standards; the funding it provided for student counseling increased
annually. Ethnic studies curricula were developed, and traditional programs were adapted to the
needs of minority students. Experimental colleges and other forms of nontraditional education were
subjected to critical scrutiny, and the best of these programs were given a clean bill of health; their
acceptance paved the way for some of the innovations of the 1970s. (p. 58)
64
It is important to remember that all of the events that took place on the CSC campuses during this decade
did so against a background in which steady and intense enrollment growth was both experienced and
expected for the foreseeable future. In sixty years, the CSC had gone from a total student em:ollment of
fewer than 2,000 students to over 224,000 by 1969. The number of degrees that the colleges awarded had
increased from 5,450 in 1949-50 to 44,224 twenty years later. The faculty had grown -from a little over
1,300 full-time teachers in 1951-52 to about 3,700 in 1960-61 to more than 11,000 by 1970-71.
the faculty grew in numbers, they flexed their professional muscles as a higher education interest group.
The mid-sixties saw not only student protests about exclusion from educational decisionmaking, but
faculty activism and collective bargaining as well.
Regrettably, growth and activism collided with the state government's increasing worry over revenue
shortages. Gerth, Haehn & Associates (1971) report:
The first major crisis of (Governor Ronald) Reagan's administration in 1967 was financial; all budgets
were reviewed to determine possible lower levels ofsupport. Nevertheless, in an atmosphere of
continuing fiscal crisis and pressure, the colleges still received basic support for programs until 1970. In
June 1970, in response to a clear public outcry, the Legislature failed to grant state college and university
faculty members a 5 percent cost of living salary adjustment given to all state employees. This was
merely a notice of things yet to come; when the governor submitted his budget to the legislature in 1971
for fiscal year 1971-1972, there were substantial and selective reductions in the level of support.... The
staffing ratios for instruction were changed in the budget submission. Clearly, the assumptions of the
state college system about necessary levels of financial support were more open to question than at any
time since the end of World War II. (pp. 216-217)
These budget cuts in faculty allocations for carrying out instruction came on the heels of widespread
concern during the 1970 legislative session about enrollment policies in the state colleges. Hearings were
held to determine the extent of the problems that California citizens were having in getting admitted to the
state colleges. With the new ethnic consciousness that had developed out of the 1960s Civil Rights
movement, concern revolved around possible racist and elitist assumptions in admissions. With the state
facing severely limited resources, more efficient utilization of existing campus resources became a
commonly accepted solution. Faculty representatives facetiously suggested that the campuses run 24 hours
a day, with special rates for off hours, and no fees between ten at night and seven in the morning.
Predictably, this attitude did not impress the Legislature (Gregg and Jones, 1971). What did come out of
the discussions was a decision taken by the Legislature to create a joint committee to review the Master
Plan, and once again the process of formally reviewing the state's organization and funding of higher
education was launched. The outcome of the work of the Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher
Education, chaired by State Assemblyman John Vasconcellos of Santa Clara, was presented to the citizens
of California in 1973 and will be discussed in the following chapter.
Internally, there were a number of issues confronting the CSC system: campus diversity versus uniformity;
a regional versus a statewide orientation; the status of the campuses as colleges or as universities; faculty
versus administration in governance issues; college presidents versus the Office of the Chancellor;
centralized control versus local autonomy (Spalding, 1971). These issues were not really problems to be
solved once and for all, but were instead evolving as permanent dynamics to be balanced within the CSC
system. Finding and holding the "golden mean" so that neither pole of the dynamic became dominant at the
expense of the other became a challenge for the administration of the CSC as the 1970s began.
There were a number of practical problems for continuing education that needed to be addressed against the
background of these more general systemwide concerns. First, continuing education deans had to relate
themselves not only to their own campus faculties and administrations, but to the central office of the
Chancellor and to his staff, including a systemwide Coordinator of Continuing Education. Second, with the
institution of the Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF), which allowed the campus and the
Chancellor's Office to divide and keep surplus revenues instead of returning them to the State General
Fund, new program development was not only supported, but was required of the deans. Social conditions
had changed sufficiently so that they could not passively coast along, simply responding to requests from
familiar clients such as school administrators. They had to orient themselves and their staffs to a much
broader array of professions and to a competitive market where adult students "shopped" for the best, the
cheapest, and the most convenient forms of continuing education. Itwas either develop marketing skills or
watch their programs run into the red financially.
Third, with the advent of CERF, and the buildup of fiscal reserves, legislative scrutiny of CSC continuing
education fiscal policy intensified. The State Department of Finance became more interested in whether
and to what degree state funds were being used by self-support programs since the state was no longer
receiving repayments of surplus revenues. Investigation of indirect costs of summer sessions and extension
resulted in efforts to establish policy that would force summer sessions and extension to repay the
campuses and the state for certain services rendered, such as accounting, student registration, janitorial
services, etc., that were currently folded into the state budget allocation to the campus. As a result,
continuing education costs began gradually to climb in relation to the fees charged to students. The
additional money that became available with the institution of CERF was earmarked for innovation, not for
covering operational deficits. However, the campus continuing education programs did have some
discretion in how much surplus revenue they would declare. As a result of CERF, fiscal procedures in
continuing education became more complicated and the deans required more accounting expertise to deal
with the changes.
Fourth, faculty had become increasingly powerful during the 1950s and 1960s, both in terms of their role
in campus governance and in their capacity to gain salary increases. As faculty salaries in summer session
and extension rose, costs for continuing education programs escalated.
Finally, the combined result of an intensified legislative emphasis on making CSC continuing education
fully self-supporting, even as program costs were rising, meant that more efficient use of available
resources was necessary on the part of continuing education administrators. They began to have some
continuing education needs of their ownl Taking college courses in marketing, public
_____and
trator considerably.
From the perspective of the campus as a whole, there needed to be a more effective integration of statesupport and self-support programs to achieve the overall purposes of the state colleges. This meant that the
needs of young people for residential degree programs and the needs of working adults for accessible
instruction had to be balanced. No doubt the CSC campuses (and the system as a whole) would have been
forced to innovate even if the intellectual and social climate of the 1960s had not encouraged change. The
combined effect of alterations in enrollment patterns as the general population aged, rising costs, and
diminishing state budget allocations placed critical strains on existing CSC policy and habits. However,
there was national and international interest in educational innovation to support efforts by the CSC to
change. During the late 1960s, there was a great deal of discussion on the campuses. Chancellor Glenn
Dumke and his staff began to think seriously about recommending some major changes in the structure of
CSC educational programs to the Board of Trustees and to the campuses because the time appeared ripe for
66
developing a new consensus about the mission of the CSC. In January of 1971 Chancellor Dumke made a
formal to the Board of Trustees which has since been labeled his "call for new approaches."
Dr. Dumke called on the campuses to rethink higher education. He suggested expansion of offcampus
instruction and noted the rigidities in current CSC operations that resulted in too much focus on
students in residence and not enough attention to those students in outlying areas, often adult
professionals, who were in need of access to higher education. He called for an alternative that
included "television, correspondence courses, self-study combined with short-course on-campus
programs, taped lectures with study guides to comprise programmed learning, as well as classroom
instruction on or off campus." Dr. Dumke specified that these innovations were to be funded on a
self-support basis so as not to create impossible demands on the state budget.
Chancellor Dumke's 1971 "call" marks a major turning point in CSC Continuing Education and a new
era began. One major result of his speech was the establishment of the Commission on External
Degree Programs in the following year and a renewed interest in the system's continuing education
programs. The activities of this commission came to dominate the overall planning of educational
innovations in the CSC during the decade of the 1970s. The advent of external degrees in the CSC
was to irrevocably change the traditional relationships between "regular" academic programs and selfsupport continuing education programs. As we will see in the following chapter, policies that received
their initial review and recommendations from the new commission were to change the face of CSC
continuing education in a manner that looks both forward to the future and backward toward the
traditional mission of the state teachers colleges -the educational development of in-service
professionals.
CHAPTER 4
Innovation and Change (1972·1977)
Chancellor Dumke's "New Approaches" presentation to the Board of Trustees' Committee on Educational
Policy on January 26, 1971 precipitated an intense period of innovation within the CSC. In his address Dr.
Dumke did more than recommend some changes in existing practices; he suggested a total overhaul in the
philosophy and practices of the state college system. He stated:
I believe that the time for fundamental changes in the character of, and in our approach to,
higher education has come. Students and faculties alike have been questioning the educational
results of our current systems, and many of us have serious doubts about their continuing
efficacy. In addition, the increasing pressures upon the tax dollar, both in California and
throughout the nation, make it very clear that under existing systems, we will either have limit
our service, or thin out our operational quality, neither of them very acceptable as alternatives.
The necessary changes will not be brought about by the inflexible, tradition-ridden, Ivy-Leaguetype universities, but rather by institutions like ours, young enough to be flexible, historically
teaching-oriented, and not afraid to try something new. (p.l)
Although the calls for reforms included all aspects of campus functioning, continuing education was
singled out for a special role:
Related to this proposal is the possibility of providing degree opportunities for substantial
numbers of students other than through an on-campus program as students-in-residence students who, under our present rigid systems, we cannot hope to serve. Our extension
operations should provide a degree aspirant with an alternative to the on-campus program....
They would also provide for the giving of degrees through extension, and the consequent
upgrading of current extension offerings. . . . This proposal suggests the need to view the regular
and extension programs as much more closely inter-related than is now the case. Extension
courses, under these proposals, must be made eqUivalent to the regular academic offerings. This
is the means, however, by which the door of educational opportunity would be opened to
thousands and thousands of additional students, especially those who for economic or personal
reasons cannot afford to take four years out of their most productive period of life to attend
college. (pp. 8-10)
The time was ripe for major change. In the early 1970s, several national studies were issued that
dthrust of Chancellor Dumke's plan. The US Office of Education funded a task force, chaired by Frank Newman, that
created considerable discussion when it as the "Newman Report:' which criticized existing higher education practices and
made radical suggestions for reforms. The Carnegie Commission for Higher Education began a series of reports in which it
echoed some of the concerns of the "Newman Report" though in a less critical tone. In California a 1972 report sponsored
by the CCHE and a 1973 report by the Legislature's Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education supported
greater institutional flexibility and access to higher education for a broader population of students. Within the CSC there
were many faculty and administrators just waiting for a chance to break out of traditional habits. Chancellor Dumke's call
for new approaches helped to legitimize their impulse to reform and gave a boost of energy to those who supported the
idea of innovation.
It is possible, however, that the period of intense criticism of higher education might have died
away without many reforms being implemented had there not also been accompanying demographic
and economic changes that effectively forced most educational bureaucracies into an organized
mode of self study. These changes included a decline in the birth rate beginning around 1960 that
alerted colleges to expect a dramatic decline in the number of 17-21 year olds who would be applying
for admission to college in the late 1970s and 1980s. In fact, the United States fell below replacement
level fertility in 1972. Relative increases in the numbers of people over the age of 25, however,
suggested to the colleges and universities that their classrooms would probably continue to fill but with
a different kind of student than they were accustomed to -employed adults.
In both 1969 and 1972, the US Office of Education, in cooperation with the Bureau of the Census,
surveyed some 50,000 households, or about 105,000 people to determine their participation rates in
adult continuing education. "Adult continuing education" was defined as "organized instruction for
persons age 17 and over who were not regular full-time students" (Gilford, p. 410). The survey found
that about 15.5 million people participated in some form of adult continuing education -nearly double
the number of college students enrolled for degrees and about 600,000 more than the entire high school
population in grades 9 through 12. Furthermore, adult continuing education was growing. Between
1969 and 1972, the survey determined that the number of participants had grown by 20.7 percent.
Though part of this growth was explained on the basis of the relative growth of the adult population,
there was also real growth. For example, in 1957, 1 in 13 eligible adults participated in adult
continuing education, whereas by 1972 the figure was 1 in 8. Women accounted for a large proportion
of the increase, with their growth in participation double that of men's. Participation rates were highest
in the segments of the population with either a college degree already or some college. Occupational
education, along with general education, by far outstripped an interest in recreational, personal, and
community concerns, suggesting that adult continuing education was related to economic upward
mobility, at least as far as its participants were concerned (Gilford, 1975).
Competition by deliverers of adult continuing education naturally began to increase as it became
common knowledge that the baby boom generation had become adult consumers and that they
represented a lucrative market for all kinds of goods and services, including education. Four-year
colleges and universities emerged in the surveys as the largest providers, with about 20 percent of the
total student participants in their programs. However, the rate of growth between 1969 and 1972
showed that the largest increases in enrollees were in two-year colleges and technical institutes (both
public and private), community organizations (for example, the Red Cross or the YMCA), and various
professional groups, such as unions or hospitals (Gilford, 1975). In fact, enrollments increased so
wildly in the local district adult schools and community colleges in California that the Legislature
became seriously alarmed that the state would not be able to honor its commitments. In 1973 the State
Department of Finance issued some frightening projections that resulted in a 1975 "cap" in the
Governor's Budget on state apportionments for adult education. In for a percent enrollment growth as
compared to the 37.8 percent growth that had been projected. Because of such potential for growth, the
Legislature felt besieged by demands for adult and continuing education funds, in turn making their
financial analysts deeply suspicious of any attempts by the state colleges to increase their share. a
result, it became clear to the Chancellor's Office that the CSC was going to have to innovate with little
financial help from the state.
In addition, there were changes within the population of college attenders themselves. The American
Council on Education reported that between 1969 and 1972 the rate of increase in numbers of
collegiate part-time students was three and one-half times as great as for full-time students
(35.3 percent vs. 10.1 percent). In 1972, for the first time in American history, approximately half of
the students (including both degree and non-degree) in colleges and universities were part time. The
shift from full-to part-time study was particularly marked at the graduate level, where full-time
enrollment dropped from 50.1 percent in 1967 to 36.9 percent by 1972. More and more students were
working their way through college.
By 1972 the campuses were no longer facing the steadily increasing enrollments of the two previous
decades. The rate of growth began to slow and by 1975 had leveled off. A new concept, the "steady state,"
was gradually taking a hold of the thinking of administrators and faculty. Within the CSC, national trends
were mirrored in the gradual decline of full-time students, from 66 percent in 1971 to 60 percent ten years
later. However, a consequence of the shift to a higher percentage of part-time students was an increase in
the actual number of students coming to and from the campus, each with their individual requirements for
support services and class scheduling. This merely confused the enrollment picture since budgets for the
colleges were figured on the basis of full-time equivalent students. It was theoretically possible for the
colleges to have more bodies to serve while actually receiving fewer dollars because of the state formulae
used to calculate appropriations. What this actually meant to a campus is described by Gilbert and Burdick
in their history of San Jose State University:
In March 1974, Academic Vice President Hobert Burns announced that the university had failed
to make its budgeted enrollment for the spring semester. After a decade of increasing student
enrollment, the university was now facing a "steady state" period.... Preliminary figures for
spring enrollment showed an F.T.E.S. (total student credit units divided by 15) of 19,365
whereas the university was budgeted for ... 20,800 minimum. It was expected that the university
would be forced to return $553,600 in funds to the state. (p. 206)
In order to return such a large amount of money, the San Jose campus was faced with the prospect of
laying off staff and/or faculty rather than merely cutting back on maintenance and luxuries. It was
experiences of this sort on campuses that helped to persuade administrators and faculty that innovation
rather than business as usual was essential for organizational survival.
There was, in fact, no shortage of potential students. However, the students who usually attended the
regular programs of the colleges -young, first-time college-goers fresh from high school were dwindling in
numbers. More middle-aged women began to return to college to complete degrees they had abandoned
when they married. The number of women students increased from 42 percent in 1971 to 52 percent by
1980, and they contributed substantially to the trend toward part-time study since a large percentage of
them had children at home. Ethnic minorities were encouraged by the Civil Rights Movement to seek entry
to professions had previously been closed to all but a select few Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics.
The general public concern with access for people to whom a college education seemed an impossible goal
was in part a result of the Civil Rights Movement, which had produced a change in American thinking
about equality, opportunity and Legislation during the term of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson earmarked
large amounts of money for higher education and affirmative action for ethnic minorities and women who
were seriously underrepresented among college and university graduates. Access to educational
opportunity became a rallying cry for many educational reformers whose philosophy was egalitarian and
populist. Scholarships and other financial aid to students began to be awarded less on the basis of
outstanding merit and more on the basis of economic need.
At the campus level, the faculty were seeing a student body which was gradually getting older, more likely
to be married and raising children, working, ethnically more diverse, and interested primarily in advancing
career prospects. Actually, the college population was beginning to look more like it had in the pre-baby
boom days of the 1940s and 1950s. Then, working teachers and veterans made up a sizable portion of state
college students. However, younger CSC faculty and administrators, accustomed to classes full of 18 to 21
years olds during the 1960s, were being treated to a new experience.
The 1960s had demonstrated how outspoken students could be in criticizing their education. The
1970s became a time. when the college campuses internalized those criticisms and tried to respond
with changes in their programs and procedures. For the California State Colleges, the irony was that
they had had less than a decade to consolidate themselves into a system. They had put in place
educational and administrative procedures that would serve to garner them status as universities -a
recognition reflected in an Assembly Bill that changed the name of the system to California State
University and Colleges (CSUC) in 1971. But no sooner was this accomplished than it was time to
dismantle existing procedures and set new ones in place.
The budget cutting by the Legislature and Governor that had begun in earnest in the late 1960s
became a way of life for the CSUC in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Inflation, increases in the national
debt, and destabilization of the dollar in the international market all served to weaken the capacity of
the states and the educational institutions to maintain prior budget levels. CSUC historians Donald
Gerth and Judson Grenier comment
Each year of the 1970s brought financial pressures of a different kind upon the system. Chancellor's
staff and the Trustees became inured to pleas for budgetary "belt-tightening." Whereas in 1967 they
had been shocked by a suggestion that the proposed budget be trimmed by 10 percent, by 1980,
such proposals were routine, with cuts forced on the system in times of emergency.
Given steady-state conditions, master planning became even more important to the future of
CSUC; constituencies recognized that when money grows scarce, enrollments plateau, or political
interference increases, planning is essential for academic survival.
The 1970s also produced the need for plans which were readily adaptable to demographic change
and student access. Only review of the status of existing programs coupled with projections of
future needs could indicate whether the system was planning properly. (pp. 60-61)
It became harder and harder for the CSUC to hold the Legislature to its traditional commitment to
tuition-free higher education, a state policy in place since the Organic Act of 1868 and a major tenet
of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. By 1970 the Trustees were constrained to concede that
the concept of tuition was appropriate in certain circumstances to augment General Fund support.
Hence, the Chancellor's Office took the position that "new approaches" should make use, where
possible, of self-support programs already in place.
It is against this background that a number of groups were created within the CSUC system to look at
here matters stood and ho,the inno,,'ations called for by the Chancellor could be put into effect. One
of the most important of these, and of enduring impact on continuing education, was the Commission
on External Degrees.
The Commission on External Degrees (1972-1977)
In April 1971 Chancellor Dumke appointed two campus presidents, two campus administrators, two
members of his own staff, and two faculty members nominated by the statewide Academic Senate to
comprise a new planning body -the Commission on External Degrees. Thomas McGrath, President of
Sonoma State College, was asked to serve as the Chairperson. No deans of continuing education were
officially appointed to the Commission -a subject that was taken up at the Commission's first meeting
-although Ralph Mills, head of the CSU Chico continuing education programs, was appointed by the
Academic Senate as a faculty representative. From the first, the Commission's meetings were heavily
weighted with high level administrators and Chancellor's Office personnel because the body was
conceptualized as advisory in nature. It had no formal
powers of its own, and, therefore, it required political credibility and persuasive power with the full
range of constituencies involved in CSUC decision-making.
There was a certain amount of grumbling by the campus continuing education deans who were not
happy about being excluded from formal membership on a planning body whose work was likely to
impact their roles in substantial ways. The continuing education deans were to express increasing
dissatisfaction with Chancellor's Office decision-making as the decade wore on. early as 1971,
Richard Barbera was reporting to his immediate superior, Gerhard Friedrich, in a Chancellor's Office
memo that "there is an undercurrent of feeling among the deans that they as the proverbial geese that
lay golden eggs -are being exploited by the Chancellor's Office for systemwide purposes. We will of
course continue to consult with them for the sake of overall common purposes and understanding."
Since it was continuing education revenues that were slated to provide start-up funds to support
development of the Commission's plans for external degree programs, the deans felt that they were
entitled to more of a role in decisions about continuing education's future. Their financial contribution
was not negligible since by the end of fiscal year 1971 there was over $1.1 million in the Continuing
Education Reserve Fund (CERF) of the 19 campuses, of which the portion earmarked as the
Systemwide Reserve Fund to be dispersed by the Chancellor's Office was $155,236.
The Commission was not conceptualized as a body to represent continuing education interests,
however. Its purpose was to establish a basis for extending the programs of the CSUC to a wider
group of students, specifically adult professionals. The specific charge to the Commission from
Chancellor Dumke stated that it was to
develop alternative procedures for assigning degree "credit" and the awarding of degrees; to propose
ways in which our campuses could explore with government agencies and private businesses the need for
and feasibility of establishing external programs which would serve the needs of both employers and
employees; and to study and make recommendations on educational delivery systems for use in external
programs. (Quoted in Commission on External Degrees, 1976, p. 2)
The new Commission met for the first time in May 1971 at the Sonoma State College campus. By
June it had a regular executive secretary appointed to it in the person of George McCabe, a faculty
member from Sonoma State College. McCabe had played a role in external education as former
director of the Santa Rosa Center operated out of San Francisco State College in the 1950s.
executive secretary, he was responsible for liaison between the Commission and the campuses, and
between the Commission and occupational groups potentially interested in external programs. He was
expected to provide consultation for those campuses in the early stages of developing programs. And
he in persuading Commission undertake a series of market studies in local communities to determine
need and interest in external degree programs. These surveys were subsequently carried out under the
aegis of the Commission by Frank Siroky, also a faculty member at Sonoma State College and a
member of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Continuing Education. These various experiences
were instrumental in McCabe's selection in 1973 as Director of the CSUC Consortium, which will be
described in more detail later.
Among the first tasks of Commission members was to figure out where they stood in relation to other
formally constituted bodies within the bureaucratic structure of the system. The Commission's charge
overlapped to some extent the regular functions of other offices and positions, for example, those of
the Division of Academic Planning in the Chancellor's Office, and of the Coordinator of Continuing
Education (a position which in 1972 was upgraded to "State University Dean for Continuing
Education" and assigned to Ralph Mills from CSU Chico). Dr. Mills' record as an innovative and
creative administrator at Chico made him a good choice for the position. He continued as a member of
the Commission in this new role.
The Commission also overlapped the duties of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Continuing
Education which had been in place since 1968. A joint meeting of the Advisory Committee on
Continuing Education and the Commission was held in May 1971 to discuss matters of common
concern -the allocation of CERF money and the financial situation of CSC continuing education, the
role of the Chancellor's staff and the new office of State University Dean, and review of the 1969
"provisions for continuing education" under which the campus extension and summer sessions
programs were currently operating. Adding more complexity to the list of interested parties, in 1972
the California Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE) developed an Advisory Committee
on the Study of External Degree Programs and Related Non-traditional Studies in California.
The Commission on External Degree Programs soon added continuing education dean Donald Morris
of Cal Polytechnic College at San Luis Obispo to its membership, who became the deans'
representative. A semi-permanent agenda was established which included a variety of issues
connected with external programs: assessment both of community needs for programs and of faculty
resources, interests and needs; academic quality control; necessary legislative actions to support
policy change; integration of new programs within the existing procedural framework of the CSUC
system; implementation at the campus level; statewide coordination of programs; cost effectiveness
and resource utilization; use of CERF monies; and cooperation with other institutions.
The Commission settled on a definition of what an external degree is -no mean feat in an era in which
there were hundreds of labels designed to signal educational innovation. The Commission's 1976
report to the Chancellor states:
Although there is little standardization of terminology relating to these new programs, the term
external degree program characteristically refers to degree programs in which all or a major portion
of the instruction takes place off the campus and often through modes that are different from those
usually associated with the traditional "internal" degree programs conducted by most colleges and
universities. Though not uniquely the attributes of "external degree programs," distinctive traits of
these programs tend to include some or all of the following: special scheduling of classes to make
attendance convenient for adults with work and family responsibilities (weekends, late afternoons,
and evenings), instruction at off-campus locations, independent study (sometimes coupled with
short periods of intensive instruction on campus or at off-campus learning centers, use of telephone
networks, TV broadcasts, TV links and networks of various kinds, exchange of tape cassettes, etc.),
awarding of degree credit by various means of assessing or evaluating competence or knowledge
previously acquired at work or in other non-academic settings, and extensive use (not only in
connection with the independent study mentioned above) of electronic and other modern
instructional technologies. A frequent, though not a necessary or intrinsic feature of external degree
programs, is the accommodation of the program objectives and other features to the particular needs
and interests of special -often occupational -categories of students, and even to the unique needs and
interests of the individual student. (p. 1)
The Commission's report notes that its definition is compatible with that provided by Cyril Houle in
his book, The External Degree, which appeared in 1973. This book reflected a national perspective and
had the effect of helping to define and legitimize the concept of the external degree. However, when
the Commission began its work in 1971, there were already many such programs in operation
throughout California and other parts of the country. They were primarily found in private colleges
and universities, which, with their greater freedom from legislative restrictions, complicated funding
formulae, and bureaucratic ties to a "system," moved into the innovative mode with great speed and
zeal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1972 survey conducted by the CCHE found 145 external
degree programs at the bachelor's level or higher in California. Of these, 131 were offered by nine
private universities and colleges. Many of the external programs of the private colleges
were offered on military bases -an irony from the state college perspective, considering that San
Francisco State .College had operated such degree programs between 1952 and 1966, long before the
wave of innovation hit American higher education.
The CSUC system also had a campus that had moved early into the external degree format. In 1969
CSC Chico began a program in the town of Redding for police officers, initiated originally by Royce
Delmatier, a Chico professor of political science, and Ralph Mills, then Chico's Assistant Vice
President in charge of community programs. The Chico campus is uniquely situated in that it has a
rural service area that extends over most of inland California in the northern one-third of the state -an
area that includes eight sparsely populated counties large enough to contain the states of
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, with space left over. In its effort to provide education
to its "community," CSC Chico faced the challenge of serving a far-flung population. The geographic
situation stimulated the campus from its inception to think regionally in terms of off-campus centers
and/or radio, television and computer connections to students at a distance.
In designing a degree program for the continuing education of police officers in public administration,
the campus ran into the same problems that military personnel had complained about to Chancellor
Dumke as described in the previous chapter: courses that were offered during the summer months
carried degree and residence credit; courses offered at other times of the year through extension could
only be used toward the degree up to a limit of 24 semester units. These regulations complicated the
scheduling of self-support courses that were part of a degree sequence and, from the perspective of
the students, made no sense at all. The regulations merely retarded their progress toward degree
completion. To get around the restrictions on extension, the Chico campus invented the concept of
Resident Extension Credit (REX) and established certain extension courses, with the concurrence of
the campus administration and Academic Senate, as being fully transferable to the special degree
program in public administration designed for the police officers.
When this maneuver around policy restrictions came to light in the discussion and evaluation of the
structure of Chico's program by the Commission, it was judged to be illegal by the Chancellor's
Office staff. In a July 14, 1971 letter to Donald Gerth, Vice President for Academic Affairs at CSC
Chico, from Gerhard Friedrich, the State College Dean for Academic Planning in the Chancellor's
Office, Gerth is taken to task for assuming that "residence extension credit" was acceptable. Friedrich
says:
I admire your initiative and resourcefulness in this matter. The essential value of this kind of
enterprise clear. What not been quite so the implications of regulations
to "residence," "extension credit," and "off-campus centers." From that viewpoint it seems that
it would have been highly desirable for the college formally to check out the considerations and
procedures related to your Advisory Committee minutes of October 31, 1968, i.e., three years
ago: "It was agreed that every effort should be made to develop an upper division public
administration degree program in Redding."
Friedrich's letter goes on to deny that an informal verbal disCUSSion, referred to by Gerth, had taken
place with a member of Friedrich's staff.·Friedrich enclosed a copy of the Chancellor's staff analysis
of the situation. This memo, from Friedrich's assistant Gary Levine, is dated June 30, 1971. It states:
It is clear from Section 40403 (Title 5, California Adminstrative Code) that extension credit may
not be used in fulfilling the minimum residence requirement. Therefore, the issue of the legitimacy
of the Chico proposal turns on the definition of "extension," and the question of whether Chico's
summer session offerings off campus are part of the regular summer session or the extension program.
Dr. Barbera (Coordinator of Continuing Education in the Chancellor's Office through 1972) has suggested
that the primary element in determining what should be considered as extension and what should be
considered as regular session is geography. In his words, "If a course is offered in a location even one foot
beyond the legal boundaries of the college, then that is an extension course." (p. 1)
While it is true that off-campus location often served to delineate extension courses from courses in the
regular state-supported programs, there is no evidence that summer courses were so divided. Summer
sessions had operated both on and off campus since the days of the normal schools. The deans did not
maintain separate extension accounts for those summer courses that happened to be offered off campus. To
do so would have been unnecessarily cumbersome. Furthermore, all summer session courses had always
carried full degree and residency credits regardless of location. Levine's conception of the problem is
somewhat puzzling in this regard.
Levine's memo to Friedrich goes on to report that the issue does not appear to involve the CCHE, which
under its then current policy, had no "specific strictures" on the operation of centers at which matriculated
students could complete some or all of their residence requirements for a degree. Levine concluded that
"the decision on the Chico proposal rests primarily within the system." This statement suggests that the
CSUC could have legally established Redding as a CSU Chico "center" where the courses could have been
offered as part of the regular academic programs of the campus, that is, using state support. Or the
extension courses could have been specially designated as carrying residence credit -the position that CSC
Chico had taken. There was, in fact, precedent for this alternative set at San Jose State College when the
campus was authorized to provide residence credit graduate courses through extension to the teachers of
the Monterey-Salinas area. When Monterey County lost its bid for a new campus in Castroville, local
politicians were assured that San Jose State College would provide whatever education was most needed.
In seeking clarification of policy, the San Jose campus had been infonned that residence credit was
"university defined" without reference to geographical location. This precedent was apparently overlooked
by Mr. Levine.
The unsettled nature of systemwide CSUC policy is revealed in Levine's memo which states:
Mayer Chapman of the Office of General Counsel has informed me, off the record, that their of the of
residence has "on campus course offerings." However, this problem has never been thoroughly researched
by the Legal Staff, and he suggests that we consider putting the question to them for comprehensive
analysis. I am of the opinion that this request will be necessary ultimately.... (Some precedent exists as a
result of a previous instance in which San Luis Obispo sought, and received through special legislation,
authorization to provide resident credit courses at Vandenberg Air Force Base so long os State monies are
not expended for capital facilities. Dr. Barbera says that this legislation has been construed as a blanket
authorization for the system. Of course, this needs checking.) (p. 2)
A major accomplishment of the Commission on External Degrees was to find a way through the legal maze of
interpretations, possibilities, and prohibitions related to how students could fulfill the residence requirements for a
degree in an off-campus program operated through the mechanisms of extension and summer sessions. The end result
was that the Commission formulated a recommendation that was essentially the same as the solution arrived at by the
Chico campus (and San Jose State) -to designate certain carefully reviewed courses offered on a self-support basis
through
extension as being applicable for residence credit toward a degree. The Commission's 1976 report describes its
solution and reasoning:
Because courses leading to CSUC external degrees were to be Extension courses offered for Extension
credit, it was necessary that the regulation allowing no more than twenty-four semester units of
Extension credit to be applied toward a baccalaureate degree be changed.
The Commission formulated a recommendation for the amendment of Title 5 of the Administrative Code
(which is under the jurisdiction of the CSUC Board of Trustees) which would authorize the Chancellor to
designate the specific extension courses which are to be offered as part of an external degree as courses
which would yield credit applicable to a degree. The Commission's rationale was that the Extension
courses to be offered in connection with a CSUC external degree program would form a coherent
program in which there would be an identifiable and continuing body of students and, similarly, an
identifiable and continuing body of faculty members responsible for offering and evaluating the program
and providing the services ordinarily required by students in degree programs. The character of the
external degree Extension courses and the character of the educational experience provided for students
enrolled in them, therefore, were viewed as fu"ndamentally different from those in the more typical
Extension programs, in which there is likely to be considerable turnover of both students and faculty and
in which students are offered a potpourri of mostly unrelated courses. (p. 41)
To arrive at the consensus that this was the most appropriate way to proceed was not easy. Many
people, both within the CSUC and outside, were suspicious of the academic credibility of extension.
Furthermore, many were critical of having matriculated students pay tuition for a degree just because
they were employed and the off-campus locations were a "convenience." These critics feared a
dangerous precedent was being set that might open the door to more extensive tuition fees for all
students, both on and off campus.
Ifthe CSUC had decided to operate its external degree programs as part of its regular state-supported
academic programs, as did the University of California when it established its experimental Extended
University in 1972-73, a different set of regulations and precedents might have been drawn upon. The
CSUC did, in fact, operate off-campus classes that were part of its regular programs but at designated
locations, such as the Moss Landing Marine Biology Center, locations at certain foreign universities for
the purpose of travel study, and the Calexico Center -a branch of San Diego State University. Many faculty
and administrators within the CSUC believed that the campuses should have followed the reasoning of the
University of California which specified that "extended degree" students will be fully matriculated and
making progress toward a university degree;
they should in the university's workload, thus for state support.
With hindsight, it appears that the CSUC strategy was the better one when it came to sustaining a
commitment to innovative programs. The University of California's experimental Extended University
was already phased out by 1978 when it became apparent to the UC administration and faculty that
state funding for the effort was not going to become permanent. Their reasoning was that it was
pointless for the university to make a commitment to something that the state did not consider
important enough to fund. The CSUC, in contrast, persevered in its commitment to special programs
for adult students, even though the costs had to be borne by the students themselves in conjunction
with support from the Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF). The state Legislature proved
enduringly obstinate about allocating more money so that already employed adults could further their
education at state expense. Numerous reports during this period (for example, by the CCHE and the
Joint Committee on the Master Plan) recommended that equity for off-campus students should be
maintained, and that it was unfair for the state to discriminate
on the basis of geography alone in higher education funding decisions, but these reports and
recommendations did not sway the Legislature. Thus, commitment to the concept of external degrees
on the part of CSUC was not easy to sustain in the face of the many internal and external obstacles.
Part of the Commission's strategy for allaying the fears of CSUC administrators, faculty, and outside
observers about the credibility and value of external degree programs was to emphasize academic
quality control. This was the second major task and challenge faced by the Commission on External
Degrees. Much of its work involved the development of planning and evaluation processes to ensure
that the campuses did not compromise the academic integrity of a new program by carelessness or poor
judgments on the part of individuals when they tried to experiment. The Commission developed a
Manual of Policy and Procedures for the Preparation of Proposals and Administration of External
Degree Programs (1972, revised in 1973) that provided detailed procedures for the campuses to
follow. Similarly, the Commission produced what seems to be an endless stream of evaluation reports
once actual programs got under way. In fact, from a historical perspective, the amount of scrutiny and
evaluation that the external degree programs received seems obsessive. One wonders how any of them
ever survived their early months with such an exhausting gauntlet of approval and review to be run.
However, the degree of anxiety that was provoked by the riskiness and untried nature of the concept
required that great care be taken administratively to protect the fragile beginnings of new programs
from those people whose suspiciousness would have squashed experimentation.
A big group that needed to be won over was the faculty. The necessity for faculty endorsement and
participation in the external degree concept was abundantly clear. The Commission's 1976 report
describes the dilemma that it faced in connection with faculty's involvement. It had decided
that high academic quality in external degree programs would be assured most effectively if the greater
part of the instruction the program were provided by regular faculty members. Furthermore, many
believed that faculty teaching in these programs should do so as a part of their regular teaching load, not
as an Extension overload. Consensus concerning this basic principle could be found among various
groups, ranging from the Academic Senate and the faculties it represents to national professional
accrediting associations. Because the level of compensation for faculty who are teaching in CSUC
Extension courses is markedly less than that for those teaching in the on-campus courses which constitute
their regular workload, the prevailing Extension fees, though adequate for compensating faculty teaching
Extension courses on the customary basis (either on an overload or on a part-time basis), could not
support reimbursement of faculty at the level which would be required by the levels of their annual
salaries.
The dilemma faced by Commission can be summed up by the statement that the two requirements of high
academic quality and self-support of external programs appeared at the time to be incompatible. The
Commission concluded that the dilemma would have to be resolved by the institution of a flexible fee
structure for external degree programs, one which would also be adaptable to faculty interests. The
Commission formulated a recommendation to the Trustees that the Chancellor be authorized to establish
the fees for each CSUC external degree program on the basis of the proposed budget for the program,
thus making it possible to compensate faculty in terms of reimbursement to their academic units for the
time they spend serving external programs. (p. 42)
This solution satisfied both the faculty and the CSUC administration.
The third major accomplishment of the Commission in the area of policy change had to do with overall
academic planning for external degrees. The existing procedures for adding a new degree program to
the campus and systemwide Academic Plan, put in place with great effort and deliberation
as part of the early accomplishments of the Chancellor's Office in the 1960s, proved to be cumbersome
and too time-consuming when it came to external degree programs. Quick decisions were necessary to
allow campuses to respond to a need for an external program as it emerged in a local community. The
Commission recommended that the Chancellor be authorized to approve a new program that did not
already have an on-campus counterpart by designating it as a pilot project, subject to certain
conditions, to be offered for a specific period of time. This gave more flexibility to the planning of
external degree programs which, as the Commission had found as it proceeded with early attempts at
implementation, were quickly overtaken by the sheer amount of bureaucratic paper-pushing that had to
be done to get approval to do anything at all.
Questions of legitimacy within the framework of state policy, faculty demands, and a volatile
marketplace were serious obstacles that made the external degree programs a shaky venture for the
campuses and the CSUC system. But the Commission worked through five years of meetings,
consultations with innumerable representatives of both supportive and critical constituencies, and
major and minor internal bickering, until it could finally point to 44 external degree programs and
approximately 4,200 students enrolled in them by 1976-77. About midway in the process, Tom
McGrath retired as President of Sonoma State College, and the chairmanship of the Commission on
External Degrees was taken over by Leo Cain, who had become the first President of the Dominguez
Hills campus. With George McCabe's appointment as the Director of The Consortium in 1973, the
position of executive secretary to the Commission was taken over by Edward Braun, the new
Coordinator of the External Degree Programs in the Chancellor's Office. Commission membership on
the part of faculty, campus administration, and Chancellor's staff turned over to some degree, but
Continuing Education Dean Donald Morris and Ralph Mills, the Chancellor's Office State University
Dean of Continuing Education, remained members of the Commission during its entire existence.
The Extemal Degree Programs of the CSUC
The bachelor's degree in public administration that had been designed by CSC Chico, and offered in
three remote locations, was the first of the external degree programs to be announced by the
Commission. In spite of the ambiguity of the residence extension credit concept, the Chico campus
continued to offer the program. Ralph Mills, in his role as Associate Vice President of Academic
Mfairs and Director of Regional Programs at CSC Chico through 1972, developed a structure that
included a fall term, a spring term, and two summer terms organized in such a way that summer
session courses provided the residence part of the degree program. The Chico campus had a faculty
and an administration that were very supportive of innovation and of the concept of external,
community-oriented education. But both Mills and his immediate superior, Vice President for
Academic Mfairs Donald Gerth, realized that if the external degree concept was to be successful for
other campuses in the CSUC, especially those with less enthusiastic faculty and administrators, active
public relations efforts on their part would be required. The presence of both Ralph Mills and Don
Gerth on the Commission, in addition to Dr. Mills' later role within the Chancellor's Office, was
enormously influential in the development of Commission recommendations.
CSC Chico was probably the most audacious of the campuses, at least in the beginning of the decade
of the 70s. Ralph Mills reports that the campus was one of the first to move into "creative marketing"
when he persuaded the Mayor of Redding to allow the campus to enclose announcements of its
external public administration program inside the water bills of city residents. Although this was not a
move that was widely adopted by other campuses, CSC Chico remained for the Commission a
prototype of innovation as it formulated policies for reviewing new programproposals from other
campuses.
Subsequently, the Chico campus developed three more external degree programs -a BS degree in
Business Administration, a BA degree in Social Science, and a BA degree in Social Welfare. Two
other campuses were early entrants into the external degree field -Cal State University at Fullerton,
with a graduate program in Public Administration, and Cal State College Dominguez Hills, with a
graduate program in Business Administration that was offered at the Space and Missile Systems
Organization in EI Segundo. CSC Dominguez Hills, under its president Leo Cain, whose long
experience in continuing education made him less wary of external degree programs than some of the
other campus presidents, and Robert Bersi, the administrator in charge of continuing and external
education, were subsequently to develop a substantial enrollment of students in external degree
programs at their campus. Although CSC Dominguez Hills did not necessarily set the record for the
highest number of students enrolled in external programs, in proportion to its on-campus enrollment,
its investment in external programs was impressive.
By the fall semester of 1972, the Commission had approved nine external degree programs on six
campuses. CSC Bakersfield joined the Chico, Fullerton, and Dominguez Hills campuses when it
launched a BS degree program in Business Administration at China Lake/Ridgecrest on the initiative
of Roy Dull, the Dean of Continuing Education. At CSU Sacramento, Dean Roy Endres set up the
largest of the external programs with 143 students in a BA program in Criminal Justice. This
particular program was offered in two locations at considerable distance from the campus the cities of
Stockton and Pleasant Hill. And CSC Sonoma, with support from Dean Carroll Mjelde, began an MA
program in Psychology to respond to increasing local interest in humanistic approaches to clinical
work. The total number of students enrolled in the nine programs was 517, of which about half were
in the CSC Dominguez Hills and CSU Sacramento programs.
San Francisco State University offered its own home-grown extended degree program leading to a
Bachelor of Science in Vocational Education in Ukiah, California from 1974 through 1977. During the
same period, they collaborated with Sacramento and Hayward to offer Ray Endres' Bachelor of
Science in Nursing.
To determine both need and interest in education for specific fields, the developing programs had the
benefit of information provided by the Siroky market surveys. These surveys found that at least
64,500 Californians were interested, qualified, and willing to pay for courses leading to a degree.
These interested potential students were on the average about 33 years of age, male, married, in
professional and managerial occupations, and had some previous postsecondary education. Their
interests centered in the fields of Business Administration, Public Administration, Psychology,
Education, Accounting, and Criminal Justice. Respondents indicated an interest in flexibility of
scheduling and location, as well as possible nontraditional modes of educational delivery.
The implementation of the new external degree programs was difficult and time-consuming for the
campus deans of continuing education; the amount of paperwork required by the Chancellor's Office
was enormous. The Commission had recommended that these innovations needed to be carefully
designed and evaluated in order to protect the students, the campuses, and the CSUC system from
criticisms by conservatives who took a dim view of "new approaches." Developing the actual program
of courses took a great deal of time and much consultation with faculty and with the campus
Academic Senate. a result, costs soared. Analyzing community needs, locating the potential students,
designing and disseminating public announcements, establishing locations, and preparing reports and
documentation all took months and months of work. Fiscal accounting had to carefully track revenues
and costs for each program. Finally, evaluations of in-progress programs were another burdensome
source of work for continuing education administrators and the faculty who taught in the programs.
But in spite of the effort required, by 1975 thirteen of the campuses had mounted external programs.
CSU Hayward and Its continuing education dean, Forrest Mayer, developed an MS degree in
Education; CSU Northridge and Dean James O'Donnell offered an MS in Engineering; CSC San
Bernardino, with Dean Stephen Bowles, developed two programs -an MA in Elementary Education
and aBA in Social Science; San Jose State University and Dean Ralph Bohn, assisted by his staff
member James Beck, the Program Administrator for External Degree Programs, launched a BA
program in Health Sciences; and San Diego State University began to offer a BS in Criminal Justice,
developed under Dean William Locke and his Assistant Director of External Academic Programs,
Lawrence Clinger. During the same period, two more programs were developed by CSC Bakersfield.
CSU Chico doubled its programs from four to eight, and CSC Dominguez Hills added three more
programs on its own.
By fall 1975 the total number of external degree programs was 41 and the number of student
enrollments was 3,733. These figures include the programs of The Consortium which, following its
founding in 1973, developed six external programs of its own by 1975 and had collaborated with five
campuses (Dominguez Hills, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Sonoma) in the design of
additional programs.
The
The Consortium of the CSUC was probably the most comprehensive effort by Chancellor Dumke
and the CSUC administration to make a radical change in the way education was delivered by
the campuses. The idea of a consortium came from the concept of "The 1,000 Mile Campus"
the theme of a conference organized by the Commission on External Degree Programs in 1971
to introduce innovative education to campus presidents, academic vice presidents, deans of
continuing education, chairpersons of campus academic senates, and faculty members with
committee responsibilities involving decisions about educational programs. The purpose of this
conference, which was held at the Kellogg West Center for Continuing Education on the campus
of Cal Poly Pomona, was to educate the huge CSUC systemwide "community" to the ideas that lay behind
Chancellor Dumke's "call for new approaches." The conference was well attended, its proceedings were
widely distributed, and it generated enthusiasm and allayed concerns about the future agenda of the
Chancellor's Office and the Board of Trustees. The 1,000 Mile Campus was, of course, the CSUC with all
19 campuses linked together into a unit that could deliver educational programs anywhere in the state, from
the Oregon border south to the Mexican border. . External degree programs were presented at the
conference within this context. Itwas, of course,
an ideal vision, since the campuses were not in fact so well integrated into a system, but the image
was clear and persuasive. Many faculty and administrators reacted with enthusiasm.
George McCabe, the Commission's executive secretary, was a supporter of the idea of a consortium of
campuses from the beginning and was influential in selling the particular model that was eventually
adopted to the various individuals and groups within the CSUC whose ongoing support would be
essential. The Commission drafted a tentative proposal that, in spite of considerable scepticism and
outright opposition from faculty and many campus administrators, was eventually adopted after more
than a year of discussion and consultation. In order to get campus faculty support, a Consortium
Advisory Committee (which was conceptualized as a standing committee of the statewide Academic
Senate) was added to the proposal. This gave the faculty as a body a good deal more control over what
the proposed consortium was going to do, and the move helped to allay concerns that this new idea
was going to aggrandize the Chancellor's "bureaucracy" at the expense of the faculty.
The main purpose of The Consortium was to provide a mechanism for the CSUC campuses to work
together and possibly even to involve colleges or universities outside of the CSUC. In addition,
it provided an opportunity for faculty to cross over departmental lines to create interdisciplinary programs.
A benefit to students was that the highly mobile ones were not placed in a position where their degree
credits could not be transferred from one CSUC campus to another.
George McCabe was selected as the first director because he had experience, creative ideas and a great gift
for persuasion, all of which were very much needed in order to start implementation, which began in
August of 1973. The director was administratively housed in the office of Ralph Mills, the State University
Dean for Continuing Education. From the beginning, the relationship of the roles played by McCabe and
Mills The Consortium was ambiguous. It was not clear who had authority for what, nor how The
Consortium administration was to relate to the deans of continuing education in the field. In addition,
McCabe was expected to respond to the Academic Senate's directives through the Consortium Advisory
Committee, and to the concerns of the Commission on External Degrees, to whom the assignment of
generating policy recommendations had been delegated by Chancellor Dumke. Other bodies, such as the
Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Continuing Education, and individual members of the Chancellor's
staff were not exactly silent either. Since The Consortium was an unprecedented body with an
unprecedented set of tasks, it became everybody's concern and interest. The end result was that The
Consortium became the node of a variety of conflicting administrative expectations. On the one hand, the
Academic Senate's Consortium Advisory Committee was responsible for planning and approving the actual
external degree programs to be sponsored by The Consortium. On the other hand, the State University
Dean of Continuing Education and the campus continuing education deans were responsible for seeing that
they were implemented. Frequently, the interests and concerns of these groups did not mesh, and in the
mass of detailed operational details to be worked out, there was a lot of slippage and conflict.
A lesser man than McCabe would probably have gone under in the crossfire of conflicting demands, but
his experience as director of the off-campus Santa Rosa Center of San Francisco State College in the
1950s had presented him with a similar set of ambiguities, and his entrepreneurial leanings allowed him to
see the ambiguities as an opportunity to forge ahead. Despite initial confusion and complaints, The
Consortium did mount a number of unique external programs, and it maintained the quality control
necessary to later satisfy the accrediting bodies.
The Consortium did not have a faculty of its own. It was organized as a facilitative mechanism to integrate
the resources of individual campuses. The consultation involved in producing multicampus degree
programs was enormously time-consuming; endless committee meetings and discussions were necessary
to work out detailed agreements and memoranda of understanding. In addition,
___director to act with various professional organizations whose members might be interested in the development of
external degree programs. For example, the Airline Pilots Association and the California branch of the American
Institute of Banking both provided money for market surveys. Again, these negotiations were time-consuming and led to
the need for more staff assistance to the director as The Consortium moved ahead.
In spring of 1976, The Consortium could point to seven intercampus programs that had been developed
and implemented during the previous four years: a BA in Business program involved CSU Hayward, San
Francisco State University and San Jose State University; an MA in Early Childhood Education was
offered in the southern part of the state by CSU Northridge and in the north by CSU Sacramento; an MA in
Environmental Planning was offered statewide by CSU Sacramento; a BS in Health Care Administration
involved six campuses (Chico, Fullerton, Long Beach, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Jose); a BA in
liberal arts was offered out of CSU Fresno; a master's in Public Administration program involved six
campuses (Fresno, Hayward, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose); and an MA in
Vocational Education program was offered
82
by CSU Sacramento, San Diego State University and San Jose State University. In addition, San
Francisco State a BA in liberal arts and MA in Environmental Planning from 1976 to 1983-84.
Beyond these programs, The Consortium collaborated on several external degree programs that were
offered on individual campuses: for example, three programs at the Dominguez Hills campus, two at
CSU Sacramento, and one each at the campuses of Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Sonoma.
The major problem for The Consortium was money. In its initial year (1973-74), a state appropriation
covered about half of the funds needed for start-up costs. The remaining money came from the
Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF). The following year, fiscal needs grew as staff and
structure grew.
In 1975-76 a serious setback occurred when the Legislature, under pressure to cut back spending,
refused to fund an appropriation for The Consortium. The CERF had to fill the gap in the amount of
$182,467, or 44 percent of The Consortium's budget. It was clear that if the state refused to fund the
administrative and program development costs of The Consortium, there was no way that student fee
revenue could ever possibly cover actual costs. The portion of CERF that was earmarked for
systemwide continuing education projects would soon be exhausted if no other stable sources of funds
for The Consortium were found.
By 1976-77 the fiscal picture had not improved. The state still refused to provide the funds and The
Consortium was caught in the anomalous position of having no state money but had the moral support
of nearly all public bodies, commissions, and legislative committees that had had a hand during the
past five years in studying California's educational needs and resources for adult students.
The Legislature, however, was already funding innovation in the CSUC in the amount of over a
million dollars a year through the Chancellor's Fund for Innovation, administered by a new Division
of New Program Development and Evaluation established in the Chancellor's Office in 1972.
Furthermore, the Legislature looked at the CERF balances. From the perspective in Sacramento, it
looked as though the CSUC had sufficient resources. From the CSUC perspective, the Fund for
Innovation was earmarked for on-campus experiments, not for external degree programs, while the
CERF money was to support development in extension and summer sessions. The Consortium was
not accounted for in either Fund.
The University of California's Extended University experienced a similar frustration when its funds
were cut at the same time. However, the university simply abandoned its whole project of to part-time
out its programs. Tile CSUC hung on. Chancellor Dumke was convinced that The Consortium was an
essential part of the system's mission and commitment to California citizens. State University Dean of
Continuing Education Ralph Mills was equally convinced, and George McCabe fought to keep it
going. The Commission supported it, although its members had to acknowledge the strong opposition
that was developing as competition for the system's financial assets became keener in the face of the
Legislature's budget actions.
The continuing education deans, however, whose efforts in their continuing education programs
(extension, summer sessions, and concurrent enrollment) were producing the CERF revenues that
kept The Consortium going, were getting frustrated. When in 1976-77 CERF had to supply
approximately 73 percent of The Consortium's annual budget, strenuous objections began to surface.
Deans of continuing education began pounding on the table in meetings as they emphasized the need
to examine the future of The Consortium and its relationship to the continuing education
programs that were essentially financing it. McCabe was called on the carpet more than once to justify
the of his office.
At some time or other, nearly every CSUC constituency -from campus presidents to junior financial
analysts in the Chancellor's Office -peered into the records and plans of The Consortium in a critical
fashion. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the regional accrediting body for higher
education, was invited as well. The accrediting commission of WASC concluded its evaluation of The
Consortium in June 1976, and The Consortium was granted full accreditation for a three-year period.
This was a considerable achievement; it indicated that an outside body, and one which had publicly
taken a conservative stance toward the educational fads of the 1970s, found the instructional programs
of The Consortium to be of good academic quality and its administrative and student services
procedures to be in order.
But the future of The Consortium remained cloudy, chiefly due to its costs and to the exceptional
demands it made on the campuses and the Chancellor's Office staff with regard to program
development and administrative coordination.
Enthusiasm for innovation was by no means widespread within the CSUC. Some campuses remained
aloof from experiments with external degrees or became involved only to a very modest extent, taking
a "wait and see" attitude. In order for a campus to undertake the development of "new approaches"
there needed to be a confluence of high level administrative support and leadership from, for example,
the President's office, along with a core of dedicated faculty, and a continuing education administrator
who was convinced that the necessary work and effort would be worth it. Semi-permanent issues of
dispute throughout the system included faculty roles and salary; financing the programs; and academic
quality control. It was the Commission's role to find some consensus policy that would satisfy the
concerns of everyone whose vested interests affected the development of external degree programs. In
this regard, the Chancellor's choice of chairperson seemed wise. Tom McGrath, the first to take on the
assignment, had the vision and the ability to articulate this vision in a way that got people excited and
interested. Later, when the actual implementation became more arduous and the work of the
Commission more exposed to criticism and questioning, Chairperson Leo Cain was a valuable
diplomat. Dr. Cain, a well-respected and well-liked administrator with an unflappable faith in human
nature, helped Commission members to maintain a balanced view among the welter of details and
conflicts that they had to address.
In 1973 the Joint (Legislative) Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education, which had been
reviewing California's educational policies and their impact for over two years, released its fina] report
In it the Committee (chaired by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos from Santa Clara) took the position
that equal access to education should be provided regardless of age or geography. The report also
recommended that the California Postsecondary Education Commission (ePEC), which replaced the
Coordinating Council (CCHE) in 1974, take responsibility for reviewing the need for educational
programs designed for adults and take an inventory of off-campus programs and
In a more controversial vein, the Committee recommended the establishment of a "fourth segment" of
public education in addition to the University of California, CSUC, and community/junior colleges.
This new public segment of higher education was to "coordinate" the efforts of the existing segments
to serve working adult students and, in addition, was expected to do those things that the other
segments balked at doing: award course credit for experiential learning, keep records of various
random courses taken by adults to facilitate transfer and accumulation of credits, and make use of
alternative forms of instruction. The Committee had become convinced that existing educational
systems were too wrapped up in bureaucratic regulations and were conservative in
nature. The Committee had its doubts about the capacity of the CSUC; along with the other public
segments, to achieve a real degree of innovation in what they were attempting.
The recommendation of a "fourth segment" to provide at public expense what the CSUC had been begging
the Legislature to fund on its campuses was like a war cry. The CSUC objected strenuously. The
Legislature conducted a feasibility study during 1975-76, which led to the introduction of a bill to create
"Golden State University," the so-called "fourth segment:' But nothing came of the idea, and the bill was
defeated chiefly because of the potential expense to the state and because there was not sufficient evidence
to suggest that the existing public campuses could not do the job. In the opinion of CSUC representatives,
The Consortium, established in 1973, was a body that could deliver exactly what the Joint Committee had
been seeking in a new "fourth segment" and at considerably less cost to the state. The Joint Committee's
report and subsequent legislative action served to stiffen the resolve of Chancellor Dumke and the Board
of Trustees to continue external degree and Consortium programs and to fight for state support for these
efforts.
However, the request for a direct subsidy for external degree programs in 1975-76 was denied by the
Legislature, although fee waiver funds to offset tuition costs for needy students continued to be
appropriated. The reasoning of the Legislature was that programs aimed at working adults did not have the
same priority as programs for the educationally and economically disadvantaged. The Legislature did not
want to see itself providing state support for students who they assumed were well able to pay for their
education, at the expense of others who were far more needy.
Prospects for state support looked gloomy, and the Commission on External Degree Programs began to
look in the direction of a policy that would allow the external degree programs to become better integrated
into the regular activities and budget of the campuses. Since requests for direct subsidies had failed, and an
individual student's economic need for fee waivers was extremely difficult to assess in a just way, the
Commission discussed the eventual possibility of shifting some or all of the programs to state support.
In 1974, the Commission recommended and the Trustees adopted a policy that would permit some limited
number of carefully selected regular campus courses to be located off campus without their
automaticallyhaving to become extension courses for which tuition fees were charged. Subsequently,
guidelines were adopted by the CSUC Board of Trustees for campus decisions about what courses could
be off campus. These guidelines were extremely rigorous and hemmed in with administrative controls so
that the CSUC could not be accused by the Legislature of irresponsibly attempting to increase its regular
campus enrollment and hence its state budget. Since this was the period when the Legislature had imposed
the "cap" on adult enrollments in community colleges and adult schools, and policy-makers were in a
suspicious frame of mind, CSUC administrators were loath to take any actions that might have adverse
political consequences.
Chancellor Dumke appointed a Task Force on Off-campus Instruction which filed its final report in
September 1975. The Task Force concluded that judicious use of off-campus instruction was both feasible
and essential. Off-campus classes should be offered where there was a justifiable need, with the same
budget formulae as for any other courses in the regular program (with the exception of travel costs). The
report was placed on the agenda of the Trustees, but they refrained from acting on the recommendations.
In their judgment, attitudes within state government were too negative to risk a change in policy at that
time. Off-campus instruction officially remained an experimental pilot project in the hands of the
Chancellor until 1976 when the Trustees acted to establish off-campus instruction, subject to specific
limitations, as part of the regular operations of the campuses.
In fall 1975 off-campus instruction was offered on a pilot project basis, subject to review by the
Chancellor's Office,.on ten campuses in 78 classes, to 1,678 matriculated students. The program was
deliberately kept quite small. Nevertheless, off-campus instruction in the CSUC involved a protracted
struggle to reassure the Legislature that it was not a Pandora's box of potential costs to the state.
Although the CSUC Office of Legal Counsel determined that no existing state policy prohibited the
CSUC campuses from offering off-campus classes with state funds, this position was challenged by the
Joint Legislative Budget Committee in an exchange of memos during October 1977. The change in
CSUC policy was eventually accepted by the Legislature with the proviso that the impact of the policy
would be studied by the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC). Temporary offcampus enrollment ceilings were subsequently imposed and observed by the CSUC.
By the time the Commission on External Degrees filed its final report in 1976, it had become
convinced of the need for closer integration of the external degree programs into the normal activities
of the campuses. It recommended that a new CommiSsion be established that would be called the
Commission for Extended Education, indicating that both self-and state-supported programs needed a
common planning process both at the campus and at the systemwide levels. The Commission also took
an unequivocal stand in favor of treating off-and on-campus matriculated students in an equitable
manner. A task delegated to the new Commission on Extended Education was to establish criteria for
deciding which kinds of external degree programs should be entirely self-supporting (such as programs
designed for particular corporations or agencies and their employees), which should require some
special fees because of special costs, and which should be funded entirely by the state. Thus, the
Commission recognized that programs and students/clients varied and might result in different policies.
The CSUC and its continuing education functions were being brought into a much more complex
environment which required at the same time greater flexibility and more careful long-range planning.
Meanwhile, as the Commission on External Degree Programs was occupied with its mission, other
innovations were underway within the CSUC that affected continuing education.
Other Innovations in the CSUC
Although the development of external degree and Consortium programs was a major aspect of the
implementation of "new approaches" in the CSUC, it was by no means the only activity directed
toward innovation. Gerth and Grenier, in their history of the CSUC, describe some of the various
innovative projects that got underway in the CSUC in early 1970s:
In December 1971, while addressing a systemwide Conference on External Degree programs, Dr.
Dumke announced a $451,000 Carnegie grant to the state colleges to develop new approaches to
instruction and evaluation at three campuses; all programs made it possible for students to accelerate
their progress toward the degree. Additional grants in 1972 financed studies of improvement of
science teaching and of the curricular off-campus needs of California residents. The Innovative Fund
secured $1.5 million in State Support Budget for 1972-73 for projects stressing the increasing of
student motivation and self-reliance. The Legislature signaled its approval the "new directions."
Other innovations included use of television as a teaching tool, a computerized teacher support
system, automated library development and exchange, and a common admissions program. A few
cooperative degree programs (example: a master's degree in geology in the Los Angeles area) were
developed. In January 1973, five campuses founded the Southern California Ocean Studies
Consortium in Long Beach to complement opportunities in this field open at Cal State Humboldt and
in the six-campus Moss Landing facility (operated by San Jose State University) at Monterey Bay. (p.
65)
A uniform systemwide policy toward Advanced Placement Credit was adopted in 1971 and
expanded in subsequent years. Additionally, two campuses joined in a pilot project by which
students could earn college credit through a series of five CLEP (College Level Examination
Program) tests; 1,100 entering students took these general exams in the fall of 1971. (p. 64)
The general purpose of all of these innovations was to make it more likely that older students, who as
a group needed a set of college policies more suited to their maturity and varied backgrounds, could
enroll in degree programs. Adults frequently brought a backlog of valuable experience to the
classroom that they had acquired in the course of living and working. Advanced placement programs
and standardized college level examinations made it possible for them to get academic credit for what
they already knew, and saved them the time and money that would be wasted in taking courses that
were not challenging to them.
Many of the strategies for creating more responsive policies for students were reflected in external
degree programs. For example, The Consortium developed three programs that utilized independent
study with tutorials. In 1975 "credit by evaluation" was inaugurated in The Consortium's programs
using some of the tests developed by the New York Board of Regents. CSUC faculty developed
several more equivalency examinations in Economics, Accounting, Business Communication, and
Business Research. Individual assessment of students was conducted as well, and up to nine units of
credit could be granted toward the degree on the basis of the student's prior experience. In some cases,
students were granted CSUC degree credit for courses that they had taken in business, industry, or
non-profit agency sponsored professional development programs. The external degree program in
humanistic psychology, developed by Sonoma State College, incorporated nearly all of the possible
alternatives into a master's level program that was entirely non-classroom oriented.
The Advisory Committee to The Consortium saw the potential of television instruction for delivering
courses to a geographically dispersed student body. They also saw that The Consortium was a logical
body to attempt the statewide coordination needed to make instructional television feasible for
external degree programs. The Committee recommended that The Consortium request budget support
in 1975-76 for a "media arm" to coordinate the resources already existed on the campuses and to
develop new uses. This function never became a reality because of the unavailability of state funds,
but the Committee continued to investigate an offer from a private company, Genesys
. Systems, to undertake development of cable TV capability. Again, the costs involved were prohibitive
and the quip, bandied about among continuing education personnel, "Genesys ... Exodus," neatly
describes this brief experiment.
The Consortium and the external degree programs were not able to make much systematic use of
instructional television during the 1970s, chiefly because the fiscal basis of these programs was so
uncertain. However, there was a lot of experimentation with televised instruction and production of
video-taped courses within the CSUC in connection with on-campus programs. The most active
campuses, and those with the most hardware, were CSU Chico, San Francisco State University, San
Jose State University, CSU Los Angeles, and San Diego State University. The facilities of several of
these campuses were unfortunately already fully committed to on-campus activities. The Chancellor's
Fund for Innovation underwrote a number of additional experimental television projects on other
campuses, such as CSC Dominguez Hills and CSU Fresno, but these experiments had little impact on
continuing education.
Television, as a medium for extending educational opportunity, was generally under-utilized
throughout the state.
A survey conducted by CPEC found that during 1973 there were only 49 courses offered for academic
credit via open-circuit television in the entire state. Only one of these 49 courses was offered
statewide. Twenty-seven of the total 49 courses were offered by two-year community colleges.
Although these represented 55 percent of the courses, they enrolled 80 percent of the total credit
enrollment.
Within the CSUC, Ralph Mills of CSU Chico wrote a proposal for a Northern California Instructional
Television Consortium as a Title I project. This consortium obtained federal funds in 1972 to
underwrite the organization of the colleges in the northern one-third of the state around shared
television resources. CERF funds were also used later in support of this project. Within the next few
years, the northern consortium began offering some lTV courses in southern California and it became
apparent that this body had statewide potential. Itwas renamed the California Instructional Television
Consortium in 1974 and became the official body for overseeing a coordinated effort to develop
television capacity for the continUing education programs of the CSUC campuses. Stuart Cooney was
made Director of the CITV Consortium, and Sonoma State College became its official home.
There was interest within the CSUC in eXploring the model of televised instruction that had been very
successfully developed by Britain's Open University during the 1960s. San Diego State University was
given a grant from the CERF to evaluate the applicability of Open University techniques for use in the
CSUC. San Diego State was selected for this task because it had an experienced, high quality
telecommunications department which operated the only licensed educational television station in
California. Also, the San Diego area had the largest cable TV audience in the entire country (68,000
subscribers), thus providing a ready population to serve as part of any experiment. The goal of the
project was to design courses using TV plus written materials that could then be made available to
other campuses.
Instructional television designed to broadcast courses to the community was conceptualized in the
CSUC as an arm of the extension programs, meaning that enrollment in TV courses carried the usual
extension course fees. In 1974-75 these fees were $26 per credit unit. As a part of extension, CSUC
instructional television was expected to become fiscally self-supporting, a goal that proved difficult to
achieve. In the ordinary extension mode, an under-enrolled course can be cancelled. However, in the
case of broadcast TV, the show must be aired regardless of how few students are paying fees for
participation. Since televised courses typically carry more costs than do classroom courses, a major
part of Dr. Cooney's role as director of the CITV Consortium was to search for grants and other
sources of funds to underwrite development.
The most successful of CITV's ventures were courses that had a well-defined professional audience,
for example, personnel employed in the statewide offices of a large company, bank, or public agency.
Courses could be delivered directly to the workplace. One of the largest enrollments in a CITV course
was in "Environmental Impact Reporting and Evaluation." Other well-enrolled courses were about
techniques of teaching reading, presented to educators.
Although the expense was heavy, the CITV Consortium increased the number of courses that it
mounted from one in 1973 to 12 (plus the "piggybacking" of four more courses produced by PBS or
the commercial networks) for 1975. As with external degree programs, the campus continuing
education deans were the administrative yeomen. In a report to the Advisory Committee on
Continuing Education, Stu Cooney wrote in 1976:
Our Continuing Education Deans and their staffs have worked together to shape common procedures for faculty review of courses, for registration requirements, for prompt shipment of
supporting materials to registered students, for testing and grading, for evaluation, and for
accounting. Together we have become producers, publishers, a mailing house, a tape network, and
an interagency testing service. We have had to develop new contract forms, specialized releases,
copyright policies, and institutional promotion on a large scale. We have done this within
established academic standards while introducing new modes of learning. (p. 2)
Despite progress, development of lTV was extremely slow. Costs were a major obstacle. If a
particular course failed to generate the expected revenues, it was the continuing education deans who
had to cover the losses from their other self-support activities. Naturally, this did not set well with
them.
The budget for the CITV Consortium increased from $76,105 in 1972-73 to $386,400 in 1974-75.
Since tuition fees accounted for only about $62,000 of the overall 1974-75 budget, the CITV
Consortium was dependent on other sources of funds. Title I (Higher Education Act, 1965) funds
provided support during the first three years, but douldnot be'coIiSidered for long-term financing. By
1976-77 the CITV Consortium budget was expected to reach more than half a million The
contribution that was expected from the CERF was heavy and appeared to be on its way to becoming
a permanent commitment. Again, this was of concern to the continuing education deans who were
already worried about the financial drain on CERF by The Consortium for external degree programs.
Many questioned the cost-effectiveness of instructional television.
But it was a deeper structural issue that retarded the widespread use of instructional television, not
only within the CSUC, but more generally in higher education. Enrollment on the campuses was
declining, and faculty were afraid that if their courses did not fill, they would be facing lay-offs. Any
innovations that appeared to shift responsibility for instruction from the on-campus faculty in their
classrooms to other places or people (including electronic media) were viewed with justifiable
suspicion by the faculty of the campuses. This included most efforts to accelerate students' progress
toward degree completion as well as efforts to give academic credit for learning in non-academic
settings. Had the campuses been over-enrolled, as they had been in the early 1960s, the prospects of
handling the overflow of students through various off-campus and acceleration policies would no
doubt have been more attractive to campus faculty and administrators responsible for on-campus
programs. But in the climate of the 1970s, where the task for a CSUC Committee on Alternative
Admissions was to find ways to create procedures that would attract nontraditional students to the
campuses, there was a substantial counterthrust to the move toward "taking the campus to the
student."
By 1977 lTV was viewed within CSUC chiefly as a vehicle for the continuing education of nonmatriculated adult students, not as a way to extend external degree programs further from the campus.
such it became a major item of expense for self-support programs. the fiscal climate for these
programs began to become more hostile and demanding as the 1970s progressed, the continuing
education deans resented more and more the expenses connected with the maintenance of
administrative "coordinating" units (The Consortium and CITV) that were clearly demonstrating the
impossibility of their revenues ever catching up to their costs. The continued existence of both
consortia was becoming problematic.
Continuing Education in the CSUC
While a great deal of energy and money were being directed toward external degrees, The
Consortium, and instructional television, the deans of continuing education on the campuses were
also responsible for running extension and summer sessions.
The CSUC was experiencing a drop in its overall enrollments in continuing education programs. Summer
session enrollments had been declining steadily since 1969. The percentage of students in the summer
sessions who were already regularly matriculated students from the campus increased from about 35
percent in 1955 to62 percent by 1975. Clearly, the CSUC summer sessions were primarily serving a
campus clientele. Professionals who came to the campus for continuing professional development were no
longer as attracted to summer sessions as they had been in previous decades. The number of teachers
seeking in-service courses had been declining along with the elementary and secondary school population.
The continuing education deans faced a challenge in program revitalization.
In extension programs, there had been a growth in enrollment of about 21 percent between 1969 and 1975,
but the growth was primarily in external degree programs. Concurrent enrollment had also increased
considerably. Both of these forms of continuing education were oriented toward degree credit. Traditional
extension courses had declined. Without the external degree programs and concurrent enrollment, CSUC
extension enrollments would have declined by as much as 26 percent between 1971-72 and 1974-75. On
the other hand, the number of courses delivered on a contract basis to particular professional clients
increased by 17 percent within a two-year period, indicating that here was an area where further growth
might occur.
When looked at from a statewide perspective, CSUC extension was oriented more toward adult students'
interest in completing a degree than it was toward their interest in non-degree professional continuing
education. Itseemed clear that CSUC was not doing as much as it could in this latter area. On the national
scene, enrollment in non-degree-related instruction had increased by 299 percent between 1963 and 1973,
as opposed to a 90 percent growth rate in degree related programs. University (of California) Extension
had seen an 18 percent growth between 1970 and 1975 in its program, which was more than 80 percent
non-degree.
Continuing education enrollments in the CSUC included only a small fraction of the 25 to 45 year old
population in the campus service areas. The CSUC was reaching, on average, about 2.5 percent of the
adult statewide population with its extension and summer programs. There was a lot of potential for
development.
Some campuses were already quite "extended." For example, CSC Stanislaus enrolled the equivalent of
more than 95 percent of the campus enrollment in its extension program. Sonoma State College and CSC
Bakersfield had similar large extension enrollments in relation to the size of the campus. But many
campuses had extremely small programs. The expansion of CSUC continuing education enrollments
became an active systemwide goal by the mid-70s
There were financial incentives to fuel pursuit of this goal. Once talk about converting external degree
programs to state support began in earnest in the mid-70s, the continuing education deans realized that
their extension programs were facing potential financial ruin. For example, at CSC Dominguez Hills, more
than 96 percent of extension revenue was derived from external degree courses. The Sonoma, Chico and
Sacramento campuses were depending on external degree program fees for more than 40 percent of their
extension revenues. At Sonoma, the summer session was similarly committed with 30 percent of summer
revenues coming from enrollment in external degree programs. The other campuses were involved to a
lesser degree, but still the financial impact of shifting external degrees away from continuing education and
toward state support was going to create serious financial problems fora majority of the deans. With the
benefit of hindsight, it was beginning to look as though those deans who had voiced suspicion rather than
enthusiasm for the new programs had had superior foresight. At least, this was the view expressed by some
of the deans at their meetings.
The fiscal picture was not one to inspire confidence in the survival of CSUC continuing education.
Two campuses operated extension at a deficit during 1974-75. Seven campuses held less than 20
percent of their revenues in reserve and thus had little in the way of a financial cushion to cover an
unexpected drop in revenues. With respect to summer sessions, 14 campuses held less than 20 percent
of revenues in reserve, and 6 campuses operated at a deficit in 1974-75.
The status of the Systemwide Program Development Reserve Fund (an account within the CERF)
varied from year to year depending on the fiscal state of the campus programs, so that deficits at the
campus level jeopardized the whole CSUC continuing education operation. At the close of 1974-75,
the fund held a little over $700,000. Major commitments of funds went to The Consortium and to
CITV, thus reducing the availability of money for development efforts that would benefit the campus
extension and summer sessions programs. Naturally, the deans were alarmed; so was State University
Dean Ralph Mills and the Commission on External Degree Programs. It seemed that the deans needed
to "make more money," But the deans were loath to style themselves as "golden egg producing geese"
if·their efforts were going to be used to fund projects which produced only dubious gains for their
programs. Continuing education began to be viewed as an enterprise that was not entirely compatible
with the overall design of "new approaches."
Once again, defining continuing education was an issue within the CSUC. Was its purpose primarily
to provide opportunities for adults to complete a degree? Was it primarily for non-degree education
for professionals? Was it a form of community education? Was it a program to provide creative and
edifying leisure time pursuits for adults? Was it to "extend" the regular campus? Did it have unique
subject matter concerns that were not reflected in on-campus programs? Should it emphasize
electronic media? Should it operate primarily on campus or off? In actual practice, CSUC continuing
education did a little bit of everything. Each campus dean had his or her preferred mix of offerings
and continuing education on each campus varied accordingly. Ultimately, though, it was fiscal
pressures that shaped programs. Since the programs had to be self-supporting, what didn't "sell" (that
is, produce enough in revenues to cover their costs) had to be abandoned regardless of their intrinsic
value.
Efforts to respond to the continuing education needs of various professional groups were intensified at
the campus and the Chancellor's Office level. Nurses were a major group since legislation in 1972 had
mandated continuing education requirements for them. However, the legislative requirements were
confusing to interpret, and since there was no single nursing association through which to negotiate
the design of courses, the CSUC had to coordinate its efforts with those of community colleges;
moreover, there were a variety of possible sources of special funds, all of which required proposals on
a competitive basis. Despite the challenging amount of work involved, continuing education for health
professionals was a growing area for CSUC extension, and a larger percentage of extension
enrollments were in courses related to health than was the case in regular campus programs. Other
subject fields where extension offerings were more concentrated than in the campus programs
included public affairs and services, psychology, and interdisciplinary programs. In summer sessions,
there was a higher concentration of courses in business management and engineering. However, the
largest concentration of both course offerings and student enrollments through the mid-1970s was still
in education, for both extension (40 percent of offerings) and summer session (28 percent) in
comparison to enrollments in regular programs (12.5 percent).
However, these aggregated figures mask important distinctions among the campuses. For example,
CSU Los Angeles placed little emphasis on education courses in its extension program (5.6 percent of
the student credit hours) while the number of public affairs courses was quite high (30 percent). On
the other hand, education courses constituted more than 50 percent of its summer
session. Since CSU Los Angeles was one of the four year-round operation campuses in the CSUC
system, its summer session was targeted to non-matriculated students, primarily in-service teachers.
Northridge emphasized business and management (20 percent of student credit hours in extension; 21
percent in summer sessions). Humboldt State University stressed agriculture and natural resources in
both its summer and extension programs. In both these cases, the content of the programs reflected the
characteristics of the campus service area and the interests of the population -one urban, one rural.
Large campuses such as San Jose and San Francisco State universities had well-distributed, diverse
programs so that they were better insulated against vicissitudes in enrollment and the ensuing financial
problems that could follow. Smaller campuses were in a riskier position. For example, during 1974-75,
CSC Bakersfield had over 66 percent of extension and 70 percent of its summer session student credit
hours in education. When the campus began a master's program in education and began to offer
evening courses, enrollment in CSC Bakersfield's extension dropped by 70 percent within two years.
Continuing Education Dean Roy Dull shifted to external degrees and concurrent enrollment to
stabilize the extension program, and he began a small summer program at the Mammoth Lakes resort
area using development money from the systemwide account of CERF. But the episode served to alert
the continuing education deans to the fact that campus planning and continuing education planning
were inextricably linked and that they were fiscally vulnerable. The example also points out the risks
of specialization, although for the smaller campuses, some specialization was inevitable.
Coordination of effort became a central preoccupation and problem for higher education during the
1970s. Some educators were promoting regional planning, while others (including the CSUC
Academic Senate) were suspicious that individual campuses might be compromised. The Advisory
Committee on Continuing Education recommended that the continuing education deans support an
experiment in regional continuing education planning in the Los Angeles area. Consequently, the Los
Angeles Basin Educational Liaison (LABEL) was set up in 1976 using systemwide CERF funds and
money from the reserves of the participating campuses: CSU Los Angeles, Long Beach, Northridge,
and Fullerton, CSC Dominguez Hills, San Bernardino, and Cal Poly Pomona. William Bright, former
director of Summer Session and Extension at CSU Los Angeles, was hired as the new director.
The purposes of LABEL were the following: to establish contacts on a united front with large
organizations whose operations covered more than one service area of a campus; to serve as an
information sharing exchange; to facilitate transfers of funds from one campus to another as needed to
sponsor intercampus foreign study programs; to eoordinate joint publioation of oatalogs and
brochures; and to mount cooperative publicity and marketing projects. LABEL was designed to
become self-supporting within three years with no further need of subsidies from reserves. we will see
in the next chapter, this expectation was to prove unrealistic.
A standardized data-gathering and management information system began to be planned in 1976 so
that more intercampus planning could be done. A proposal for implementing the national credit
designation -the Continuing Education Unit (CEU) -was adopted. A contract with BankAmerica was
negotiated so that students could use their credit cards to pay their continuing education program
tuition and fees. And a variety of marketing consultants began to appear. State University Dean Ralph
Mills, as well as several of the campus deans, saw that they needed to begin conceptualizing CSUC
continuing education in business terms. Educational consultant Marcia Salner was commissioned to
carry out a policy study as a preliminary to establishing a Task Force on Continuing Education in
1976, whose job it would be to make recommendations to the Chancellor regarding the future of
CSUC continuing education program.
These and other new ventures were all directed toward linking CSUC continuing education programs with
large, underserved populations of adults who had definable instructional needs and the financial resources
to pay the costs of their instruction.
The deans were placed in the difficult position of having to "make a profit" however they could, but still
demonstrate the academic integrity of their offerings. Frequently, what would "sell" in the continuing
education marketplace was pretty weak fare from an intellectual perspective. And there were a great many
competitors who did not care about the quality of their offerings as long as they were making money.
Many colleges, universities, and private organizations were vying for the opportunity to collect fees from
people on the basis of promises to advance their career opportunities.
Appropriate academic standards for continuing education became a statewide and national issue during the
1970s. The CSUC continuing education deans were frequently on the defensive with those members of the
campus faculties who did not think that extension should offer anything that was not already being offered
on the campus. On the other hand, the deans were often outraged by the irresponsible attitude that was
reflected in the instructional offerings of some of the colleges and universities outside of the CSUC system
with whom they were in competition. In their programming of continuing education offerings, the deans
needed to walk a thin line between being so excessively conservative that they lost money and being so
willing to follow popular fads that they were criticized for offering intellectual "fluff,"
Ralph Bohn, the dean at San Jose State University, recalls that some colleges gave one semester unit of
credit for a three-day workshop. Soon there was further devaluation to one unit of credit for one day's
worth of attendancel Bohn, along with Shepard Insel at San Francisco State, were two CSUC continuing
education deans who were active in calling attention to the need for statewide standards. Documents were
drawn up by a standards committee comprised of CSUC continuing education deans and staff members
and reviewed within the CSUC. In addition, Ralph Bohn was an active participant in the Western
Association of Schools and Colleges' efforts to develop an appropriate stance for the Association in
accreditation visits. Subsequently, continuing education began to receive more attention in campus
accreditation site visits. As a result, there was more general criticism of those campuses which ran loosely
supervised, "just for profit" continuing education enterprises. Because the CSUC deans were generally
responsible about the issue of academic standards, the CSUC was seldom singled out in public discussions
(for example, in legislative hearings) as an example of irresponsible profiteering in programs for employed
adults. The tradition in the CSUC of using campus faculty for summer and extension courses to the extent
feasible, and the effort (not always by the that was made at the Chancellor's Office level to ensure that
anything out of the ordinary was carefully evaluated and monitored, helped to maintain an attitude within
CSUC continuing education that adherence to generally accepted academic standards was a central goal.
This goal, however, did not always make for profitability. By 1977 profitability was a serious issue for the
continuing education deans because of increasing costs due to inflation and to increasing competition from
other organizations.
To make matters worse, the State Department of Finance appeared to be glaringly unsympathetic to the
position that self-supporting programs, operating within a public university, were in. The results of a fiscal
management audit of the Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF) in 1975 made it clear that the
Department of Finance intended to stress the idea that CSUC continuing education programs were to be
entirely self-supporting. The audit recommended a number of changes in accounting procedures with
which continuing education personnel were in concurrence. The Department of Finance also proposed to
eliminate the direct state support that had been provided for one-half of the position of Dean of
Educational Services and Summer Sessions.
Eliminating this half of a position would have effectively killed the small programs at the California
Polytechnic Universities at Pomona and San Luis Obispo, as well as at CSU Humboldt.
In addition, the Department of Finance recommended that all indirect forms of support for continuing
education programs, such as lights, office space, telephone, etc., be eliminated and that the bills for these
services be charged to the appropriate CERF accounts. This move would have seriously destabilized the
financial operations of most of the campuses continuing education programs, especially since the demand
was coming at a time when the programs were already struggling with the impact of escalating costs,
declines in enrollment in traditionally successful courses, and the possibility of losing fees coming from
external degree programs.
In 1976 Richard Lundstedt, financial analyst in the office of the State University Dean for Continuing
Education, issued a Continuing Education Fiscal Status Report in which he put the matter as bluntly as it
could be stated: "Speaking generally the fiscal situation ofself-supporting educational programs is poor and
likely to get much worse" (p. 1).
By 1976-77 the CSUC continuing education programs were posting almost 215,000 enrollments, and $15.5
million in revenue on the 19 campuses. To put the continuing education programs in perspective, the
enrollment in the programs, when translated into full-time equivalents, represented about 7 percent of the
total FTE of the CSUC system which enrolled about 290,000 students in 1976-77. The revenues from
continuing education programs reflected about 2 percent of the overall budget of the CSUC which in 197677 was a little less than $710 million for operation of the 19 campuses.
Campuses with large programs, Le., those generating more than $1 million in revenues in 1976-77 included
CSU Fullerton, Long Beach, Northridge, Sacramento, and San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose State
Universities. However, in that year, the Fullerton, San Francisco, and San Jose campuses posted large
deficits. In addition, Sonoma State College was not only in a serious deficit situation but had also
exhausted its reserves, thereby requiring a large loan from the systemwide reserve fund.
Because the financial picture was gloomy, and the future direction of CSUC continuing education
programs unclear, a Task Force on Continuing Education was appointed and set to work. Its chair was
Stephen Horn, President of CSU Long Beach. Its members included two vice presidents of academic
affairs, three faculty members, a representative of the Associated Students, a campus dean of students, a
campus business manager, two continuing education deans (William Murison from CSU Fullerton and
Ralph Meuter from CSU Chico) and two representatives from the Chancellor's Office, including Ralph
Mills, State UniversitY Dean of Continuing Education.
The Task Force did not get very far in creating solutions to the problems that surrounded CSUC continuing
education, but it did identify the issues. In his letter of transmission accompanying the 1977 report of the
Task Force, Dr. Horn wrote to Chancellor Dumke:
These issues include the present and future roles of both The Consortium of the California State
University and Colleges and the California Instructional Television Consortium. We are
cognizant that our recommendations for budgetary consolidation of the existing Extension and
Summer Session Accounts will also require policy consolidation in these two program areas.
The matters of faculty compensation, student fees, course credit, and the allocation of a
percentage of program net revenues to the Systemwide Reserve will require broad input. (There
is) the challenge of blending certain of the existing external degrees into the Academic Master
Plan of the system. (There is also a need) to review and simplify the variety of credit provided
for various course and activity programs.
This agenda was to fall to a new commission, conceived as a successor to the very successful
Commission on External Degree Programs. Chancellor Dumke agreed with the recommendation in
the 1976 report the Commission on External Degree Programs that there was a need for the creation
of a body within the esu that would "have as its sphere of concern and activity all of extended
education in the CSUC, including such activities as late afternoon, evening and weekend study,
extension and summer session classes and external degree programs" (p. i).
The establishment of a Commission on Extended Education becomes a fitting act with which to close
the five-year period from 1972 to 1977 in which the CSUC had been occupied with "new
approaches." Extended education was the result. The concept reflected an important change in the
way faculty and administrators thought about higher education in general and continUing education in
particular. It more clearly captured the idea of integrated programs that operated both on campus and
off campus and in both the degree and non-degree modes. It included traditional "extension" along
with the idea that the regular programs of the campuses were not confined to the boundaries of college
buildings. In fact, "continuing education" was no longer simply extension and summer session. For
the CSUC it had come to include external degrees, consortium degrees, concurrent enrollment of nonmatriculated students in regular courses, foundation-run conferences or workshops, off-campus
instruction, on-campus innovations, and use of electronic media.
The combined impact of this diversification of programs strained the traditional definitions,
procedures, and regulations of the system. Salner, writing in 1976, says, "The conventional
distinctions between off-campus and on-campus instruction, between resident and non-resident
students, between matriculated and non-matriculated students, between fiscal state support and selfsupport, are becoming blurred. The very definition of 'continuing education' has itself become a
debatable issue" (p. 6). The new label -extended education -better reflected what the CSUC intended.
The mission of the campuses was conceptualized in regional terms, and the CSUC system had in fact
become "The 1,000 Mile Campus." While there were gaps in its capacity to deliver, there had been, within
a relatively short period, a profound reworking of the commitments of the system. The long-term result of
its experiments with various kinds of innovation in education had led the csue to the point where the
Task Force on Continuing Education saw fit to recommend substantial revision of the formal mission
statement of the system in the state's Education Code. The new mission statement that was proposed by the
Task Force in its 1977 report reflected its feeling that the CSUC had a regional and statewide
responsibility to deliver courses and programs "in geographic areas of the state where a demonstrable need
exists" (p. 25). Furthermore, continuing education
. m's obli ation. The Task Force suggested that the CSUC "shall provide instruction related to
professional certification, licensure, and re icensure in accordance with educational requirements
established in law. Such instruction shall utilize both state and self-support sources of revenue" (p.
25).
As we will see in the following chapter, formal changes in the mission of the esue involving
legislation would take more consensus building than had actually been accomplished during the early
1970s. But the Task Force's recommendation is an important statement of the way in which faculty
and administrators on the esue campuses had altered their conceptualization of the purpose and
processes of higher education. Chancellor Dumke's "call" in 1971 had been answered.
CHAPTER 5
Extended Education (l 977·] 982)
With the creation of the CSUC Commission on Extended Education in January 1977, a new period in
the history of continuing education began. For five years, faculty and administrators within the system
had been experiencing the excitement of innovation as well as some of the frustration, conflict, and
disruption. While almost everyone working with the CSUC had come to understand the necessity for
major revisions in the system's educational philosophy and operating procedures along the lines called
for in Chancellor Dumke's 1971 "call for innovation," establishing consensus about what those major
revisions should actually be had proved far from easy.
The five-year period following the Chancellor's message produced a veritable storm of reports from
commissions, task forces, standing committees, and ad hoc subcommittees. But while there was never
any lack of recommendations for improvements or changes, implementation was another matter. The
pace of change proved to be much too slow for some, too hasty and ill-considered for others.
Nevertheless, the CSUC had, between 1972 and 1977, institutionalized external degree programs
involving nearly all of the campuses, developed and maintained The Consortium despite the financial
difficulties that it entailed, and begun to put in place a large-scale instructional television network.
These were not negligible achievements. On the positive side, these new programs, and the processes
designed for implementing them, served to establish a philosophy within the CSUC that the
continuing education of working adults was a task that was central to the present and future of the
system. On the negative side, the attempts to innovate brought to the surface a myriad of wellestablished operational procedures and vested interests that proved to be solid obstacles to smooth
change.
What had become abundantly clear by 1977 was that continuing education programs for working
adults could not be cordoned off into "separate" programs. Rather, they touched on every aspect of
campus functioning. That the CSUC was indeed a system of interacting and interdependent parts,
anyone of which could and did affect the others, was evident as soon as any effort was made to put
something new in place that was not just "added on" through an increase in the budget. What made
attempts at change and innovation particularly challenging for the CSUC during the 1970s was that
change was taking place within already very tight fiscal constraints which were to more by 1980.
The concept of "extended education" reflects an awareness that had begun to develop between 1972
and 1977, that working adults were a major student constituency to be served educationally by the
CSUC. In addition, there developed the simultaneous understanding that campus "business as usual"
would not suffice as the means for serving that constituency. The system's definition of its purposes
and mission was "extended" to include new patterns and procedures for delivering instruction.
Itbecame the task of the new Commission on Extended Education to make recommendations for
actions by the Chancellor and/or the Board of Trustees that would consolidate the most positive of the
changes that had been put in place, and identify any further barriers to progress -procedural,
philosophical, political, fiscal -that prevented the system from responding to the educational demands
being made upon it by a generally older student population.
The demographic shift toward older students was by now so evident that it served as daily news. An
article in the Los Angeles Times on October 3, 1977, was entitled "The Impact of Middle-Aged
Students: Over 35 Group May Force Major Reforms in Higher Education." However, within the
CSUC, reforms had, been in process for quite some time already.
The new Commission on Extended Education was composed in 1977. Donald Gerth, a familiar actor
in the evolution of CSUC continuing education and now president of CSC Dominguez Hills, was
appointed chairperson. Dr. Gerth brought an exceptional background to the job. In addition to serving
in many different roles on CSUC campuses, he had been a favorite appointee to committees,
commissions, and study groups during his career as a faculty member, a dean of students, and an
academic dean. As Vice President at CSU Chico, he had been active in promoting the development of
the first external degree program on a CSUC campus. He had served as a member of the Commission
on External Degree Programs during the course of that commission's existence, and he had also served
as a member of the Advisory Committee on Continuing Education. Deeply committed to the concept
of extended education, Gerth also believed that the 19 CSUC campuses were indeed a system with
common concerns and common goals. In 1981 he was appointed by the American Council of
Education to its national Commission on Higher Education and the Adult Learner, thus providing
recognition for the efforts of the CSUC to respond to adult students as well as providing an
opportunity for the CSUC Commission on Extended Education to keep abreast of national
developments in adult learning.
Members of the CSUC Commission on Extended Education included three continuing education
deans -Ralph Meuter from Chico, Roderick Peck from Long Beach, and William Locke from San
Diego, along with three faculty members from various campuses, two senior campus administrators,
and three representatives of the Chancellor's Office staff, including State University Dean of
Continuing Education Ralph Mills. Rhody Ringis, from the Dominguez Hills campus, became the first
executive director.
Among Gerth's first tasks as chair was to go through the various reports, such as those of the
Commission on External Degree Programs and of the Task Force on Continuing Education, to assess
what progress, if any, had been made in the implementation of recommendations by these study
groups. The major challenge facing the Commission was the so-called "steady state" of no anticipated
growth in either enrollment or fiscal allocations from the state. This steady state condition translated
into a situation in which any new educational or support programs that the system wished to create for
its adult students would have to be "purchased" through the cutback of existing programs. Naturally,
cutbacks were always politically unpopular and difficult to effect, primarily because of the personnel
dislocations involved. However, confronting this challenge squarely became the Commission on
Extended Education's role in policy formulation.
Because working adults are rooted in family responsibilities and jobs within their communities, it was
not possible for the CSUC to provide educational services to adult students by simply directing people
to where the services existed or could be most conveniently developed. As a result, the strategy of the
Commission, as it faced the need for changes, was to redirect the programs rather than the students.
The Commission needed to consider systematic procedures for academic planning, and to work
toward integration of self-supporting programs with those offered by the campuses through their
regular budget from the state. The issue of whether and how to convert external degree programs from
self-support (i.e, tuition charging) to state support became a major focus for Commission discussion.
In October 1977 guidelines for off-campus classes were revised. The Board of Trustees had moved to
make off-campus instruction a regular part of campus operations, following its several years as a pilot
project under Chancellor's Office supervision. A directive from the Chancellor's Office to the
campuses shifted decision-making to the campus administrations but laid out certain conditions
for approval, including the need for a clear rationale for each proposed class. The directive stressed
the importance of 4aving the classes taught by the regular campus faculty.
However, the CSUC faced a major anomaly in that some off-campus courses were part of regular
state-supported degree programs, and thus required no tuition charges to students, while other offcampus courses were part of external degree programs operated under the auspices of extension for
which tuition had to be charged. An Ad Hoc Study Group on Conversion of External Degrees to State
Support was formed by the Commission in order to consider which external programs could be
legitimately moved from self to state fiscal support. The CSUC needed a way of escaping the inequity
of state policy that required the campuses to charge tuition to students for geographically remote
degree programs even though the students were duly matriculated and seeking a CSUC degree. There
were a number of considerations: To what extent was the clientele for whom the external degree had
been designed entitled to fiscal support from state funds? Would the special character of the external
degree as a vehicle for continuing education of adults survive once the program was folded into the
regular offerings of the campus? What time frame should be recommended for conversion in order to
minimize the potential disruption to both the legislative budget process and the fiscal operations of
self-supporting programs -extension and summer sessions? The Ad Hoc Group needed to develop
criteria for making these assessments.
The plan to move off-campus courses from self-support to state support was not greeted with
enthusiasm by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. In an October 17, 1977 letter, Hal Geiogue,
Principal Program Analyst for this Committee, reminded the CSUC through Dale Hanner, Vice
Chancellor for Business Mfairs, that this idea had not been approved by either the Legislature or the
State Department of Finance, and that furthermore, existing policy provided state support only to oncampus courses.
On the other side, a bill was introduced in the State Senate in 1977 (SB 1128) that would have
prohibited the CSUC "from charging an instructional fee to any matriculating students taking· courses
for credit in an external degree program except for the maximum $25 tuition fee authorized by statute
and a fee based on costs attributable solely to the courses' off-campus location" (for example, rent or
faculty travel costs). This bill was predictably opposed by the Department of Finance, which claimed
that the 19 campuses already offered a reasonable opportunity for postsecondary education to virtually
all California residents. The department was fearful that eliminating the tuition charges for off-campus
degree courses would increase enrollments in the CSUC beyond what the public could pay for. One
estimate was that state costs would increase by $2.7 million.
Individual campuses also had their particular concerns about the impact of shifting external degree
programs to state support. An example of how the picture looked from the campus perspective comes
from Dominguez Hills, where several courses were offered off campus in fall of 1977: eight courses
in Business were offered at a high school twelve miles from the campus; two courses in
Environmental Science at another high school ten miles away; and two more Environmental Science
courses in a third high school twelve miles from the campus. Enrollment in these off-campus courses
was estimated to be a little over 300 students. All of the courses were part of external degree
programs, but to make matters a little more complicated, Dominguez Hills also had an on-campus
external degree program in Humanities which featured independent study as part of an intercampus
Consortium program. In this program, working students came to the campus once a month for
individual tutorials with campus faculty. In addition, Dominguez Hills offered a master's degree in
Administration, involving about 60 business people in courses taught at five different Los Angeles
area motel conference locations. Similarly, the campus offered a master's degree in Medical
Technology with about 70 students in five hospital locations in the Los Angeles area. How should
administrators make decisions about the value, ethics, and educational soundness of converting this
range of to state support? The answer was by no means clear. Furthermore, Dominguez Hills had to
take into consideration that conversion to state support woqld mean the loss of about $200,000 in
revenue to its extension program. The campus administration questioned whether the actual costs of
delivering instruction off campus could be covered by the state support formulae, which did not
provide for faculty travel, rent on conference facilities, or at-a-distance support services, such as
financial aid counseling, placement services or academic advising.
However, off-campus instruction was not in every case restricted to courses that were part of formally
constituted external degree programs as it was at Dominguez Hills. Several campuses offered part of
their regular campus program in off-campus locations. Long Beach offered 20 classes, and San Diego
37, primarily in teacher education. Northridge had 20 off-campus classes, most at the Ventura
Learning Center. San Jose had classes either in teacher education at various local schools or at the
army base at Fort Ord near Monterey. Stanislaus had the largest number (45), since it had begun the
earliest pilot program of off-campus regular courses, most of which were offered in the city of
Stockton. It was clear that off-campus activity needed to be examined so that in the future courses
would be developed in relation to clear objectiVes.
The Commission on Extended Education, facing a massive job of converting external degree programs
to state support, struggled to get campus data that was accurate in order to make projections about
possible future enrollments and costs. The Commission discussed issues related to space needs, staff
needs, salary, faculty workload, and state formulae. The task was to occupy the Commission for
several years. However, other issues were also brewing.
For several years, various groups had been expressing concern about how the Continuing Education
Revenue Fund (CERF) was being generated and spent. interest rates began to increase, CERF
generated more money. The existence of a substantial kitty, supervised by the Commission, began to
excite the interest of lean and hungry administrators and faculty outside of continuing education. The
continuing education deans, whose efforts were responsible for generating income to the Fund,
naturally felt that they should be the chief beneficiaries of its earnings. The deans also felt that they
were being financially squeezed by unfair policies within the system. For example, policy on the use
of revenues from the concurrent enrollment of non-matriculated students in regular on-campus courses
was changed in 1978. The campus presidents were given the authority to decide how the revenues
should be divided between extension and the campus academic departments. At those campuses with a
president who was sympathetic toward self-supporting programs, this was a perfectly acceptable olic .
On other cam us .
e avore so that they benefited from concurrent enrollments far more than did extension. Mutterings
about "rip-offs" were heard at meetings of the continuing education deans.
Also difficult for continuing education deans were the slow but steady increases in chargeback costs,
initiated as a result of pressure from the State Department of Finance, which continuously ate into their
budgets. The deans found that the concept of "self-supporting program" was constantly being
redefined in ways that were clearly detrimental to the fiscal stability of extension and summer sessions.
This was nothing new in the CSUC; an Interim Assembly Committee on Education had begun in 1961
to complain that these self-support programs were not independent of indirect sources of state support.
However, what was rapidly changing in the late 1970s was the amount of zeal with which legislators
pursued this idea. Continuing education was beginning to be conceptualized in some quarters as a
tenant on the campus premises. At the same time, paradoxically, there were increasing requests from
other quarters for more integration in campus and systemwide academic and fiscal planning. The deans
were caught in the middle. they saw the matter,
the first business of the day was financial survival. For example, in 1967-68 no campus had a deficit
in its self-support programs. In 1976-77 eight campuses showed losses.
On the other hand, the Commission felt that it should take a broad view of the issues. Itwas loath to
side only with the deans. Money was tight everywhere, and using CERF monies to bail out faltering
extension programs was not what the fund had been designed to accomplish. Rather, the fund was to
be used to underwrite the development costs of innovation. Nonetheless, it was Widely rumored
among the deans that various campus or Chancellor's Office administrators occasionally made
frightening references to the possibility of raiding CERF for purposes that had little to do with
continuing education. There was ample precedent in the past for using self-support program revenues
for general campus expenses even though system policy, after 1962, expressly precluded this. The
struggle by the deans to hold onto continuing education revenues and to use them to the benefit of
their own programs came to focus on how the CERF systemwide account was being allocated, and on
the role of the Commission in making allocation recommendations.
Major fiscal commitments inherited by the Commission were The Consortium, which accounted for
43 percent of all allocations from the CERF systemwide account between 1970 and 1977, and the
CITY Consortium, which received percent. The Los Angeles Basin Educational Liaison (LABEL)
was also a small but steady recipient of funds, although it consumed less than 2 percent of the
available CERF monies between 1970 and 1977. The remaining money from the CERF systemwide
account was used for special projects on the campuses that promised to yield value for all campus
continuing education programs within the CSUC. However, this seemed a pitifully small amount to
the continuing education deans, who saw little direct benefit to their programs coming from the
various consortia.
At its May 1978 meeting the Commission agreed to remind the Chancellor that continuing education
was an integral function of the CSUC and to recommend, therefore, that indirect costs of self-support
continuing education programs, such as extension and summer sessions, be borne by the regular
campus state support budget rather than charged back. It was left to the Chancellor's Office to fight
the matter out with the Department of Finance and the Legislature in a battle that was decisively lost
in 1978 when California voters, desperate for relief from escalating property taxes, passed
"Proposition 13," which froze property taxes and prohibited further increases.
Educators immediately felt the impact of this "taxpayers' revolt." When local revenues failed to keep
pace with inflation and rising costs, local schools and community colleges turned to the state to make
up their losses. As a result, the costs that California government had to cover increased dramatically.
The existence of a surplus fund helped state the first year after Proposition 13 to "bail out" stranded
local schools and community colleges, but the long-term effect was to force drastic budget cutting
actions across the board in all organizations relying on public monies. The CSUC was no exception.
As a result of the passage of Proposition 13, all salaries for public employees, including CSUC
faculty and staff, were frozen and, in addition, $14.5 million in "unidentified savings" were mandated.
This meant that the CSUC was expected to find a way to spend $14.5 million less than it had been
budgeted for during 1978-79. Hiring was temporarily suspended as were purchases and building
repairs. Governor Jerry Brown, in a letter of November 8, 1979, asked the CSUC, along with all state
agencies, to identify "existing programs which may be subject to reduction, elimination or
redirection."
The CSUC responded by establishing a systemwide review process made up of nine task forces with
the unenviable charge of recommending where the system should cut, slash, and burn in
order to conserve taxpayers' dollars. The Project A Task Force, which looked at academic programs,
was contemplating a possible loss of as many as 842 faculty positions systemwide. Naturally, the
mood on the campuses was close to paranoia as low enrollment programs for which there was little
student enthusiasm faced extinction. Few people on the campuses or in the Chancellor's Office were
much interested in the problems of the continuing education deans.
It fell to the Commission on Extended Education and its chair, Donald Gerth, to try to keep the peace
among disputing constituencies so as to arrive at some consensus that could be translated into feasible
systemwide policy by Chancellor Dumke and the Board of Trustees. Gerth's strategy for moving the
Commission forward on the tasks delegated to it was to convene small task forces utilizing two or
three Commission members. These groups often drew in additional people from the campuses or the
Chancellor's Office who were not members of the Commission but who had something to contribute.
This strategy permitted the Commission to conduct a number of simultaneous investigations that
produced draft recommendations on which the Commission could act.
For example, to deal with the Commission's number one priority issue -the conversion of selfsupport
external degree programs to state support -two Commission subcommittees had been put to work:
one, on needs assessment, was chaired by Commission member Gerald Sherba, Vice President for
Academic Affairs at San Bernardino; the other, on resources, was chaired by John Foote, Dean of
Academic Planning at San Jose.
The subcommittee on resources concluded that conversion of off-campus self-support classes did not
need separate state budget formulae; however, the subcommittee suggested that a special allocation be
made to each campus based on the level of their off-campus activity. Such an allocation would be
needed to provide the administrative coordination, public information, and support services unique to
off-campus programs.
The needs assessment subcommittee reported that more systematic data gathering at the campus level
was needed and that this data needed to be better shared between and among campuses. The
subcommittee recommended more sophisticated marketing techniques for linking the needs of
potential and current students with what the campus could offer, and also better links between the
CSUC and state, federal, and county government offices so that continuing education programs could
be developed for in-service government employees.
In September of 1978, Robert Jones, also from the Dominguez Hills campus, replaced Rhody Ringis
as executive director of the Commission. The three continuing education deans' positions on the
Commission had also changed hands since one dean was appointed each year to a three-year term. In
1979-80 the new representatives were Roger Dash from CSU Los Angeles, James Fikes from CSU
Fresno, and Sharon Ferrett from Humboldt State University.
Meanwhile, the Chancellor's Office had been able to arrive at a detente with the Legislative Analyst's
Office on how to handle the potential integration of external degree programs into the state support
budget for the CSUC. The two offices agreed to limit the campuses in 1978-79 to what they had spent
in 1977-78. No new courses or locations were to be added, and there was to be no increase in full-time
equivalent enrollment (FTE). In addition, and this was more controversial, campus authority for
approving off-campus locations was withdrawn, and authority was instead delegated to the State
University Dean for Academic Affairs in the Chancellor's Office. This general situation was to remain
in effect, pending a study of the issues by the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which
was to be completed by January of 1980.
Considerable discussion of this policy took place at the meetings of the Commission. Campuses lost
flexibility, were stuck with figures that were of questionable accuracy, and had to abandon plans and
commitments made for the upcoming year. The spectre of increased centralization at the Chancellor's
Office level, coupled with limits on the decision-making flexibility of the campuses, elicited anger at
the campus level. Some saw the situation as a sign that they should stop offering off-campus
instruction. Tempers were short, in any case, because of the generally negative political and fiscal
outlook for higher education in California.
By 1978 an overall decline in college enrollment had been recognized nationally, which further
lowered morale on the campuses already beset by fiscal cutbacks. One problem was that faculty and
administrators were accustomed to a professional situation in which enrollment and hence budget
growth were the norm. But growth in enrollment began to taper off beginning in 1972, and in 197677 the CSUC saw its first actual enrollment decline.
From then on faculty and administrators were forced to acceptsome new and unpleasant realities.
Cutbacks due to decreased enrollment and demands from the state for emergency savings meant that
some people would lose their jobs. Worries over who would be the first to go distracted the entire
CSUC system. Faculty began to wonder if going off campus in order to get students into their classes
might be a way to save their positions.
Off-campus instruction would not prove to be any kind of a panacea. As George McCabe, Director of
The Consortium, pointed out in an April 1977 letter to Donald Gerth, most of the enrollments in
external degree and Consortium programs tended to be in programs that were already full on the
campuses so that the external program was sustained by a shortage of openings on campus. Iffaculty
were being under-utilized on campus because of little demand for their field, then there was no offcampus demand for them either. On the other hand, if there was such demand on campus that
particular faculty members' courses were filled, it was difficult then to motivate them to go off campus
because they were already busy enough with on-campus students.
Competition for qualified and available students began to increase among all of the colleges and
universities in California. Many colleges, particularly those in the private sector, were operating off
campus in a major way; the public colleges and universities were far behind in the race for the offcampus student. A 1979 draft of CPEe's report on off-campus instruction states:
Only ten of the 268 locations operated by the University (of California), 26 of the 526 locations run
by the State University, and 197 of the 2,507 locations provided by the Community Colleges offered
as IIluch one program. _
One of the major attractions of the relatively expensive off-campus credit courses provided
by the independent institutions is that most of them are offered as part of a sequence of
courses that could lead eventually to a bachelor's or master's degree. In fact, 83 percent of
the off-campus locations with three or more courses operated by the independent
institutions offered at least one degree program in fall 1978. (p. 34)
CPEC also found that the independent colleges operated off-campus degree programs much farther
away from their campuses than did the CSUC, which tended to concentrate its efforts within close
range of the campus. Among the independent colleges, over half off-campus locations were at least 50
miles away and almost a third were over one hundred miles away.
It is possible that the CSUC policy of utilizing its own campus faculty as much as possible in its
external programs was restricting the geographic range of off-campus instruction. In addition,
Trustee policy of paying for extension and summer session teaching according to the same scale as
regular faculty placed a heavy fiscal burden on self-support programs: faculty salaries accounted for
about 70 percent of the costs of extension and summer sessions. Ralph Mills, the State University
Dean for Extended Education, pointed out to the Trustees at one of their regular meetings that one of
CSUC's major competitors devoted 35 percent to faculty salaries. While not the only item that
increased costs, faculty salaries were certainly a major focus when the CSUC continuing education
deans attempted to reduce expenditures in order to remain solvent.
A Commission task force was appointed to consider the issue of faculty salaries, while the
Chancellor's Office undertook a comparative study of practices in other universities. The continuing
education deans wanted more flexibility in policy in order to get around the high salary rates that they
were required to pay instructors. On the other side, faculty were incensed that any group could think
that there was virtue in tampering with faculty pay scales after so many decades of struggle to
professionalize the faculty and create decent remuneration for teachers in the state systems. In
November 1979 the Academic Senate passed a resolution formally opposing the idea set forth by the
deans of continuing education -that salaries for self-support programs should be paid on a scale that
was separate from regular faculty. By the end of 1979, the continuing education deans and the CSUC
Academic Senate were in complete opposition about salary policy for extension and summer sessions.
Clearly, any proposals that would serve to give continuing education fiscal relief would have hard
sledding.
As a way of moving forward, the Commission recommended attention to several other factors related
to costs: policies to reduce chargebacks to self-support programs; greater flexibility in the setting of
course fees; and more attention to the marketing and planned development of extended education so
that opportunities to generate revenues were not lost by an unprepared campus. Toward this end, a
large-scale marketing study was undertaken with the help of the firm of Peat, Marwick and Mitchell.
Its purpose was to find ways to make the campuses' self-support programs more viable as business
ventures without sacrificing their academic integrity.
With the continuing education deans on one side, the faculty on the other, the Commission confronted gloomy
enrollment projections for the CSUC as a whole. California was anticipating that the 1980s would bring an increase of
21 percent in its population 30-39 years of age and an increase of 47 percent of those 40-49. People over 65 would
increase by about 27 percent. However, the usual college-going age group, even when stretched to include anyone
under 30, could be expected to increase by only 8.5 percent. The 18-24 year old group was expected to drop 25 per-_
-----The population of California and the US as a whole was aging.
Other social changes were occurring as well. The Education Commissions of the States issued a report
addressed to colleges and universities regarding what they could expect during the 1980s. The report
noted the changing nature of the student clientele with respect to age, gender, and ethnicity; increased
interest by the public in consumer protection, public accountability, and cost savings that would result
in more government regulation; more competition at every level of society as resources became
scarcer; changing priorities of public officials causing education to drop as a national concern behind
defense, environmental protection, crime, and housing; collective bargaining by faculty; and changing
academic interests of students as they became more concerned with preparing themselves for
vocational and occupational competition. The report questioned whether institutions set up to deal with
the problem of orderly growth were equipped to deal with the new problem of orderly retrenchment
and consolidation. Retrenchment was the challenge facing the CSUC as the decade of the 1980s began.
104
Against this background, characterized by the need for immediate budget cuts and reductions in personnel
and programs, weakened morale, personal fears and discouragement, the major programs of CSUC
Extended Education were being evaluated -external degree programs, The Consortium, instructional
television, and continuing education in extension, summer sessions, plus a newly developed "special
session." The fate of these programs, major products of CSUC's program of innovation begun in 1972, is
central to the story of continuing education in the California State University.
External Degree Programs
In the academic year of 1977-78, the CSUC external degree programs saw their high water mark in both
numbers of students enrolled and in the number of programs. Systemwide enrollment in external degree
program courses was.8,432 in 575 classes for a full-time eqUivalent (FTE) figure of 1,920. Although this
was less than one one-hundredth of a percent of the total CSUC enrollment of 233,699 FTE enrollment,
the figures were substantial enough to fuel state officials' fears that a Pandora's box of future expenses to
the taxpayer would be opened with a move by the CSUC to transfer this enrollment into the system's
overall budget requests to the state.
The Ad Hoc Committee on Conversion presented a report to the Commission on Extended Education that
detailed a plan to convert all external programs to state support by 1979-80. Exceptions were the programs
that were operated on military bases or to an otherwise closed clientele. CSC Bakersfield was offering a
BS degree in business administration at the Naval Weapons Center near China Lake; CSU Fresno had
begun a master's program in engineering at Edwards Air Force Base; and both CSU Long Beach and San
Diego State University had programs at naval stations in their areas. Although the structure of these
programs was somewhat different from earlier degree programs operated by San Francisco State
University in the 1950s and 60s, the CSUC was clearly back in the business of offering degree programs to
military personnel. Since these programs were not open to the public, and the military students were
technically not California residents entitled to state support, these military programs were to remain selfsupporting throughout the duration of their existence. Most other external degree programs, however, were
targeted for conversion.
CSU Dominguez Hills was the first to take the conversion plunge when it transferred two of its very
successful programs (the MBA and the MS in Environmental Studies). The results were disastrous.
Enrollment fell off almost immediately, and in the following year the campus asked to have the programs
returned to self-support status. The reasons for the enrollment drop are not really clear, but it was
attributed to the fact that the curriculum of the external MBA program was modified so as to conform to
the degree program on the The Dominguez Hills faculty and administration felt that they could not justify
the existence of two identical campus degree programs that had different content. Second, the special
advising and counseling services that had previously been provided by the staff of the continuing
education office were not taken up by campus faculty once the programs became part of the regular
campus program of offerings. The importance of such advising for adult students out in the community
was stressed by the Task Force on Continuing Education in its 1977 report:
By imaginatively "tracking" a hypothetical nontraditional student from home to work to initial
contact with the campus through public information, admissions, advising, and subsequent
enrollment, the Task Force became convinced that there are serious obstacles to student access:
complex, lengthy and time consuming admission and registration procedures, difficulty in
obtaining comprehensive information about various alternatives, limited advising and
counseling assistance, etc. In evaluating and choosing from among the variety of educational
options available through the CSUC, the potential student in the community at large has no easy
task. (p. B)
But the problems were more subtle than simply the withdrawal of additional advising or unwelcome changes in
curriculuI;l1. George McCabe, because of his experience as Director of The Consortium, is one of the most
articulate analysts of the problems of integrating special programs for working adults with "business as usual"
on the campuses. His (1979) report on off-campus instruction makes several predictions about what was likely
to happen in the CSUC:
The difficulties of converting external programs as seen by those most responsible for them are:
•
At a time of shrinking enrollments (or fear of shrinking enrollments) the relatively small size of
external programs will result in their being overlooked in the course of campus internal budgetary
allocation procedures. External programs will be starved as they compete with underfinanced efforts to
meet on-campus needs. Sufficient monies will not be available for travel costs, for program coordination,
advising and outreach. The starving of external programs will be most severe in inter-disciplinary areas
which have no established on-campus base.
•
Many regular faculty, who have served off campus for extra compensation, will not be willing to
do so as part of the regular academic load, particularly if such service requires extensive travel time. (This
reluctance is mitigated on some small campuses with severe underenrollment problems and off-campus
access to larger population centers.)
•
Some student fee-supported programs are highly dependent for their success upon the part-time
use of highly placed agency professionals. Department chairs who have willingly called upon such persons
under a self-support mode will be placed in considerable conflict under a state support mode if they must
struggle with the prospect of "layoff" of tenuretrack faculty simultaneously with the need for continued
part-time employment (now under state support) of off-campus personnel. ...
•
Those who have participated in program development, educational outreach and off-campus
course scheduling (and who therefore understand what is involved) feel that off-campus scheduling will be
undertaken in terms of on-campus needs and without the awareness required of off-campus scheduling
problems. Many predict an early demise of such converted off-campus efforts....
•
Some impacted programs -notably Business Administration -forgetting the long period in which
they were "carried" by other disciplines (notably the Social Sciences) are feeling oppressed by the fact that
they have "wall-to-wall" students and high student faculty ratios. They are not in the least interested in
extending their services to meet off-campus needs. They experience some difficulty in obtaining full-time
facul ualified in ial ar
us, one 0 e areas of greatest demand is matched with a faculty with the greatest reluctance. (pp.
151, 153)
The continuing education deans who were participating in the Ad Hoc Study Group on Conversion assessed the
situation on their campuses, and found that attitudes varied considerably. For example, Roy Dull reported that
the president of CSC Bakersfield had taken a position against the conversion of external degrees to state support
because he feared that the capacity of his small campus could not be stretched far enough. Ralph Meuter
reported that the attitude on the Chico campus was exactly the reverse: conversion had been a long-time goal.
Joseph Corbin reported that CSC Stanislaus had pushed its faculty into compliance because the campus was
overstaffed in relation to its current enrollment: the faculty had been told that they had to go off campus or risk
layoffs. No extra compensation was provided for travel costs but the faculty could make use of state cars.
Corbin expressed the opinion that this policy would not likely survive any collective bargaining initiatives by
faculty. Ralph Bohn predicted that the external programs of San Jose
State would fold within two years unless faculty incentives were built into the conversion plan. However,
despite attitudes on most campuses, the Chancellor's Office was adamant: the programs would be
converted. To do otherwise was to court further risk of law suits as students became increasingly aware of
the legal tangle produced by the imposition of tuition charges on matriculated students who were taxpaying California citizens.
Time was to prove George McCabe generally correct in his predictions about the potential of the campuses
to maintain existing external degree programs intact, for, in fact, no program survived the conversion
process without substantial changes. Many were lost altogether on campuses where incentives to maintain
the commitment to at-a-distance education were lacking. Between 1977 and 1982, the CSUC lost about
700 FTE students in off-campus degree programs as the conversion plan proceeded.
By 1981-82 the original conversion plan had been substantially modified as it became clearer that there
was serious opposition, both within and outside of the CSUC, to folding the external programs into the
regular programs. Twenty-five programs were not converted and remained under the aegis of the
continuing education deans. Of these, 18 were on four campuses: Bakersfield, Chico, Dominguez Hills,
and San Bernardino. Some campuses continued to offer Consortium programs, in particular, CSU
Northridge and Sacramento. However, enrollment had declined to about one quarter of what it had been in
1976-77. In 1981-82 FTE was 464, including Consortium programs. The lost enrollment was not entirely
taken up in state-supported off-campus instruction.
Some campuses simply abandoned the whole external degree concept. Others wanted to maintain it, but
favored some modifications, such as moving programs to off-campus centers to diminish the stress that
more far-flung operations produced on campus faculty and administration. Some established centers were
revitalized, and new centers were created. Most notable as permanent locations were the Stockton Center
of CSC Stanislaus, the Contra Costa Center (in Pleasant Hill) begun by CSU Hayward, the North County
Center (in San Marcos) that San Diego State University opened in addition to its branch campus at
Calexico, and the Ventura Learning Center, where Northridge offered a large number of courses. San
Francisco State University reestablished its presence in downtown San Francisco in 1979 through a CPECmandated collaborative venture with the San Francisco Community College District's Downtown Center.
Itwas officially designated as an off-campus center shortly thereafter and received state support beginning
in 1984-85. A resident MBA program is now offered there as well as a number of extended education
classes and programsSan Francisco State opened its very own Downtown Center for Professional
Development (nonacademic) in February 1988.
From the perspective of the continuing education deans, the impact of the external degree program venture
was rather negative. They felt that they had done the legwork of developing the concept, learning by trial
and error what would work and what would not, and building up expertise about how to deliver degree
education to a middle-aged, mid-career student clientele. As soon as they began to get good at it, the policy
of conversion to state support turned these hard-won successes over to the campus administration, where
people who were inexperienced with such programs had to begin allover again. The deans were not
surprised when many of the programs began to falter as the campuses modified the programs to better
conform to what campus faculty and administration were used to.
On the other hand, there were a number of positive effects. First, the initial decision to assign pilot project
status to external degree programs and to house them with continuing education gave campus faculty and
administration a chance to get used to the concept in a gradual way. Because of the self-support status of
continuing education, administrators had more flexibility and freedom
to innovate than did their counterparts in the regular state-supported programs. Furthermore, the continuing
education deans had more experience with mature students than did campus personnel who were used to
the primarily 18-25 year old population.
By the 1980s, however, following several years experience with external programs, campus attitudes
had begun to change. Faculty and administrators had learned to cope with the severe stresses of
funding cutbacks, demographic change, and enrollment shifts. Fewer faculty and administrators were
resistant to the idea that the campuses had to "extend" themselves in order to become more accessible
to a greater variety of students. Itis possible that without the pioneering of the continuing education
deans and their staffs, the educational concepts that the external degree programs embodied would not
have had a chance to take root, given the bureaucratic inertia of large campuses with entrenched habits
and vested interests. By the time conversion to the regular programs was considered as an alternative,
a majority of regular CSUC faculty and administrators no longer found the idea of external degree
programs strange or threatening. In fact, experience with external degrees led to some innovations in
on-campus programs -for example, the Project for Adult College Education (PACE) begun by CSU
Dominguez Hills in 1981.
The PACE program had begun initially at Wayne State University in Michigan with trade union,
federal, and foundation grant money. The Dominguez Hills campus then borrowed and strengthened
the model. Its purpose was to create better articulation between two-year community colleges and
universities so that students were more likely to continue their education through a full four years to a
bachelor's or master's degree. The PACE program at CSU Dominguez Hills was successful in
attracting adult students and now includes cooperative efforts with six community colleges and a
second CSUC campus, San Jose State University. Joan Holly McGrath, Who recently retired as
director of the program, earlier served on the staff of The Consortium. In her opinion, the PACE
program could not have been started at all if it had not been for the initial campus experience with
external degree programs.
Second, off-campus instruction -which had been virtually abandoned by the CSUC campuses as a
regular pattern of educational delivery in the 1960s -was resuscitated as a policy as a direct result of
the development of external degree programs. Offering these new programs on a selfsupport basis
eventually led to a confrontation between CSUC and state legislators over the legality of charging
tuition to matriculated students. The CSUC eventually won, thereby gaining some much-needed
flexibility as to where, when, and how instruction could be offered by the campuses. It is unlikely that
this issue would have arisen or a change in CSUC policy come about if the external degree programs
had not been first pioneered by continuing education personnel.
The fight during the 1970s to extend state support to education offered outside of campus boundaries
was not easily won by the CSUC. Following a study of the issues, the California Postsecondary
Education Commission (CPEC) recommended in 1980 that a ceiling on off-campus enrollment be
established so that growth could be controlled. It was already clear to CSUC faculty and
administrators that there was not going to be any stampede toward off-campus activities, due largely
to the various disincentives outlined earlier by George McCabe. However, the Legislature was still not
convinced and a limit of 1,600 FTE students for 1980-81 was agreed to. This limit was to be gradually
increased to 2,100 FTE the following year and to 2,600 by 1982-83. The CSUC was to report annually
to CPEC on its actual off-campus enrollment through academic year 1982-83.
CSUC enrollment in state-supported off-campus courses did not exceed the established limits. In fact,
the figures fell considerably short of the ceiling. For example, in 1981-82 the campuses posted 922
FTE enrollment, when the ceiling was 2,100. However, overall growth was steady.
The campuses were operating in a number of different kinds of off-campus locations: at the Calexico
branch campus of San Diego State University; at centers, where some physical facilities were owned or
leased by a campus and where there was a resident director and staff (examples are the Ventura Learning
Center or the Contra Costa Center); at a special facility like the Moss Landing Marine Biology Center,
operated by San Jose State University on Monterey Bay; or at various temporary sites, where several
courses or just a single course might be offered at minimal expense to the campus. In addition, summer
sessions frequently were offered at a distance from the campus, even overseas (an example is San Jose
State's summer master's degree program in industrial arts offered at the University of Puerto Rico).
By 1982 a CSUC campus was likely to be offering both state support and self-support courses at any or all
of these types of sites in addition to regular on-campus courses and programs. The offerings might be
single courses or complete degree programs. The end result was that external degree programs and the offcampus activity that they entailed had ceased to be regarded as "experimental." They had settled into an
institutionalized place within CSUC operations. Paradoxically, what looked like a new structure had a
certain familiarity about it, for without conscious effort, the CSUC had revived patterns of education that
had been typical of its colleges in earlier periods when the state teachers colleges had offered their courses
wherever there was a need.
The Consortium
In 1978 George McCabe resigned as Director of The Consortium and returned to a faculty position on the
Sonoma State College campus. He was disillusioned, for his earlier hope that The Consortium could
become a twentieth "campus" in the CSUC system had obviously come to naught. The failure to gain fiscal
support from the state in spite of repeated attempts by the Chancellor's Office and McCabe himself,
coupled with an atmosphere of uncertain state policy toward CSUC's efforts at innovation, left The
Consortium to limp along always desperately in search of funds. Had The Consortium been a private
enterprise, free from the bureaucratic relationships of a large statecontrolled university system, it might
have been possible to develop it as a fiscally self-efficient entity. But The Consortium staff was not
independent of the whole, nor was it possible to raise tuition fees high enough to cover the costs of the
inordinate amount of staff time that was needed to relate the programs to the ongoing operations of 19
large campuses.
Following four years of enrollment growth in Consortium programs, enrollment began to falloff after 1978
in the post-Proposition 13 climate of fiscal stringency. But more serious than the general economic
turndown was the uncertainty about the future of The Consortium. It was increasingly dependent on CERF
money generated by continuing education programs for its fiscal support.
A new director needed to be appointed if The were to continue beyond its pilot phase which ended in 1978.
The deans of continuing education had been complaining for quite some time about the financial drain that
The Consortium represented. Several of the campus presidents were unsupportive, taking an "I told you so"
attitude. Faculty were lukewarm, and there was substantial support within the Chancellor's staff for a
decision to phase The Consortium out.
The campuses were notified that The Consortium's life was over. Management of a phase-out was turned
over to Ralph Mills, the State University Dean of Continuing Education in the Chancellor's Office. Staff
was reduced from 12.6 positions to 2 in order to save money, and the admissions and recordkeeping
functions were decentralized to the individual campuses.
But Chancellor Dumke was stubbornly supportive of the concept. He and a few other stanch supporters,
like Ralph Mills and some of the members of the Commission on Extended Education, believed that the
CSUC needed an entity that could offer degree programs up and down the 1,000
mile length of California to students who otherwise would not have a realistic opportunity to complete a
degree. I\ather than give up, Chancellor Dumke created an Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of The
Consortium and charged it to assess the possibilities for continuing The Consortium on a self-support basis.
The Ad Hoc Committee, chaired by Donald Gerth, subsequently came up with a plan designed to achieve
total self-support for The Consortium by 1983. To help with the transition, the Chancellor asked his staff
to prepare proposals to be submitted to philanthropic organizations and other granting agencies throughout
the country. On the advice of The Consortium's faculty Advisory Committee, an interim director, Helen
Cheney Gilde, a faculty member from the Long Beach campus, was appointed. The permanent
appointment of David Elliott from San Jose State, formerly Chair of the CSUC Statewide Academic Senate
and a member of the Ad Hoc Committee, followed in 1981 and The Consortium was given a new lease on
life.
Some important administrative changes were made that freed The Consortium staff from some timeconsuming entanglements. For example, the director was to report directly to the Chancellor. The
Consortium was also authorized to offer its own courses rather than having to continue to depend on the
campuses to provide faculty. These changes streamlined Consortium planning and gave it more
independence from the campuses and from the continuing education deans. In 1979-80 The Consortium's
instructional programs were again formally evaluated with generally favorable results, and in 1981 the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges continued its accreditation.
As of 1981-82 The Consortium was offering eight programs, of which five were graduate programs, one
was a teaching credential program, and two were bachelor's degrees. Eleven campuses were involved in
program delivery.
David Elliott was able to report that, in 1981-82, The Consortium had kept to the fiscal plan outlined by
the Ad Hoc Committee, and its books were balanced. The receipt of a grant for $2.3 million from the
Kellogg Foundation to support a bachelor's degree program for working nurses allowed for an increase in
overall Consortium enrollment as the nursing program got underway. The admissions and records office
served its far-flung students via an 800 toll-free number. Student fees were set at $85 per credit hour.
But The Consortium still did not enjoy a consensus of support that made it a secure and permanent part of
CSUC operations, and, once again, it would have to prove itself.
Continuing Education
While external degrees and Consortium programs were a major preoccupation of the CSUC in the years
following Chancellor Dumke's call for new approaches, there were also many important changes in
traditional extension and summer sessions programs. The addition of external degree programs and of
concurrent enrollment policy had added some complexity to the basic extension and summer sessions
organization. Another new concept, "special sessions," was added during this period.
The purpose of special sessions was to find a way around the problem described in the preceding chapter:
self-support courses offered by CSUC continuing education carried residence degree credit only when they
were offered in the summer and not at other times of the year. By extending the sessions into year-round
operations, continuing education programs would gain the flexibility to offer courses that carried residence
credit at other times of the year besides summer.
The rationale for this move was described in a memo of February 27, 1974, from Ralph Mills, State
University Dean of Continuing Education, to Alex Sherriffs, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs:
1)
Public schools in California are beginning to experiment with year-round operations. As a
result, many public school personnel are not able to attend summer sessions. Rather, they are free
during other periods of the year. By offering them Special Sessions during periods when they are
available to attend, it will be possible for many to continue their progress toward advanced degrees
and credentials. Extension courses will not meet these needs, because of the limitations on the
number of extension units that can be used to meet degree requirements.
Military personnel stationed on bases throughout California are often unable to attend
regularly scheduled on-campus courses.... They could be provided with a broad range of
educational opportunities if we were able to schedule "special session" courses on military bases.
Credits earned in Special Sessions, as in Summer Sessions, could be transferred to other
institutions, along with the military student. Only very limited numbers of extension units are
acceptable for degree purposes when they are transferred from one institution of higher education to
another. Hence, the extension program courses do not satisfy the educational needs of military
students.
2)
Students who desire to accelerate progress toward their degrees can do so now during the
summer period, by attending summer sessions. With the implementation of a "Special Session"
during the semester break period, students would have another opportunity to accelerate their
progress, since there is no limitation on the number of "Special Session" (Summer Session) units
that can be used to meet degree requirements.
3)
that were part of external degree programs could be offered in this way, and this mechanism was
clearer and less tentative than having the Chancellor designate certain extension courses as "special"
on a case-by-case basis.
The institution of special sessions required legislation to effect changes in sections of the State
Education Code. The revised Code became effective January 1, 1976, but a few campuses had
already been experimenting by that time. The most common pattern was to use the winter break
between semesters where there was a three-or four-week period that could be conveniently scheduled
with classes. As in the early days of the state colleges, these tuition-charging sessions provided a way
for the campuses to offer more courses than the state was able to pay for to those who wanted to
make use of the option. However, unlike the early days of the colleges, when public school teachels
were the major only clientele, the CSIIC by the 1970s needed to reach a range of professional groups
for whom the summer was not necessarily the best time to "go to school."
The institution of special sessions as a program did not mean that it was immediately implemented.
First, a variety of administrative policies needed to be created, dealing with salary, fees, relation to
the CERF, budgets and personnel. In June of 1978, the Chancellor's Office issued a memo covering
procedures, which was followed in 1980 by more extensive guidelines.
As a result, the CSUC began the decade of the 80s with a fiscal, administrative, and academic
structure that allowed regular sessions, special sessions, and extension to operate simultaneously
throughout the academic year. This three-pronged structure included state-supported degree-related
instruction, self-support, degree-related instruction (via special and summer sessions), and selfsupport extension programs which offered instruction for which residence degree credit was either
inappropriate or irrelevant. All three prongs of the structure could operate either on campus or off.
The institution of the new special sessions had two paradoxical effects. First, it served to integrate the planning
of traditionally separate extension and summer sessions programs because it forced the deans to design a yearround strategy for continuing education. The deans now had several options from which to choose as the vehicle
for delivering a particular activity. Second, the institution of special sessions served to differentiate extension
from residence credit instruction by making it less necessary to use extension for offering degree credit courses.
Thus, extension became more clearly delineated as a program for non-matriculated students who were not
interested in degrees, although they still might want some formal recognition in the form of credit for their effort.
Extension programming was thus loosened from its connection with the regular collegiate program, because
courses that carried degree and residence credit could now be offered at any time of the year via special sessions.
Naturally, the transition to two simultaneously operating continuing education programs (one for degrees and
one for non-degree instruction) was not accomplished all at once. The process graduallytook place over a period
of five years or so following the formal institution of special sessions in 1976. The Commission on Extended
Education and the regular meetings of the Deans of Continuing/Extended Education were the forums, through
which procedures and policies were developed.
A major outcome was that the CSUC gained more flexibility to offer degree credit courses off campus, to
charge tuition fees for those students who really did not have a legitimate need for
.
state-supported instruction, and to follow the demands of the market in developing non-degree extension
programs.
During the late 1970s, marketing became a major concern as enrollment declines in extension and summer
sessions began. CSU Fullerton was one of the campuses to find itself with a deficit in 1978, a situation
described in a report to Ralph Mills, State University Dean of Extended Education, from Mary Mark Zeyen,
Vice President for Academic Affairs at CSU, Fullerton, dated December 22, 1978:
The Extension/Summer Session deficit currently charged to the Fullerton Continuing Education
Program is a direct result of a decline in enrollment and increases in institutional support costs.
Prior to the 1976-77 years, the growth rate of our Extension Program was phenomenal. During a oneyear period, for example, our Extension enrollments increased over 400 percent. From 1972 to 1975
our attempt was to increase Continuing Education staff and programming to meet this growing
demand.
By the 1976-77 academic year, however, the growth pattern suddenly and dramatically reversed.
This resulted in an over-expenditure (i.e., one not justified by income) both in staff salaries and
programming: It seems that we had been caught a tIde whose flow had suddenly reversed.
During the last IS-month period, we began to adjust our administration. We have had to dismantle
an operation, an administration that has taken four years to build.
The Fullerton campus was not alone. Many of the continuing education deans were finding themselves in great
fiscal difficulty. Fees for extension and summer sessions could not be raised beyond a certain point without
putting the CSUC out of the market in relation to what other colleges and universities were charging. What the
programs needed was more expertise in how to uncover the educational needs within the service area of the
campus, followed by aggressive action to mount new programs that would address those needs. In short, they
needed more marketing expertise.
The concept of marketing, however, was controversial on the campuses. Many academically oriented
administrators and faculty thought that marketing was the equivalent of hucksterism. However,
it was clear that they needed to draw upon better channels of information in designing extension and
special sessions programs because bad decisions, based on insufficient or faulty information, had too
many serious financial consequences.
Two campuses (CSU Fullerton and Sonoma State University) volunteered and were selected by the
Commission on Extended Education as lead campuses to participate in an expansion of the marketing
study begun earlier by the firm of Peat, Marwick and Mitchell. Consultants from this company began
working with continuing education deans and staff in the design of specific marketing tools. In
February 1982 the Commission on Extended Education helped to sponsor a systemwide conference
for campus faculty and administrators in order to share the results of these experiments, which had
had a positive effect on CSU Fullerton and Sonoma State University enrollments in continuing
education programs. Facilitating the development of the marketing project became a major
commitment of the Commission.
A major target for development was non-degree professional education, already an important part of
CSUC extension offerings particularly on the large urban campuses. A second area was noncredit
instruction, which had been relatively undeveloped in CSUC, while University (of California)
Extension and many private colleges had increased their non-credit registrations markedly. In
University Extension, non-credit registrations at off-campus locations jumped from 5,489 in 1976 to
12,896 in 1978; in the independent institutions, they increased from 2,089 to 6,560 in the same period,
according to CPEC data.
In the CSUC, continuing education programs on most campuses did not include much in the way of
non-credit extension courses. Some campuses developed workshops, conferences, and short courses
in a relatively big way -for example, Fresno, San Jose, San Francisco, and Stanislaus. However, only
nine of the 19 campuses offered non-credit education through extension. In 1977·78 the largest
programs were at Northridge, San Bernardino, and Sacramento, with smaller programs at Dominguez
Hills, Sonoma, Long Beach, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Bakersfield.
Non-credit activities were not necessarily missing on the CSUC campuses. Many campuses pursued a
policy of allowing their academic departments to develop such activities on their own using the fiscal
mechanism of the campus foundation office. However, the continuing education deans began .to
rethink this practice as they saw their extension programs being recast primarily as non-credit
professional education programs. Any activities funded through the foundations in effect cost them
potential revenues. a result, a tug-of-war that had been going on sub rosa for many years erupted into a
more serious issue: What relationship did extension programs have to education offered via the
foundations, and how should the revenues from foundation-run education be used? By 1982-83 all but
four of the 19 campuses had developed non-credit extension courses and enrollment
had more than doubled.
Two other areas that constituted a challenge to the deans were instructional television and any other
program development effort that was not feasible for one single campus to undertake on its own.
Unfortunately, both the Los Angeles Basin Education Liaison (LABEL) organization and the
Instructional Television Consortium had failed in their objectives of becoming self-supporting. Both
organizations were disbanded when their directors resigned, since it was clear to the Commission on
Extended Education and to the Chancellor's Office staff that cost-effectiveness was going be a
continuing issue. Because all involved parties were aware of the Chancellor's problems, even keeping
the "1 ,ODD-mile" Consortium afloat, there was little strenuous objection from any front when these
organizations folded.
However, a question facing the CSUC was whether or not it would be a part of the telecommunications
revolution and if so, how? The development of the videodisc and its commercial availability from 1979
on signaled a new era in educational television. Several campuses proposed projects, to be funded from
the CERF Systemwide Development Fund, that would increase their television capacity. CSU Fresno
created a televised series on "Changes in California Real Estate Funding," and much effort also went
into developing ITFS (Instructional Television Fixed Service) networks in the Los Angeles and San
Francisco areas. For example, in June of 1981, the Commission on Extended Education recommended
to the Chancellor that $37,000 be spent to upgrade ITFS linkages between the CSUC and the Pasadena
Unified School District, in particular, to identify the availability of broadcast channels in these urban
areas, to determine the best technical configurations, and to discuss how various CSUC campuses could
contribute programs. The goal was to enable campuses to share electronic equipment and programs,
and thus to have a greater impact on the local community.
CSU Chico was unquestionably the leader in telecommunications for continuing education in the
CSUC system. With a service area that covered 21 percent of California, but including only 2.13 percent of the population, the campus was dependent on television technology as the only feasible way to
deliver education to its widely dispersed communities. CSU Chico had started an ITFS system in 1975
with links to University of California at Davis, and to the towns of Colusa and Marysville. By 1981 the
campus had linkages to nine sites. During five years of delivering live televised classes from the
campus, with two-way interactive audio so that viewing students could participate along with oncampus students, Chico had enrolled over 1,000 students in about 100 courses.
Chico's TV courses included computer science, sociology, the problems of the modern family,
religious studies, geography, history of California, education, and marketing. Books and other
classroom materials were mailed to students' homes or to the off-campus location where the fixed
service television equipment was housed. Students who were matriculated paid regular college fees for
the televised course; non-matriculated students paid extension fees.
By 1981-82 CSU Chico was expanding its television capacity from fixed service via microwave links
into cable television. The campus proposed creation of a regional learning center to be located off
campus that would make it possible to connect ITFS students "on-line" with the campus. The students
would then be able to access library materials, which could subsequently be delivered to an off-campus
site, where career, academic, placement, and financial aids counseling could also be made available.
The Chico campus was also planning two-way television so that the instructor see the student as well as
the other way around, and linkS between television, computers, and facsimile transmission so that
students' tests, term papers, or records could be transferred from place to place. However, all of this
required money for equipment and development. More and more of available CERF funds were being
allocated for development of instructional television capacity on the various campuses. Other
campuses, though less innovative than CSU Chico, were beginning to develop lTV capacity for their
continuing education programs: San Francisco, Northridge, Stanislaus, and Fresno, particularly.
Fortunately for the status of the CERF, the economic slowdown that characterized the mid-1970s
produced high interest rates. The fund, which accumulated interest, grew by 49 percent between 1978
and 1979, with additional growth of 34.5 percent from 1979 to 1980. By 1982 the Systemwide
Program Development Reserve Fund of CERF was generating over $1 million to be allocated for
special projects. Unfortunately, as the CERF reserves grew, so did the watchful interest of campus
administrators, Chancellor's Office staff, and the State Department of Finance. The
Commission on Extended Education was the functional guardian of the coffers, since allocation
recommendations went from this body directly to the Chancellor.
It was at about this time that CSUC continuing education invented and sponsored a continuing
education consulting service titled the University Services Program. This project was conceptualized
primarily by Ralph Mills, who saw an opportunity for the CSUC to do more outreach to public
agencies. The campuses could provide professional and continuing education for agency employees,
or offer technical assistance of various kinds through individual faculty members on a contractual
basis. Gene Anton, Deputy Dean of Continuing Education in the Chancellor's Office, was asked by
Mills to head this project, and in 1978 various types of in-service education, report writing, and
program analysis projects were begun on a pilot basis; later, the program became a full-fledged wing
of the Division of Continuing Education in the Chancellor's Office.
In 1981-82 CSUC continuing education programs posted 187,989 gross enrollments in credit-bearing
programs of which summer sessions were still the largest, with about 45 percent of the total. CSUC
continuing education was serving the equivalent of about 15,000 full-time students and was
generating over $25 million in annual revenues. Non-credit enrollment was increasing very quickly,
from approximately 11,000 in 1977-78 to over 38,000 in 1981-82. The percentage of overall continuing education revenues derived from non-credit enrollment jumped from a little over 2 percent of
revenues to more than 10 percent. It was clear to continuing education deliverers that short courses,
workshops, lectures, and conferences -all designed to appeal to the information needs of various
professionals and other groups of workers -meant potentially big business.
In 1982 Glenn Dumke retired after more than twenty years as Chancellor of the CSUC system. With
the appointment of W. Ann Reynolds, a young woman from outside the California educational
system, a new era was about to begin. The CSUC was again renamed; it officially became The
California State University in January of 1982. In this same year, Donald Gerth stepped down as chair
of the Commission of Extended Education, thus marking another change point in the history of CSUC
continuing education. His role was taken over by Harold Haak, President of CSU Fresno, who
appointed his Director of Institutional Research, Harold Best, to serve as the Commission's executive
secretary.
The years of the Commission under Gerth had been marked by several very important accomplishments. The concept of extended education became more than a nice sounding phrase when the CSUC
signified its willingness to take its programs to those students who were prevented by various
obstacles from coming directly to the campus. The work of the Commission gave to the concept a
functional and operational substance embodied in a series of policies enacted over a five-year period.
One such policy of great importance to continuing education concerned faculty salaries.
The faculty salary issue had become hopelessly bogged down in the supposedly intractable problem of
linking salaries for extension teaching with regular program salaries in order to please the faculty,
while on the other hand keeping those salaries within range of what the classes actually produced as
revenue. A way around this impasse was arrived at by the Commission, which recommended that
authority for setting salaries in self-support programs be decentralized to the campus presidents within
ranges established by the Chancellor. The same strategy was applied to setting student course fees,
giving the campuses more flexibility. However, the presidents were constrained by the requirement
that salary policy was to be embedded within the context of an annual plan for
extended education which each campus was to submit to the Commission for review. The planning
process designed by the Commission stressed the development of marketing information for linking
resources with needs, and was to include an integration of self-support programs and state-support
programs that were being utilized as part of the overall effort to provide education for working adult
students.
The Commission spent considerable time in the preparation of guidelines for these campus plans and
in reviewing those submitted by campuses.· A Procedures Manual was developed by the Commission
and the Peat, Marwick and Mitchell consultants. Gradually, because of extensive effort by continuing
education personnel and the Commission itself, marketing became a standard aspect of CSU extended
education, and marketing expertise came to be more highly valued, both within continuing education
programs and in regular campus operations. This change in emphasis had a substantial impact on who
was hired, how programs were designed, and how information about campus programs was
disseminated.
The growth of funds in the Systemwide Program Development Fund account of CERF provided the
Commission with an opportunity to approve projects that had some enduring impact on the way
continuing education was carried out. A big expense item was support for the various consortia that
the CSU attempted to put in place. Although The Consortium for external degree programs was the
only one to survive this period, the efforts at intercampus planning and program delivery had the
effect of sensitizing continuing education deans and other campus administrators to the impediments
that existed. If nothing else, there was more communication.
The period from 1977 through 1982 was notable for attempts to sustain various consortia, to develop
a better marketing capability, and to create an instructional television network for the CSUC.
When Harold Haak took over the leadership of the Commission on Extended Education, the
continuing education deans' representatives had turned over again to now include Donna George from
CSU Long Beach, Roy Dull from CSC Bakersfield, and Peter Dewees from San Francisco State
University.
Some of the issues facing the Commission were relatively new, such as how to develop and fund an
integrated television communications network to include all 19 campuses. But others such as the
problem of gaining state support for continuing education had appeared on Commission agendas
before and stubbornly resisted solution. Particularly those issues that required legislative action began
to take on the status of unpleasant predicaments to be tolerated as cheerfully as possible. Dr. Haak, the
Commission members, and continuing education deans would find their good cheer tested during the
years 1982 to 1985. These years constitute the next and final period in this history of continuing
education in The California State University.
CHAPTER 6
Rethinking Educational Goals (1982-1985)
With the advent of a new Chancellor, The California State University (as it was officially designated
in 1982), began a process of both formally and informally examining its operations and priorities. The
political and fiscal climate for educational organizations in California, though calmed considerably
since the first waves of confusion following in the wake of Proposition 13, was not hospitable.
Educators were gradually accepting the fact that underfunding, increased regulation, and a suspicious
attitude on the part of the State Legislature and the Governor had become part of the normal state of
affairs. The new Chancellor, W. Ann Reynolds, her staff, and the campuses began the slow process of
establishing relationships, negotiating expectations, and creating consensus around strategies for
preserving the CSU and moving it forward into a new era in which new demands would inevitably be
made both from outside and inside the CSU system.
The decade of the 1980s was characterized by a generally increased political conservatism, with
former California Governor Ronald Reagan in the White House and Republican George Deukmejian
as the new California Governor. Young people's attention seemed dominated by economic competition for jobs, housing, and material advantages so that as potential college students they turned away
from traditional liberal arts programs and toward occupationally oriented programs. On the campuses,
engineering, computer science, management, public administration, and health fields saw increased
enrollment demand, while humanities programs -such as languages, history, philosophy, and the arts continued to be hard pressed to define their relevance to the contemporary student. Although voices
were heard decrying the abandonment of commitment to liberal education, economic realities
continued to dominate for the majority of students and employers.
Continuing education programs were part of this general trend in the direction of emphasis on
technical and professional training, all within a context that seemed preoccupied with money.
Working adults seemed primarily interested in activities that would help them to gain or hold a
competitive edge in an increasingly unforgiving marketplace. Fiscal issues dominated discussions at
meetings of the Commission on Extended Education and meetings of the Deans of Continuing/
Extended Education.
In 1982 the distribution of enrollment in CSU extended education programs showed that summer
sessions remained the largest of the programs (53 percent of enrollment), whereas extension
enrollment was smaller by half than it had been in 1970. However, special sessions had grown and
extension gained additional students through concurrent enrollment. This pattern of gains and losses
suggests that either students were particularly interested in courses that carried degree and residence
credit, or that it was these kinds of courses that the CSU was particularly adept at providing in
competition with other colleges and universities in the state.
As the decade wore on, the CSU would find that the demand for concurrent enrollment -that is, for
opportunities to attend on-campus classes as a non-matriculated student -would continue to increase
until by 1985 concurrent enrollment generated almost 22 percent of the enrollment in CSU selfsupport programs. What had become clear was that the CSU had a large investment in self-support
programs that extended to an audience beyond the campus the same education that was provided by
regular campus programs. Within the CSU, the question on many people's minds was: Why doesn't
the state support this education with fiscal allocations, and why is it designated a self-support activity?
The CSU was gradually moving toward an integrated approach
to program development and delivery for which the label "extended education" seemed descriptive.
What remained resistant to integration was the budget, divided into state-support and self-support
components, but lacking an educational rationale that provided a consistent definition of what selfsupport programs were supposed to accomplish and for whom. The primary policy issue had
broadened from "What is the mission of continuing education within the CSU?" to "What is the
mission of the CSU, and what is the purpose of its self-support programs in relation to that mission?"
The reality was that self-support programs in the CSU consisted of those educational activities that the
state refused to fund. Since the state provided no definition or plan, it was left to the CSU to figure out
an educationally defensible rationale after the fact.
The problem for CSU was exacerbated by differences between the various segments of higher education in
the state. For example, University of California linked state support to matriculation and full-time pursuit
of a degree, while self-support programs were for non-matriculated students who were taking single
courses, or perhaps a group of courses, while they worked. All self-support programs were housed with
University Extension, which was administratively and programmatically separate from the degree granting
programs of the UC campuses. The advantage of this approach was a certain simple clarity about what
kinds of programs belonged in which funding categories. The disadvantage was that UC made no
provisions for part-time matriculated students, nor did it offer any off-campus degree programs or
residence credit courses for working adults. When it had become clear during the 1970s that the state
would not continue to support UC's Extended University, UC closed its external degree programs rather
than try, like CSU, to continue them on a self-support basis.
The CSU was also sometimes compared to the independent college, which received no direct state support
and which charged tuition for all of its various educational activities. Private colleges and universities had
moved into adult continuing education in a big way during the 1970s. By the early 19805, the independent
colleges in California enrolled approximately 16 percent of their matriculated students in special offcampus degree programs, with locations that were often geographically far removed from the parent
campus. However, these private college and university programs charged tuition, which usually amounted
to many thousands of dollars a year. Thus, private education had, and continues to have, an unavoidable
elitist bias. The CSU had always maintained that, as a state policy, accessible degree programs for working
adults should be available in the state-supported colleges and universities as well as in the private sector.
Since UC had abandoned the attempt to deliver such degree programs, the CSU was left to either "carry the
ball" alone or drop the effort. There were many people -faculty, administrators, and Chancellor's Office
staff -who believed that the CSU should follow the example of UC and simply forget about Uextended
education.'; The existence of contrary ideas about what the mission of the CSU should be, complicated by
the contrasting examples on the one hand of a private sector that was markedly successful in off-campus
education, and on the other of a public university which did little to improve access to degree programs for
working adults, divided discussion about the future of CSU.
To make the issue even more problematic, the CSU was also sometimes compared to the public
community college. Historically, both degree and non-degree adult education in the community and junior
colleges had been supported by the state. However, the rapid growth of adult education and of the state's
fiscal obligation had produced a budget emergency in higher education during the 1970s that still remained
vivid in the memories of state legislators and the people in the State Department of Finance. In its efforts to
extend education, the CSU was hampered by the fear among state policy-makers that no limits could be set
on the number of people in California who would avail themselves of a college degree at state expense.
State policy-makers raised important questions about the role that individual students should play in
financing their own educations,
particularly when they had the means to pay. The employer's responsibility was also considered, since it
was the employer who often derived direct benefit from the continued education of their employees. Since
there was no general consensus about either the state's role or the mission of the various campus segments
with respect to the continuing education of working adults, the colleges and universities, along with the
State Legislature and its committees, muddled through on a day-to-day basis. Not surprisingly, the
problems persisted.
Harold Haak took over the chairmanship of the Commission on Extended Education, the general
uncertainty about the mission of continuing/extended education, and about the mission of the CSU, in
general, lurked behind all of the myriad operational issues that came before the Commission. The
CSU was delivering a full spectrum of educational programs throughout the state; however, the CSU
rationale for what should be offered on a self-support basis and what should be supported by the state
was becoming increasingly confused and irrational because state policy was based on out-dated
definitions derived from the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education.
Looking back, one can see that decision-making regarding continuing and extended education in the
CSU had gradually lost the overriding vision that had been provided for the system during the 1970s
by Chancellor Dumke's formal call for ""new approaches." Because of lack of encouragement at the
state policy level and a hardening fiscal climate, vested interests on the campuses and within the
Chancellor's Office began to divide the system internally, preventing the development of widespread
consensus upon which overriding visions are based. a result, decisions affecting continuing and
extended education were often compromised and based on temporary political or fiscal expediency
simply because problems had to be addressed, consensus or no.
An example is faculty salary policy for self-support programs. In the absence of a clear sense of the
kind of commitment the state was prepared to make to continuing education for adults, and given a
similar ambivalence on the part of the campuses about their own commitment to programs that the
state did not seem to take seriously, there seemed no way around the impasse. The solution finally
was to add some flexibility to a standardized scale and to decentralize some of the decision process to
the individual campuses. Unfortunately, it is likely that the unresolved issues of state and system
policy were merely shifted down from the system level to the campus level. Here the campus
presidents, deans, and faculty faced the same issues of muddled state and system policy and mission
as did the Commission on Extended Education, the Chancellor, and the Board of
Trustees, but the issues became obscured in the day-to-day need to make operational decisions about
individual faculty members and individual courses. As a result, the decade of the 1980s saw
continuing education and extended education administrators become increasingly preoccupied with
struggles on their campuses over single cases usually involving money at the core, and increasingly
despairing about the possibilities of gaining a clear mandate from either their campus, the Chancellor,
or the state Legislature that could provide general policy guidelines.
In the absence of clear state policy, during the early 1980s actions were taken at the state level which,
incrementally, tended toward the establishment of a de facto policy that both the Chancellor's Office
and the CSU continuing/extended education deans found completely untenable. For example, for
academic year 1982-83, funds were withdrawn which had traditionally supported one-half of a dean's
position and half a clerical position for continuing education. The loss of $637,636 to the CSU budget
fell on the self-support programs, which then had to find money in their operational budgets or their
reserves to take over the support of these essential positions. It was subsequently found that Humboldt
State University, because of its geographical isolation and the poverty of the local economy, could not
support its continuing and extended education programs entirely out of fees to students. It would
either have to be subsidized in some way or close out its programs. This issue became a major item of
Commission discussion.
Between 1978-79 and 1980-81, the chargeback costs to self-support programs assessed by the
Department of Finance had increased by 77 percent, a gradual but steady increase which had
necessitated fee increases to students and cutbacks in programs. The deans and the Commission
wondered and worried about how far this trend might go. With urging from the Commission and the
deans, a letter of protest was sent in November of 1982 to the Department of Finance from Dale
Hanner, CSU Vice Chancellor for Business Mfairs.
The protests by CSU administrators seemed to fallon deaf ears in the state capitol. In 1983-84 $1
million was deleted from the CSU budget on the grounds that self-support programs were not being
charged enough for all of the goods and services that were provided to them through the General Fund
support of the campuses. In order to comply, the Chancellor's Office issued revised policies on
chargeable services which affected continuing education programs. To make matters worse for the
deans, the chargeback increases often were levied too late in the fiscal year to allow for rational
advance planning. a result, self-support programs ended up with expenses that they were ill-prepared
to meet.
By 1985 another fiscal dispute between CSU and Sacramento erupted when $2 million was deleted
from the 1985-86 academic year budget on the grounds that revenues from concurrent enrollment
should be shared with the state. Concurrent enrollment enabled continuing education (nonmatriculated) students, with the permission of the instructor, to occupy seats in on-campus statesupported classes which were not filled to capacity. Continuing/extended education offices shared the
revenues generated by these students' fees with the academic departments. From a CSU perspective,
this was appropriate in order to supplement the diminished levels of state funding for basic campus
operating expenses, such as equipment and student assistants. From the perspective of the state,
continuing -education programs and non-matriculated students were getting the benefit of public
investment in faculty salaries, classrooms, equipment, etc., without paying for these services. The
thinking in Sacramento was that, if a student wasn't registered for a degree program, he or she should
reimburse the state for use of campus services, at least in part.
By 1985-86 11 of the 19 CSU campuses ended the year with deficits in their self-support programs.
And for the first time since the CSU had been established as a system,continuing education
systemwide ended the year with more expenditures than revenues. Fortunately, campus and system
reserves held in the Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF) were available to cover the deficits.
And this was the crux of the matter as far as the Department of Finance was concerned the existence
of sizable reserves in the CERF accounts.
____the State Department of Finance to the CSU self-support programs for return of money to the state was its
awareness that the system had the Continuing Education Revenue Fund (CERF) at its disposal. In June of 1983 the
amount that had accrued to the system-wide account, not including the reserves held by individual campuses, was
more than $3 million, of which about $691,000 was already encumbered for the support of special projects. A
balance of about $2.5 million was distributed back to the campuses on recommendation of the Commission on
Extended Education.
From the perspective of the Department of Finance and the Legislature in Sacramento, all of the
complaints about unfair chargebacks and inadequate state support for continuing education were moot,
given the obvious capacity of the CSU to generate excess income from student tuition fees. When this
excess income was invested by the state treasurer according to the provisions of CERF, it compounded
interest and thereby increased further. Whenever the CSU officially protested Department of Finance
actions or policy, the reply was always the same: CSU self-support programs do not have a genuine
need for state support. Furthermore, threats by the Department "to take
120
another look at the balance sheet" (thereby justifying even more stringent demands for further
reimbursement of the General Fund) were enough to discourage CSU administrators from pressing
harder for policy clarification.
From the perspective of the CSU, the CERF account balances were misleading in that they tended, by
virtue of old-fashioned accounting practices, to make the actual resources available to self-support
programs appear larger than they in fact were. Furthermore, the Department of Finance did not seem
to be sufficiently aware of the necessity to maintain reserves -a minimum of 10 percent of revenue
capacity -against the inevitable vicissitudes of the continuing education marketplace. In addition, there
were no provisions in the CERF accounting practices for a campus to accumulate money from year to
year toward a large investment -such as telecommunications equipment that required substantial
capital. For the CSU, the accumulation and use of CERF reserves were tied into a concept of
marketing, advance planning, and development that was unfamiliar within traditional thinking about
how state-run education operated. The problem for the CSU was to develop, in cooperation with the
Department of Finance and the Legislature, a way to accurately account for "profits" from tuition
charging programs, to retain incentives for the campuses to produce such "profits" through judicious
market planning, and to provide a way to ensure that adequate reserves were held and could be used
effectively where and when they were needed. This became a major agenda item for the Commission
on Extended Education.
Complicating discussion was the issue of small campuses versus large campuses and how deficits
were to be managed. Should the system take from the "rich" campuses, which had large urban
populations to draw continuing education students from, to give to the "poor" campuses in remote
areas? To what extent should each campus strive to maintain a full range of continuing/extended
education services? What was the obligation of each campus, and was there a minimum level of
service that should be provided? Did a campus have the authority to shut down its self-support
programs they proved too troublesome or unprofitable?
Once again, behind the discussion lay the issue of the mission of the CSU. What role did continuing
education and adult access play in the overall obligations of the CSU to the citizens of California?
How could the CSU ethically charge tuition fees in an educational system that was by definition
tuition-free? Was the Department of Finance launched on a secret policy to gradually introduce tuition
into the state educational system? There were people who felt that California's traditional commitment
to tuition-free higher education was under attack from a number of fronts.
In 1984, following an audit of CERF, the CSU Board of Trustees requested that a definition of "selfsupport" be developed. The task was delegated to the Commission on Extended Education, which
arrived at a definition of self-support that focused on those courses that carried degree credit,
excluding programs that were offered on a non-credit basis or for extension credit only. Included were
all courses offered as part of summer sessions, special sessions, external degree programs, The
Consortium, and concurrent enrollment. In addition to its definition, the Commission suggested some
budget changes; the proposal stated that "student tuition and fees (should) pay only direct instructional
costs and the direct administrative support incurred within the campus office of continuing education,
including the costs of program development and promotion." Student fees would not be used to
support admissions and recordkeeping, computer services, fiscal (accounting) services, library,
departmental or school offices, or anything already on a campus as part of its regular operations.
These items, used essentially in support of degree credit instruction, should be funded by the state. In
addition to students' payment of direct costs, extension would continue to "tithe" 4 percent of gross
income to the campuses to pay back indirect costs. In addition, the Commission's proposal asked that
pro rata charges to the campuses for the maintenance of state
agencies (such as the Department of Finance) be dropped since the CSU did not believe that student
tuition should be used to support state government.
The Commission forwarded its definitions and recommendations to Chancellor Reynolds, who pointed out
that there was no general consensus outside of the CSU that state funding could be provided to selfsuppport programs, and that the Commission's definition of self-support could not be activated internally
without the agreement of the Legislature, the Governor and the Department of Finance. The issue required
legal counsel's opinions and further study of its political ramifications. Once again, the Commission was
butting its head against the wall of legislative policy as it tried to achieve some operational consensus that
would enable the continuing education deans to do more rational fiscal planning.
Within this context which dominated the activities of the Commission and the Continuing/Extended
Education deans, a number of operational changes were effected such as launching a legislative bill in
1983 to get summer sessions exempted from the timetable of the General Fund Budget so that faculty
paychecks would not be held up until the Governor actually signed the budget bill.
All non-quarter system campuses were affected year after year -perhaps 2,000 summer faculty and there
was havoc when faculty checks were not available when the work was completed. Some "job actions" took
place, and more serious consequences were threatened.
Others that seemed more worthwhile included gaining approval for several special projects for extended
education, including a $10,000 grant from CERF to San Francisco State University to conduct a survey of
computer software packages that might be suitable for use by continuing education. CSU Fresno produced
a video series for real estate personnel; telecommunications equipment and networking in the Los Angeles
Basin was strengthened with a substantial investment of funds; a data processing project for continuing
education was initiated; money to support the campus development of extended education and marketing
plans was continued; the Peat, Marwick and Mitchell company completed their project of assisting the
CSU to develop better marketing techniques; and the system participated as a co-sponsor with the CAEL
(Cooperative Assessment of Experiential Learning) association in a national project on adult learners.
The Commission also discussed the formation of policy on international study and out-of-state delivery of
extended education, necessary in light of greatly accelerated communications technology. For example,
several campuses were delivering television courses to students as far away as China. Guidelines needed to
be developed to ensure that the host state or country was fully informed, that cooperative relationships
were developed, that funding issues had been addressed, and that quality control was guaranteed by the
necessary administrative ad hoc committee on international study, formed by the Commission and chaired
by Gerald R. Stairs, Provost at CSU Chico, was to find ways to create better integration between
continuing/extended education and other international programs on the campuses, such as Study Abroad
(for matriculated students), faculty and student exchanges, international relations curricula, development
projects and research in other countries, partnerships with international organizations, and the development
of global literacy in the use of technology. Recommendations from the task force and the Commission
were concretized in a directive from the Chancellor's Office in October of 1983 and incorporated into
Trustees policy in September, 1985.
Instructional television was becoming an increasingly important subject for the Commission, but members
realized that the technology involved required special expertise beyond what most of the members
possessed. order to ensure good recommendations regarding this expensive and rapidly changing
educational medium, the Commission recommended to the Chancellor that
a separate task force or commission be created that could draw on lTV experts within the system.
Furthermore, the Qommission members could see that instructional television required more integration of
its various aspects, such as live versus taped courses, teleconferencing, automated library access, and links
with computers. This recommendation for a separate systemwide task force or commission was accepted
by Chancellor Reynolds, and discussion has continued in the CSU about issues such as faculty
participation/training for lTV; patents and copyrights; relations with national lTV consortia; feasibility of a
satellite network; equipment and costs; and systemwide coordination of effort.
The Commission devoted a considerable amount of attention to discussion of the Continuing
Education Revenue Fund (CERF): its accounting procedures; how the fund should be developed,
maintained, and spent; and the stance which the CSU should take with the state Legislature and the
Department of Finance regarding the role of CERF in relation to the mission of the CSU. A
Commission task force went to work on the problems and presented a draft report for Commission
discussion at its March 1983 meeting. For the first time,·it began to appear necessary to place an upper
limit on the amount of reserves that a campus or the systemwide fund could generate. There was
already policy about minimum reserves: 10 percent of the prior year's revenues should be held in each
campus' account where pOssible, and the systemwide fund was to retain a minimum of $200,000.
However, without clearer guidelines for designating revenues above these minimum amounts in the
system's budget format, the CSU was going to continue to have to justify what looked like a very big
bank account. The task force suggested that revenues above a certain limit should be redistributed
back to the campuses. Thus, the small-reserve-generating campuses would be subsidized by the largerevenue-generators; such redistributions would assist the campuses in paying assessments and
chargebacks levied on CSU self-support programs by the Department of Finance. The task force also
suggested organizing the CERF account in such a way that subaccounts could be defined for the
purpose of carrying funds for research and development from year to year. The task force noted the
CSU's need to define the educational value of research and development for continuing education. It
recognized that the increasing CSU emphasis on market research as a factor in institutional
responsiveness -a result of the project undertaken with the help of the Peat, Marwick and Mitchell
company -was by no means understood in the state capitol. The CSU clearly needed to do a better job
of articulating its need for the CERF money.
By 1985 the Chancellor's Office, upon recommendation by the Commission, had developed new
policy for the management of CERF accounts. Each campus' CERF reserves were to be limited to
$150,000 or 15 percent, whichever was greater. The Fiscal Management Office would establish a
CERF Planned Major Project Account so that a campus could accumulate money from year to year
for a major approved project related to self-support instruction. Cam us deans could . weer ey wante t
eir excess revenues deposited in their regular CERF account or in the new PMPA (Planned Major
Project Account), and funds could be shifted as necessary.
By the beginning of 1986, CERF showed a balance of $10,337,171, of which a little over $7 million
was held in the 19-campus reserve accounts. About $2.3 million was redistributed to the campuses
from the systemwide reserve. Including interest income to the account and various systemwide
projects approved by the Commission, about $445,000 remained for future systemwide extended and
continuing education projects.
Extended Education
Operationally, CSU had by 1982 created two tracks for dealing with non-traditional adult learners: a
degree track which mixed both self-and state-support funding in order to deliver courses to students
in locations accessible to them, and a non-degree "continuing education" track for
students who sought professional or personal interest courses or certificates rather than full-scale
degrees. This track -the continuing education track -was a fiscally self-supporting program, although
debates continued between the Department of Finance and the CSU about just what "self-support"
actually meant in terms of allocation of dollars. However, there seemed to be consensus both inside
and outside of the CSU that non-degree education for adults was something that the adults themselves
had an obligation to pay for -at least partially -even in a tUition-free educational system.
On the other hand, there was CSU's extended education degree track. This track was comprised of several
different programs, including The Consortium, external degree programs (which were now offered either
on a self-support basis through special sessions, or on a state-support basis as off-campus instruction), and
concurrent enrollment. In this degree track, self-and state-support programs were mixed in an uneasy set of
policies that seemed to satisfy no one completely.
A typical expression of the lack of satisfaction with existing,policy was the fight between the State
Department of Finance and the CSU over revenues from concurrent enrollment. By 1985 the CSU had
decisively lost in its efforts to persuade state policy-makers to reconsider its new policy of asking the
campuses to repay part of these revenues to the state. What effect this policy will have on the continuation
of concurrent enrollment as an educational option in the CSU is not yet clear. However, one campus -San
Jose State University, which organized its concurrent enrollment courses into what it calls its "Open
University" -was clearly concerned about the willingness of the campus to continue the program. An article
in the student paper, the Spartan Daily, said:
The gates of Open University may soon swing shut on 40,803 CSU students if a fee charged by
the governor's office becomes part of next year's budget.
Should the fee become a permanent part of the budget, it could prove to be the death blow to the
program, said Bob Donovan, SJSU director of Open University....
Open University provides an opportunity for part.time students to enrich their education
without going through the hassle of registration, Donovan said.
He said the program provides a second chance for academically disqualified students to
improve their grades and be re-admitted ... Open University students can take up to nine units,
enroll· ing in classes that are not up to capacity.
Instructors are not paid for teaching additional students ... The program raised about $1 million
last year (1985) for SJSU, and most of that money went back to the departments in which it was
Donovan said..
"We're getting more for less," Donovan said. "The state isn't delivering dime one to support this
program."
The state feels differently. Since Open University uses university facilities supported by the
general fund, it's clear that it receives state support, said Carl Rogers, CSU program analyst for
the Department of Finance ... The state should be compensated for that use, Rogers said.
Since revenues from Open University (concurrent enrollment) at San Jose State had been used to fund
supplies, student assistants, equipment repair and faculty travel to conferences, the issue penetrated into the
total budget process of the campus. Similar situations existed on other campuses which had developed
concurrent enrollment into a major program. The matter is far from settled. To what extent concurrent
enrollment will continue to be a growing dimension of CSU extended education remains to be seen.
The Consortium continued to be a major CSU vehicle, at least in theory, for delivering degree
programs to working adults throughout the state. However, The Consortium continued to be beset with
problems, which, under the new Chancellor and a new director, did not seem to lessen. For example,
the relationship between The Consortium and the Commission was an uneasy one. Consortium staff
were restive with the seeming interference of the Commission in Consortium affairs. Director David
Elliott had worked to get The Consortium free of budget approval and other entanglements with the
Commission, so that by the time Harold Haak assumed the chairmanship of the Commission, The
Consortium was no longer a formal responsibility. However, Consortium affairs continued to loom
large in the activities of continuing education personnel on the campuses, and thus issues involving
The Consortium kept turning up in Commission discussions.
For a time, The Consortium operated as a relatively free-wheeling entity under the aegis of its
advisory committee of faculty and the Chancellor. Then disaster struck. An audit of The Consortium's
budget in early 1985 revealed that, although fiscal prOjections indicated that the budget would be in
the black for 1985-86, the reality was a sizable deficit due to inadequate accounting procedures.
Director Elliott was shocked as was the rest of the extended/continuing education community. An
investigation ensued, but there was no way around the fact that The Consortium was in arrears by
about $700,000 and could expect a similar deficit in the following fiscal year.
The response of Ralph Bohn, Dean of Continuing Education at San Jose State University and a
member of the Commission, sums up the reaction of the extended and continuing education deans to
the news. In a memo, dated September 6, 1985 to Harold Haak, Bohn writes:
It took some time to recover from the shock of learning that the reported September 1984 Con-
sortium surplus of approximately 1/4 million dollars has changed to a September 1985 deficit....
CERF is a single revenue fund. a result, The Consortium deficit has been met with the funds from
the Systemwide Reserve. Since existing policy provides a payment to campuses of Systemwide
Reserve surpluses, each campus is interested in seeing that the Chancellor's Office accepts
responsibility for the deficit, and establishes procedures which will eliminate further deficits and
repay the Reserve. This is appropriate since present policy calls for deficits being treated as
repayable loans with interest.
The Commission on Extended Education has a major responsibility in seeing that the Systemwide
Reserve is repaid.
Bohn went on to layout the concerns of the deans: that the deficit of The Consortium would continue
to grow, thereby CERF further than it already had been in preceding years; that The Consortium would
never become a self-supporting entity; that future administrative responsibility for The Consortium
might be assigned inappropriately without essential fiscal or policy support; and, finally, that deficits
left by cancelled programs would be inappropriately assigned. In short, the campus deans were
worried about the very real possibility that they might get stuck with The Consortium's debts, a state
of affairs that would have negative consequences to their own sometimes marginally stable selfsupport programs.
The Consortium continued operation into 1985-86 under a cloud of concern and opposition. Its
enrollment in five bachelor's level programs and six master's programs was 814 full-time equivalent
students. Increasingly, organizational problems with duplicative administrative roles had spoiled
smooth relationships with the campuses, and, with the announcement of fiscal problems of such
magnitude, The Consortium's fate was sealed. In 1986 the decision was taken to phase out The
Consortium and integrate its programs and students with campus-based programs. It had had
a short and troubled life, and, more than anything, it stands as a testimony to the kinds of problems
that are created by to integrate a tuition-charging "school" into the midst of an educational system
based on the principle of tuition-free state-supported education. Ambiguous state policy (which was
never clear about what kind of fiscal commitment the state could or should make to working students
who live or work too far from the boundaries of a campus to attend classes within its boundaries)
placed a great deal of stress on a small organization within an institution such as the CSU.
Furthermore, there were flaws in the administrative and decision-making structure of The Consortium.
The deans of Extended/Continuing Education and the Commission continued to press the Chancellor's
Office without success for the establishment of some administrative mechanism that would preserve
what was good about the consortium concept: a means for campus cooperation in delivering external
degrees across broad geographic areas of California. But The Consortium was finally overwhelmed,
and many people were left to wonder if it could have been different. The need that originally justified
the founding of The Consortium remains. A legitimate question for speculation is: Will the CSU
create some other mechanism in the future for which The Consortium will serve as a model, both
negative and positive?
Meanwhile, CSU Extemal Degree Programs continued to operate in a modest way within the CSU. At
the height of their popularity, about 50 different programs operated on a self-support basis, but by
1984 there were only 27 self support programs involving 12 campuses, with an enrollment of less than
550 full-time equivalent students. Most were pilot programs. A report to the California Postsecondary
Education Commission describes the CSU rationale for self-support external degree programs:
It is important to note that self-support external degree programs are typically designed to have a finite
lifetime. They are developed and implemented to serve a specific clientele in a particular geographic
locale. When these needs are met, the program may be moved to another locale or terminated in
accordance with accepted procedures. The declining enrollment history of campusbased external degree
programs clearly reflects, in part, the conversion of those programs to General Fund support or the
phase-out of those programs that have met their educational objectives. (p. 2)
Among the pilot programs that operated on a self-support basis were a few that were operated outside of
California. San Diego State University, for instance, developed a degree program in education at the request of
school administrators in Crystal City, Texas. The program, focused on bilingual instruction, operated for two
years, after which time it was transferred to a Texas university for continuation. Similarly, San Jose State
University was asked by Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii, to assist in the design and development
of a master's program in criminal justice. The San Jose campus delivered the core of the program using its
summer session and a January special session until Chaminade Umversity coUld develop Its own permanent
San Jose State University also helped the Northern Mariana Islands in the South Pacific to establish a
community college aimed particularly at educating elementary school teachers. A grant from the US Office of
Education provides for the gradual shifting of the programs from SJSU to the new community college as it
grows.
Although self-support external degree programs continued to be an option for the CSU, increasingly,
off-campus courses were being shifted into the regular campus mode of operation. Enrollment limits
had been set by the state Legislature beginning in 1980 so that the campuses did not get too zealous in
"extending" their enrollment. The state-funded off-campus enrollment of the CSU remained quite
modest and gradually became focused in off-campus centers.
More than 60 percent of the that was offered by CSU in 1983 was in "centers." Enrollment in that
year was a little over 1,000 FTE. Major CSU centers included the Contra Costa
Center, opened by CSU Hayward in 1981-82 in the city of Pleasant Hill, the Ventura Learning Center
where CSU Northridge offered degree credit courses to about 80 students each year, San Diego State
University's North County Center in San Marcos, and CSU Stanislaus' center in Stockton. San Diego
State University continued to operate its branch campus in the Imperial Valley (Calexico). In addition,
San Francisco State University offered courses in a "downtown" center, San Jose State University
offered courses in Monterey, and CSU Fresno developed a site in the city of Visalia. By 1985 CSU
San Bernardino had added a center 80 miles from the campus in Palm Desert, and Sonoma State
University was delivering a program on the northern coast of California in Ukiah.
Of course, not all off-campus instruction in the CSU was offered at formal centers. Several campuses
(Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles, Chico, Sacramento, and Fullerton) offered off-campus courses
in a variety of sites convenient to the students. Also, campuses with formal centers did not necessarily
limit their offerings to those fixed locations. For example, the San Jose, Hayward, and San Francisco
campuses offered courses in several locations around the Bay Area'. By the academic year 1985-86,
students enrolled in off-campus state-supported programs amounted to about 2,100 full-time
equivalent students. However, in terms of actual number of students, most of whom were part
time, not full time, the number was more than 12,000 -a sizable group though extremely small
in relation to overall enrollment in a campus system the size of the CSU. Enrollment in state
supported off-campus courses represented 1 percent of the systemwide full-time equivalent students,
and about 3.8 percent of an unduplicated head count. Roughly 943 course sections were being
offered in 1985-86. Approximately 69 percent of the faculty teaching these courses were full-time
faculty members of the CSU.
Well over half of the off-campus instruction took place at one of the six centers approved by the
California Postsecondary Education Commission for delivery of degree and residence credit courses:
Contra Costa, Ventura, North (San Diego) County, San Francisco Downtown, Stockton, and Palm
Desert. The average distance of a center from a parent campus was about 42 miles. Three of the
centers (Palm Desert, Stockton, and San Francisco) were located in facilities provided by a community
college where there could be some joint planning for lower division (community college) courses and
upper division (CSU) courses. Centers were being developed by CSU Chico in the city of Redding, by
San Jose State in the Monterey/Salinas area, and by SDSU in the southern part of San Diego County.
In the "old days," the existence of a center with sufficient enrollment to justify staff and regular
programming of courses presaged the development of a new campus. Several of the 19 CSU campuses
-for example, Stanislaus, Bakersfield, Sonoma, and Hayward -had begun in just such a way. By the
1980s, however, enrollment projections in the state could not justify the investment in full-scale
permanent physical facilities for more CSU campuses. Both the administrators of the CSU and the
state Legislature were thinking in more flexible terms. But communities still pitched proposals into the
political arena in the hopes that a "real" campus would be established on their home front. For
example, the community of Concord in Contra Costa County (served by CSU Hayward) had waged a
20-year campaign to get the state to honor its 1967 decision to build a campus near that city where a
site had already been selected. However, as birth rates and population growth began to drop lower than
original projections, the Legislature had second thoughts. The Contra Costa Center represents a
compromise between a full-fledged campus and nothing at all. However, the last word on the fate of
CSU's various centers has yet to be heard.
In the future, the Legislature and the CSU will need to decide whether to invest in a few, new,
permanent campuses, or in a larger number of semi-permanent centers where face-to-face instruction
can take place, or whether instead to invest in telecommunications with the expectation that the
electronic age will lessen a college's dependence on the traditional classroom.
Instmctional Television
The telecommunications revolution of the 1970s and 80s forced educational planners to debate whether
physical "centers" or campuses in the traditional sense were any longer necessary. Recordkeeping and
other data processing could be electronically centralized, while students and teachers could be located
where demand and opportunity required. Some college faculty and administrators developed
tantalizing utopian visions of a "high tech" mode of higher education for the future, although the
majority considered television instruction an adjunct to traditional instruction rather than its
replacement.
Unquestionably, CSU Chico has been the forefront of the CSU campuses in incorporating television
into the structure of its educational delivery system. It was, for example, the first of the CSU campuses
to develop Instructional Television FixedService (ITFS) locations. Live television classes originate in a
special room in the library on the Chico campus from which they are broadcast to various receiving
sites where off-campus students can gather. One-way video combined with two-way audio make it
possible for the off-campus students to ask questions and participate in discussions along with the
students in the campus classroom. Students who are too far from a receiving site but who are able to
join one of the participating cable companies can rent a "brown box" from the campus that will enable
them to receive the classroom broadcast in their own homes. Phone contact with the classroom can
also be established.
By 1985-86 Chico's ITFS network included 15 communities, the most distant of which is in Yreka,
173 miles north of the campus. The eastern leg of the system goes 140 miles over the Sierra Nevada to
the US Sierra Army Depot at Herlong. The southwest leg extends 49 miles into a county school's
office in Colusa, while in the southwest the system extends into the Hewlett-Packard Company
facilities in Roseville. The TV classroom is used from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday through Friday
and on Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. This amounts to about 2,160 hours of televised classes
annually.
In addition, CSU Chico has the only satellite up-link in the CSU system, to which other northern
California campuses can also connect. Using satellite transmission, the campuses can deliver televised
classrooms literally anywhere in the world; currently, a master's degree program in computer science is
being delivered via television. In September 1984 the Chico campus began broadcasting four
____science courses every week to an enrollment of about 100 students each semester. By September 1985 the program
was courses per from three ---companies (Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, and the Bentley Nevada Corporation)
generated 140 enrollments at 13 corporate locations in six states -California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and
Tennessee -with further expansion planned.
The small Stanislaus campus has made effective use of television instruction, using CSU Chico as a
model. It currently delivers between 60 and 70 courses via television per term over three channels to
an FTE of about 350.
Between 1983 and 1985, an ITFS system with four channels was developed to connect all of the CSU
campuses in the Los Angeles Basin with a transmitter atop Mount Wilson. An example of the use of
this system is Cal Poly Pomona's "PolyNet," an instructional TV network aimed at high school
students. As part of the Distance Learning Center directed by Robert Threlkeld, the network has
offered courses in German, Calculus, Physics, Biology, Art, and Psychology to advanced high
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school students who want to start their college level education early. All of the lTV courses are
transferable for college credit later. A university credit course entitled "The Role of Engineering in
Society" was recently offered to 18 Los Angeles area high schools. Engineering faculty from the campus
participated in the course, designed to help young people who are interested in engineering make
informed decisions about future college majors and career fields.
CSU Northridge has developed an independent ITFS system which serves a geographic area almost as
large as CSU Chico, but with a much denser urban population. Northridge currently broadcasts courses
throughout the San Fernando Valley, Antelope Valley, Los Angeles County and Ventura County.
San Diego State University has developed ProfNet which offers TV courses to professionals in their
workplaces. Since the program began in 1984, graduate level courses in engineering, computer science,
and business administration have been delivered via television to corporate and government organizations.
Upcoming plans include transmission of courses to Mexico's microwave and satellite networks -a first for
an American university.
Because improved telecommunications capacity for continuing education was a high priority for the
Commission on Extended Education, several campuses received grants from the CERF System-wide
Reserves for telecommunications equipment. In addition, most campuses drew on their own reserves for
this purpose. CSU Chico's fiscal investment in its lTV system exceeds $2 million, which has come from a
combination of campus, grant, and CERF Systemwide Reserve money. Fourteen campuses have ITFS
capacity, 11 have cable franchises, one campus (San Diego) operates a public TV station, and 11 have
satellite reception. The Chico campus will develop a Ku band satellite up-link in the future in addition to
its present C band capacity.
Continuing Education
The second track of extended education in the CSU is designed for students who are not interested in
matriculating for degrees. Rather they are concerned with professional development and learning for their
own pleasure and personal reward. Extension has traditionally been the CSU vehicle for delivering nondegree courses and programs, and, as such, CSU Extension follows market demands, giving the deans or
directors of extension programs the opportunity to be creative. They can also lose their shirts if they have
no skills in marketing.
Certificate programs are a growing part of CSU continuing education, since many professionals
do not want a full de ee ro am still want more in-depth study than can be provided in single courses. For
example, CSC Bakersfield in cooperation WI etty emery, crea e certificate program in chemical engineering that
was designed to meet refinery expansion needs. The program lasted for four years, after which time it was
phased out because it was no longer needed. Another certificate program at Bakersfield is the Attorney Assistant
Program, modeled after one begun earlier by Sonoma State College. It is designed to update skills of legal
secretaries and paralegals as well as to provide entry for those wishing to become attorney assistants or to attend
law school in the future. According to responses received by a Cal State Bakersfield survey, there are over 100
paralegals employed full or part-time in the Bakersfield region who could benefit from further education.
San Francisco State University led the way in creating certificate programs, offering the first one for
academic credit in 1969-70 (Early Childhood Education) and the first Paralegal Studies Certificate
Program after which all others were modeled. Then came the Gerontology, Construe· tion Practices, Music
Recording Industry, and Parks Administration, all from 1974 to 1980. These
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programs moved the campus to design a number of undergraduate and graduate certificate programs,
minors, one graduate degree program (Gerontology). All Continuing Education certificate programs
utilized advisory committees from community and campus segments. Nonacademic certificate
programs in the more technical fields of professional financial planning, computers, tourism and
telecommunications were also developed in the 1980s.
The Long Beach campus offers "Computers in Education," a certificate program designed for teachers.
In 1984-85 CSU San Bernardino developed a unique paralegal training program in cooperation with
the state Employment Development Department's Division of Training. The students were 25
unemployed steelworkers who wished to become paralegals. Of the 25 students, 20 finished the
program, 11 were later employed as paralegals, and 6 went on to law school.
CSU Long Beach created a special program for women entrepreneurs which arose out of its certificate
"Women and Work." Because this first certicate program attracted a large number of women who were
interested in starting their own businesses; a special training program, focusing especially on
entrepreneurship skills, was designed. The program not only gives information but also provides role
models in the form of local women who have already been successful in businesses of their own. The
main objectives of the program are to erase the myth that running a business is for men only and to
help participants learn how to do essential planning.
CSU Los Angeles has developed several certificate programs, including Legal Assistant (which began
in 1975 and has now graduated more than 400 students), Legal Interpretation and Translation in
English/Spanish; Library Technician; and, upcoming, Pulmonary Physiology and Technology,
Production and Inventory Control, Intravenous Therapy for Nurses, Microcomputers for Business
Teachers, and Industrial and Institutional Fire Protection and Safety.
The titles of CSU certificate programs suggest the wide range of job skills that employers are seeking
and the kind of diversification and technological sophistication that workers now need.
In order to respond to change, diversity, and advancing technology, Cal State Los Angeles has created
a Research and Development unit within the Office of Continuing Education. The campus felt that it
needed to find a way to get better information about ethnic, demographic, and economic changes
affecting the Los Angeles area, and to be sure that the campus would be able to respond to those
changes in a timely manner. The Director of Research and Development is responsible for culling
daily, weekly and monthly periodicals, meeting with industry and community leaders, and maintaining
a liaison with the campus academic departments in order to survey the resources available for meeting
requests from industry and local communities. Two issues have surfaced recently: the high drop-out
rate among high school students in the campus service area and the need for services to the elderly.
The Los Angeles campus has responded to the first by obtaining a research grant from the State
Department of Education to develop two seminars to be offered by people who are working with highrisk youth. As to the second area -the elderly -the campus Office of Continuing Education has joined
the international Elderhostel program and is beginning a new focus on educational and multi-cultural
activities for senior citizens.
San Francisco State is another campus which has organized senior citizens through its "60 Plus Club,"
and other campus programs, such as Elderhostel. The "60 Plus Club" sponsors lectures, day tours,
social events, access to campus classes on a reduced fee basis, use of library facilities, and discounts to
SFSU performing arts and symphony concerts.
Travel Study is another important activity of CSU continuing education. San Jose State University has
a long-standing and successful program which offers dozens national and foreign trips each
term. Cal State Los Angeles sponsored a tour of central European music festivals in 1984, and a
comparative study of criminal justice systems (to Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Greece in 1984 and 1985;
to Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Monaco, Germany, Italy, and Austria in 1985). A trip to study
education in Korea was offered in 1985, and foreign study in the Chinese language was offered at
Hong Kong University in the same year. San Francisco State University organizes ecological
fieldwork expeditions, such as projects to research the behavior of wolves in Wyoming or study the
effects of modernization in Nepal.
In the CSU, foreign travel study does not only mean American students going abroad, it also includes
programs for foreign students coming to the United States. Sally Gardner, Director of the American
Culture and Language Program (ACLP) at Cal State Los Angeles, reports that ACLP began in 1978
with 9 students, expanding to 90 students by 1980, and to more than 150 by 1985, most now from the
Asian Pacific Rim countries. The students study English as a second language, reading and writing
skills, American history, a course called "Biology, Race, and Ethnicity," speech, and business
practices. Other CSU campuses have taken up the Los Angeles model. A slightly different twist is
provided by San Francisco State University, which has developed an English fluency course for nonnative speakers employed as workers in the Bay Area. The course is often sponsored by various
companies who employ a high number of recent immigrants since these companies have an interest in
the improvement of the language skills of their employees.
Another strategy of CSU continuing education has been to develop campus "centers" devoted to a
specific issue or theme. San Diego State University has developed a Center for the Study of Data
Processing which serves managers, systems analysts, programmers, and data users in more than 30 of
San Diego's leading industrial firms. The firms participate in the center through annual corporate
memberships. Similarly, the Center for Management Development, another cooperative venture
between SDSU and the corporate community, aims at first-line supervisors, engineering managers,
middle management, and executives. CSU Fresno offers an annual four-day Summer Institute on
Aging designed for care providers of the elderly, to whom it provides essential information and
knowledge related to gerontological care.
CSU Long Beach developed a Weekend College of Engineering, offered through special sessions,
when the on-campus program was full to over-flowing. With the weekend college, students who were
not able to enter the regular program were able to study engineering, and some of these .students
eventually were admitted to the less crowded graduate engineering programs of the campus.
Although a fair amount of continuing education in the CSU is organized around themes or programs,
the single course is a long staple Examples include San Francisco State University's course for deaf
and hearing impaired education students designed to help them pass the state-mandated basic skills
test for public school teachers. A similar course is offered to the visually handicapped for the
mathematics section of the test, since non-seeing students need additional tutoring in the visual-spatial
skills required for geometry. CSU Fresno has continued with a seventy year old tradition of offering
courses for teachers in the Sierra foothills. A course entitled "Energy and Environment" features
strategies for teaching children about environmental protection and ecology. CSU Los Angeles offers
master classes in the arts taught by international experts from the Royal Danish Ballet (1984), famous
alumni of the Lester Horton School of Dance (1985), and singer Andrea Von Ramm, a noted
specialist in medieval and renaissance music (1986). San Jose State University won the LERN
outstanding non-credit course award for a course entitled "How to Build Your Own PC-XT
Compatible for Less than $800."
Not all CSU continuing education courses and programs are for working adults, however. Both CSC
Bakersfield and CSU Long Beach designed summer programs for children when Proposition 13
decimated the budgets of local school districts. Many local schools at that time had to abandon their
summer on which many working parents depended for summer activities for their children. The CSU
campuses saw the community need and were able to design programs that, in addition to providing
supervised activities and educational enrichment for kids, were integrated with on-campus teacher
training courses, provided opportunities for local teachers to work in the program and to experiment
with new techniques, and provided some parent education as well.
The variety of CSU continuing education, which is only very partially covered here, indicates that sellsupport programs, like extension, are a means through which the campuses can offer education over
and above what the state is able or willing to pay for. In some cases, continuing education provides
services to businesses who pay educational expenses for their employees. In other cases, new selfsupporting programs are designed when there are simply too many students for the campus to
accommodate in existing programs. In still other cases, programs are designed in response to some
default in the community. As a result, continuing education is frequently innovative, and on the cutting
edge in giving communities what they require. In other cases, continuing education provides a
temporary stop-gap for activities that eventually move elsewhere as policy and fiscal changes allow.
The flexibility of continuing education programs has historically been a great advantage in evading
bureaucratic obstacles. However, the programs, based as they are on fees paid for services, are
vulnerable to rapid shifts in the interests, needs, and resources of California's population.
In 1984-85 CSU continuing education enrolled 116,847 students in various special sessions (credit)
programs, and another 245,178 in extension and non-credit programs, including more than 40,000
students in concurrent enrollment courses. There were more than 41,000 course sections offered, and
revenues exceeded $37 million.
But the future is clouded. In October of 1986 James O'Donnell, Dean of Continuing Education at CSU
Northridge, wrote to his campus president, James W. Cleary, expressing a level of worry that was
typical of most CSU campuses:
The relative health of Continuing Education in the California State University system has been
in decline for two years, and now threatens to slip precipitously. The reasons for this change are:
(a)
Increased competition for self-support students;
(b)
A cutback in educational budgets by
(c)
Assessments by the Department of Finance against Concurrent Enrollment;
(d)
Loss of the half-positions paid out of state funding for the Continuing Education Dean and
his/her secretary;
(e)
Slippage in funding availability from the statewide reserve.
Itseems unlikely that the combined campuses will reverse this trend in fiscal year 1986-87 without a
major cutback in areas of new program development.
As this history concludes, a number of unresolved issues confront the CSU and its extended!
continuing education programs. The issues relate to the overall responsibility of state government to
fiscally support the education and re-education of working adults, and to the ways the CSU
system internally allocates the money that is made available from state funds. Will the campuses
continue to encourage the concurrent enrollment of non-matriculated, part-time adult students in oncampus courses? Will the CSU be encouraged to develop a greater array of off-campus centers, or will
the state prefer to concentrate effort on a few additional campuses? What role will telecommunications play in educational delivery? Will the CSU invent another Consortium to address the
continuing problems related to cooperation and coordination in a multi-campus system and to the
disappearing geographical boundaries that go along with electronic technology? Where will the
money come from -taxpayers, the students themselves, employers, or a combination of all three? How
should this money be accounted for and allocated? It is clear that these issues will not be easily
addressed, for they have had a disturbingly recalcitrant place in public debate about public university
education in California. They remain agenda items for educational planners in the future.
In 1985 a state Commission for the Review of the California Master Plan for Higher Education was
mandated by the Legislature, and charged to conduct a'comprehensive review of state policy for
higher education -the first since the 1972 review headed by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos. The
CSU Commission on Extended Education recognized the importance of this state review of the
Master Plan. In a letter to Chancellor Reynolds from Harold Haak in January of 1985, Haak stressed
the need for the Chancellor to urge the state Commission to consider several issues of great
importance to the CSU: the public service role of the CSU; state funding for continuing education; the
mission of the CSU in statewide adult education; and educational telecommunications. The outcome
of the state Commission's hearings, deliberations, and written reports will not be known until its final
recommendations for changes in state education policy are debated in the 1987 or 1988 sessions of
the state Legislature.
EPILOGUE
In the preceding chapters, a chronology of events covering a period of more than 125 years has
established that continuing education is a major traditional activity of the California State UDiversity,
though over the years it has undergone numerous changes in definition, focus, and practice. While in
the past it has been offered in boom times as well as in periods of fiscal crisis for California, currently,
the fiscal picture for continuing education in the CSU appears as mixed as policies and definitions.
There is no clear agreement among educators or state policy-makers about what continuing education
is, who it serves, how, why, or who should pay for it. The result is that it is very difficult to assess
where continuing education currently fits in the overall picture of the 19-campus CSU system.
CSU continuing education has traditionally aimed its activities primarily at working adults and has
usually involved tuition fees. This tendency, developed over time, to equate tuition charges with
educational programs for working adults has been problematic for the California State University. The
CSU is a state-supported university whose status derives from the state policy, in place since the
Organic Act of 1868, of providing tuition-free higher education to any citizen of California who is
able to demonstrate the capacity to benefit from it. The policy of tUition-free public higher education
was re-emphasized in the 1960 Master Plan for California Higher Education, and has remained a
cornerstone of state policy since. Within this context, charging tuition to working adults becomes a
seriously controversial policy issue, particularly since almost 45 percent of all undergraduate and
graduate students in the United States are over the age of 25.
Historically, self-supporting educational programs in the CSU have served to fill the gap between
what the state could and would pay for and what the campuses actually wanted and needed to do. CSU
extension and summer sessions, as well as external degree programs, though nominally created for
other purposes, have delivered education over and beyond what the state was able to fund. The selfsupport status of these programs has been their strength and their weakness. For example, when
innovations were needed, often only self-support programs had the freedom to alter practices without
lengthy and conflicting attempts to alter legislation or iriternal bureaucratic policy. On the other hand,
self-support status has been the weakness of continuing education because that status has made it
vulnerable financially. Unprotected by entrenched bureaucratic regulations or vested interests, CSU
continuing education has had to adapt to vicissitudes in policy along with the ups and downs of the
marketplace. An example is the external degree programs which, begun as an innovation, passed
within less than a decade through CSU continuing education hands on their way to their current status
as operations.
Because of the long-term tension between state support and self-support in CSU continuing education,
its programs are both innovative and perpetually confused with respect to policy. One can find
evidence for both negative and positive judgments of continuing education's contributions to the
mission of the CSU; the judgment depends on where one looks in the historical record.
It is possible, however, that CSU continuing education is both less innovative and less confused than it
appears on the surface. A theme that runs through the preceding chapters is that the continuing
education of adults has always been an integral part of the business of the CSU, from the days of the
normal schools; only gradually did pre-service education become the dominant dimension of teacher
education in California. And only gradually have the colleges expanded their focus beyond teacher
education to include a whole range of vocations.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, by developing late afternoon and evening classes, the state colleges
became able to serve large numbers of adult students -a practice that was more formalized with
the advent of the G.I. Bill for veterans of World War II. What is important to recognize, however,
is that these adult st.udents of the 1940s and 1950s were not charged tuition simply because they
were adults, or working, or in need of geographically accessible classrooms. They were being
educated at public expense as part of higher education policy, both state and federal. At that time,
extension and summer sessions served specifically as vehicles to provide for additional teacher
education, and although they did entail tuition, the school district (funded by public money) often
underwrote the costs of the course. Or if a teacher attended a college course independently, he
or she was indirectly reimbursed for the expense of the course in the form of salary increments
a reward for continuing to learn, established as a common school district practice throughout the
state. Providing for the continuing education of one particular professional group -teachers
was the focus of CSU continuing education programs for many years.
The baby boom generation, which arrived like a tidal wave in the decade of the 1960s, unsettled the
traditional practices of the colleges. Suddenly, there was an incredible demand for college by young high
school graduates; the campuses were flooded with applications for the admission of 18 and 19 year olds.
Adult part-time students were pushed to the periphery when, for example, the category of "limited
student" was abolished in the early 1960s in order to make room for the increasing numbers of first-time
freshmen.
The colleges and state policy-makers turned their attention to this new, sizable, and vocal majority. As
young faculty were added to the CSU campuses during this period of enrollment growth, they became
socialized to expect large numbers of young students, unlike previous generations of faculty who had
always had older students, particularly teachers and school administrators, in their "extended day" classes.
At the same time that the baby boom generation was creating a huge, though temporary, need for more
facilities and more faculty members, the faculty were becoming more professionalized and organized. As
the campuses grew and standards for hiring gradually were raised, faculty began to make a serious effort to
emulate the Ivy League atmosphere of the older, elite Eastern American universities. This goal competed
with the more egalitarian traditions of the land grant universities of the Midwest and Western states. A
continuing tension between Ivy League elitism and land grant egalitarianism was not unique to the CSU; it
has been a factor in the historical development of the University of California, as well, thus making it a
general factor in the evolution of higher education policy in California.
Proponents of the two conceptualizations of the purposes of higher education vied for faculty and
administrator support within the esu and affected public debate in the state Legislature about·_specific state
higher education policy. As CSU faculty became more professional, they became more politically powerful,
and the ways they thought about their roles became increasingly influential in policy decisions. Adult
students, for instance, did not fit readily into the mental image of faculty and administrators who envisioned a
California higher education that could rival that of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The picture of a residential
college full of impressionable youths who looked to faculty members as fonts of wisdom and intellectual
stimulation was hard to hold onto in the face of classroom questions and challenges from cynical G.I.'s or
busy working people who wanted to get on with practical business. The working adult student, rather, fit into
the mold of the land grant university where higher education was to be made "practical" by applying it to the
everyday business of living. The adult student was therefore attractive to many faculty members and
administrators who supported this goal and were less interested in emulating Harvard. But for those faculty
and administrators who were supportive of the drive in the state colleges for full university status, for
scholarly recognition in the worldwide academic community, and for more research opportunities, the adult
student was seen as something of a liability. At any
rate, throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, the adult student played second fiddle to a large, young
generation which was staging a continuous series of media events and distracting an entire nation with its
politicized demands.
Once the baby boom generation graduated and the era of student protest subsided, the state colleges
and universities lost the temporary swell of 18 to 21 year olds who had been in need of so much
investment and attention. Gradually, as the baby boom generation aged, the campuses reverted to an
age distribution of students that more closely approximated the age range that they had traditionally
served. However, by now the state colleges had become full-fledged universities, in which the
complexity of modem higher education with its many competing purposes was demanding a balance
between egalitarian sentiments and elitist ambitions.
CSU faculty and administrators had, for the most part, learned their roles and formed their attitudes
about higher education during the baby boom years. The reappearance of adult students in college
classrooms came as a surprise to a large number of educators who were not used to them. These
educators had not experienced, during their professional careers, much else except large and growing
enrollments of youngsters fresh from high school or transferring from junior colleges. Furthermore,
they had grown accustomed to relative fiscal generosity to higher education on the part of the state
and federal governments during the economic good times of the 1960s. When enrollment of first-time
freshmen began to drop in the mid-1970s, and funds began to be cut back, faculty and administrators
were surprised and shocked. Older state college faculty, nearing retirement in the 1970s, remembered
the days of the 1930s and 1940s when there was not much money around for colleges to work with,
and working adults, particularly in-service teachers, were common as students. But in the 1970s, there
was a new generation of relatively young faculty and administrators for whom the baby boom years
were the only experience they had had, and who expected neverending economic as well as
enrollment growth. The adjustment of expectations required by the demographic shifts and economic
changes of the 1970s was profoundly difficult for college and university educators as well as for state
and federal policy-makers.
By the 1970s and 1980s, the State of California had become staggeringly populous and complex. The
population of potential CSU students now included more working adults, and, in addition, was more
ethnically diverse. The political and economic climate for higher education had grown a bit sour,
perhaps partly a legacy of the baby boom generation's vociferous opposition to government control.
But the CSU still had the same faculty and administrators, for the most part, who had been hired in
record numbers during the 1960s. This generation of educators (and legislators) who came of during
the baby boom years do not see their own socialization as unique to a particular period in America or
in the overall history of the CSU. Rather they see their own experience as the norm of what is and
what should be. Primed to expect high enrollments of young high school graduates, constant growth
and new building programs, and steadily improving conditions for faculty scholarship, they are a
disillusioned group for whom morale has been an issue. The working adult student may be a symbol
for this group of educators of what is wrong, rather than what is right, with California higher
education.
At the state policy level, legislators cut budget support for higher education in the years following the
graduation of the baby boomers, but they did not at the same time necessarily change their thinking
about whom higher education was for and what it was supposed to mean in the overall scheme of
things. Legislators, along with campus administrators and faculty, have now had to change their
perspectives, their habits, and their expectations with respect to colleges and universities. The result
has been a certain dislocation and inconsistency in policy. The process of changing expectations is
slow and difficult.
Through it all, continuing education personnel on the CSU campuses found themselves in a unique
position. They had always stood outside of the highly politicized state budget process that engaged the
CSU with the Legislature and the Governor because of the self-support status of their programs. But
in the financial difficulties that began to beset the state, self-support education was reassessed by those
outside of it for its capacity to raise money. Furthermore, the aging of the population, which caught
faculty by surprise, moved continuing education, which had always been aimed at working adults, into
the forefront of public discussion about higher education.
But CSU continuing education deans were not necessarily ready to make use of the vastly more
favorable circumstances that were evolving. They, too, had their habits and their expectations.
CSU continuing education had traditionally occupied itself with teacher education. Extension and
summer session administrators, whose professional contacts were primarily with local educators,
watched their enrollments drop as teacher education slipped as a state priority. What challenged
the CSU deans was the dawning recognition that what they had always done for teachers, they
now needed to do for a great variety of professional groups. But how to gear up to do this? The
development of marketing expertise became a CSU continuing education project. However, it was
.basically its traditional experience with in-service teachers that provided the CSU with models for
operating extension and summer sessions in relation to a broader range of professions.
CSU continuing education demonstrates in its history then a great deal more continuity in philosophy
and activities than most higher educators realize. Providing for the education of working adults is not
new; it is basic to what the state colleges have always done. The unusual years during which the baby
boom generation "went to college" as 18 to 21 year olds need to be viewed as the temporary
aberration that they in fact were. Now what is problematic for the CSU is not the fact of a "new"
population of working adult students, but rather the tendency of educators and policy-makers to forget
the historical experience of the organizations in which they work. Current educational thinking seems
to be based on a set of assumptions about higher education that are more appropriate only for the
unusual baby boom years of the late 1950s and 1960s when "taking care of all those kids" was the
first order of the day and dominated everything as the state geared up to respond to a crisis. Ironically,
the passing of this crisis has left a new crisis in its wake. "Taking care of all those adults" is the order
of the day. Fortunately, the CSU is not without a history that includes such care.
The CSU has always been functionally egalitarian and concerned with professional in-service
education. What has changed over the years is the scope of this concern, not the fact of its existence as a
fundamental aspect of CSU identity and a commitment of state government. The history of continuing
in the CSU provides a de-mystification of the adult student and his or "unusual" needs by putting them
into this larger context. The CSU began its existence as a continuing education enterprise more than a
century ago, and it continues to this day to enroll a very large number of adult students.
Although it is beyond the scope of a history to point the way toward the future, it is possible to see in
the past record clues to the solutions for some of the current problems that face the CSU, namely how
to define continuing education and its role as part of the mission of the university. The tendency
arbitrarily to connect it to self-support funding appears to constrain the delivery of continuing
education to adult students. If self-support education, as an established aspect of CSU operations, were
to be conceptualized as simply another funding base, these self-support programs would have greater
freedom to innovate, explore, and implement new ideas. Thus, the purpose of self-support educational
programs in a state-supported system like the CSU could be frankly entrepreneurial. Some ventures
might prove to be mistakes, others of enduring value and worth institutionalizing eventually as statefunded activities. But as long as self-support programs
are seen only as vehicles for delivering "adult education," the variety of activities potentially available for
exploration will be limited. Furthermore, the attempt to use self-support programs to "extend" regular
instruction handicaps the self-support programs in the marketplace, which is their natural habitat, for selfsupport programs in the CSU, regardless of how their educational purposes are defined, are businesses.
They should be run as businesses -that is, they need to ensure an excess of income over expenditures simply because they cannot be run in any other way unless they are subsidized. The continued reluctance
of state government to subsidize a form of education that contains within its structure the capacity to
generate its own sources of support suggests that it might be in the best interests of the CSU to
conceptualize self-support programs, not merely as education for working adults, but more broadly as the
research and development wing of the campuses. In so doing, the campuses might be able to compensate
for the inevitable resistance to change that is inherent in large state bureaucracies by creating a place where
innovations are pioneered and evaluated at no cost to state government. As the Commission on Extended
Education demonstrated in the late 1970s, CSU continuing education units can do marketing projects for
the campuses.
Continuing education for working adult students meanwhile needs to be differentiated in the CSU more
clearly into degree and non-degree tracks. It is generally agreed that non-degree education for nonmatriculated students is beyond the scope of what state government can support in the four-year colleges
and universities. However, continuing education for degrees falls within the scope of what the state has
historically guaranteed its residents. By utilizing extension, summer sessions, and special sessions to
deliver continuing education towards degrees, the CSU (and state policy-makers who encourage the
practice) operates contrary to well-established public commitments to California citizens. As the historical
record demonstrates, most of CSU's conflicts with the state and with its own students and faculty around
the issue of continuing education has revolved around the unprecedented move to charge tuition fees to
students who are fully matriculated and seeking a university degree.
In sum, it appears that the time has come for self-support education and the continuing education of adults
to part company as synonyms and become separately established as enduring educational programs in
their own rights. This is not to say that the two do not have a relationship, or that they cannot overlap for
specific purposes. It is simply to suggest that the connection may not be as automatic as current practice,
viewed without relationship to historical context, may lead us
believe.
It is likely that when all is said and done, however, self-support programs, regardless of how they are
named or are construed to be, will always be problematical in relation to the "regular" state-supported
programs of the California State University. Hopefully, working adults who wish to continue their pursuit
of university degrees will be less controversial in the future than they have been in the recent past. Itdoes
seem clear, however, that they are deserving of the best possible instruction and support that the California
State University and the State of California can provide.
THE END
REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION
Stern, Milton: "The Invisible University." Journal oj the National University Extension
Association, December, 1985.
CHAPTER 1
Published Sources Brubacker, J. S.: A History oj the Problems oj Education (2nd edition). New
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Creese, James: The Extension oj University Teaching. New York: American Association of Adult
Education, 1941.
Davies, Sarah M.: A History oj Humboldt State College. (Master's Thesis, School of Education,
Stanford University, March, 1947).
Gerth, Donald R. and Grenier, Judson A.: A History oj the Calijornia State University and
Colleges. Long Beach: CSUC, 1981.
Gilbert, B. F. and Burdick, C.: Washington Square, 1857-1979; The History oj San Jose State
University. San Jose, CA: San Jose State University, no date.
Gordon, Margaret: Employment Expansion and Population Growth: The Calijornia Experience,
1900-1950. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954.
Greathead, Estelle: The Story oj an Inspiring Past. San Jose, CA: San Jose State Teachers
College, 1928.
Hogan, F. P.: The History oj Fresno State Teachers College. (Master's Thesis, Leland Stanford
Junior University, October, 1929).
Morton, John: University Extension in the United States. Birmingham: University of Alabama 1953
.-----__ _.___ _ _
Pangburn, Jessie M.: The Evolution oj the American Teacher's College. New York: Teachers
College, Columbia University, 1932.
Rockhill, Kathleen: Academic Excellence and Public Service; A History oj University Extension in
Calijornia. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983.
Rowland, Eugenia: Origin and Development oj Fresno State College (Dissertation, University of
California, Berkeley, August, 1949). .
Schoenfeld, C. A. (with D. N. Zillman): The American University in Summer. Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.
State Normal School: Historical Sketch. Sacramento, CA: State Printing Office, 1889.
Stephan, A. S.: "Backgrounds and Beginnings of University Extension in America."
Educational Review, Spring, 1948.
Archival Material
Chico State Teachers College Circular of Information, 1932-33. (San Francisco State University
. Special Collections).
Devoss, James C.: Life History (Transcribed oral history interview, no date, probably around
1956). (San Jose State University Special Collections).
Fresno State Normal School Summer School Circular of Information, 1914. (CSU Fresno
Archives).
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Humboldt State Teachers College Circular of Information, 1932-33. (San Francisco State
University Special Collections).
Lesley, Lewis B.: San Diego State College, The First Fifty Years, 1897-1947. (San Diego State
University Archives).
McLane, C. L.: The Growth and Development of Fresno State College for the First Twentyjive
Years, 1911-1936. (CSU Fresno Archives).
Minutes of the Council of College Presidents, 1933-34. (Systemwide CSU Archives, CSU
Dominguez Hills).
San Francisco State Teachers College Preliminary Announcement of Summer Session, June 26August 4, 1922. (San Francisco State University Special Collections).
San Francisco State Teachers College Announcement of Courses, 1928-29. (San Francisco State
University Special Collections).
CHAPTER 2 California State University: Statistical Abstracts, 1985. CSU Office of the
Chancellor.
Gerth, Donald R. & Grenier, Judson A.: A History of the California State University and
Colleges. Long Beach, CA: CSUC, 1981.
Gilbert, Benjamin F. & Burdick, Charles: Washington Square, 1857-1979, The History of San
Jose State University. San Jose, CA: San Jose State University, no date.
Holy, T. C., Semans, H. H., and McConnell, T. R.: A Restudy of the Needs of California in
Higher Education. Sacramento, CA: State Department of Education, 1955.
Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 1960-1975. Sacramento, CA: State Department
of Education, 1960.
Rockhill, Kathleen: Academic Excellence and Public Service; A History of University Extension
in California. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983.
Rowland, Eugenia: Origins and Development of Fresno State College. (Dissertation, University
of California, Berkeley, August, 1949).
Strayer, G. D. et al.: A Report of a Survey of the Needs of California in Higher Education.
Sacramento, CA: State Department of Education, 1948.
Archival Material
Annual Reports on Summer Session (1946-60), State Department of Education, Division of State
Colleges and Teacher Education. (CSU Sacramento Archives: State Department of Education,
Miscellaneous Reports).
Catalogues (San Francisco State University Special Collections):
Chico State College Circular of Information, 1940-41 Chico State College General
Catalogue, 1947-48 Chico State College Summer Session, 1948 Fresno State College
Catalogue, 1940-41; 1947-48 Humboldt State College Catalogue, 1940-41; 1947-48
Humboldt State College Summer Sessions, 1948 San Diego State College Bulletin and
Announcement of Courses, 1940-41; 1947-48 San Francisco State College Catalogue,
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Correspondence File: Assembly Committee on Education Report, circa 1959-1961. (San Jose
State University, Office of Continuing Education).
Correspondence File: Deans of Educational Services and Division of State Colleges and Teacher
Education, 1946-1962. (Lundstedt Collection, CSU, Office of the Chancellor, Division of
Extended Education).
Extension Programs, California State Colleges, 1959-60. Educational Planning Office, State
Department of Education, Division of State Colleges and Teacher Education, February 1, 1961.
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GuidelinesJor the
State· Department of Education, Division of State
Colleges and Teacher Education. (CSU, Office of the Chancellor, Division of Extended
Education).
Minutes of the Council of (State) College Presidents (1946-55) (CSU Sacramento Archives).
Report on Extension (Glenn Kendall, Chair), May 22,1950. State Department of Education
(CSU Sacramento Archives: State Department of Education, Miscellaneous Reports).
Report of the Assembly Interim Committee on Education, 1961. (San Jose State University,
Office of Continuing Education).
San Diego State College, Council of Division Chairmen: Report of the Subcommittee on
Extension, Extended Day, and Summer Sessions, February, 1956. (CSU Sacramento Archives:
State Department of Education, Miscellaneous Reports).
CHAPTER·3
Published Sources
California Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE): Continuing Education Programs
in Calijornia Higher Education, No. 1005. Sacramento, CA: Author, July, 1963.
California Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE): Status Report on Continuing
Education Programs in Calijornia. Sacramento, CA: Author, November, 1965-66.
California State University and Colleges: Statistical Abstracts, 1976. Long Beach, CA: CSUC,
Office of the Chancellor.
Gerth, Donald R. & Grenier, Judson A.: A History oj the Calijornia State University and
Colleges. Long Beach, CA: CSUC, 1981.
Gerth, Donald R, Haehn, J. and Associates: An Invisible Giant. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1971.
Glenny, Lyman: "New Horizons for Continuing Education and University Extension" (Paper
delivered to the National University Extension Association Region 6 Conference, October 10-12,
1973).
Gregg, J. E.& Jones, R: "Faculty Views of the Role·of State Government." In Gerth, Haehn &
Associates: An Invisible Giant. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1971, pp. 34-49.
Insel, S. A., Hoggard, R and Robinson, B. A.: Continuing Education jor Licensed Projessionals
in Calijornia: A Survey Study. San Francisco State College, November, 1972.
McCabe, George: Should the State oj Calijornia Finance Off-campus Instruction by the
Calijornia State University and Colleges? A Study oj the Issues. Long Beach, CA: CSUC, 1979.
Rockhill, Kathleen: Academic ExceUenee and Public Service; A History oj University Extension
in Calijornia. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983.
Spalding, B.: "Mandate for Change." In Haehn Giant. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1971, pp.
190-211.
Archival Material
Reports, California State Colleges (CSU, Office of the Chancellor):
Academic Master Planning in the CSC: 1972 through 1975-76; Part Four -The Scope oj
Extension Offerings, April, 1971.
Adult Education Survey: Response oj the· State Colleges to the Statement oj Issues,
August 17, 1962.
Dumke, Glenn: "Some Proposals for Change in the CSC" (A statement presented to the CSC
Board of Trustees' Committee on Educational Policy, Los Angeles, January 26, 1971).
Extension Activities within Continuing Education, September, 1965.
O'Bryne, Ernest: Financing Adult Education in the California State Colleges, June 26, 1962.
O'Bryne, Ernest: Functions of the CSC in Adult Education (with Ralph Prator), preliminary
draft, May 16, 1962.
Task Force Number Eight (Extension and Summer Session) of the Committee for Fiscal Responsibility: Report, June, 1966. (Also Gerth Personal Archives). Status Report on Continuing
Education, 1965-66, December, 1966. Study Group on Admissions Policy: Report, March, 1964.
(Also Gerth Personal Archives). 1965 Summer Sessions, Division of Academic Planning.
Correspondence File: Richard Barbera, 1970-1972 (CSU, Office of the Chancellor). Gerth,
Donald R.: Personal Archives (CSU Sacramento, Office of the President). Minutes of the
Academic Senate of the California State Colleges, 1964-65 (CSU, Office of the Chancellor).
Minutes of the CSC Board of Trustees, 1960-70 (CSU, Office of the Chancellor; also San
Francisco State University Library, Documents Section). Miscellaneous Papers and Reports.
(Lundstedt Collection, CSU Office of the Chancellor, Division of Extended Education). State
Advisory Committee on Continuing Education: Report, 1965 (CSU, Office of the Chancellor) .
State Department of Education: Extension Programs in the California State Colleges, 1961.
(Gerth Personal Archives, CSU Sacramento).
________.....__
Published Sources
American Council on Education: Report of the Committee on the Financing of Higher Education
for Adult Students. Washington, D.C.: Author, 1974.
California Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE): The California Master Plan for
Higher Education in the 1970's and Beyond (A report to the CCHE by the Select Committee on
the Master Plan). Sacramento, CA: Author, 1972.
California Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE): A Preliminary Study of External
Degrees in California. Sacramento, CA: Author, 1973.
California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC): Report on Instructional Television in
California Postsecondary Education. Sacramento, CA: Author, 1975.
California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC): Degrees of Diversity; Off-campus
Education. in California. Sacramento, CA: Author, 1980.
Carnegie Commission for Higher Education: Less Time, More Options -Education Beyond High
School. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.
Carnegie Commission for Higher Education: Toward a Learning Society -Alternative Channels
to Life, Work, and Service. New Yark: McGraw-Hill, 1973.
Commission on Non-traditional Study (Samuel Gould, Chair): Diversity by Design. San
Francisco: Jassey-Bass, 1973.
Gerth, Donald R. & Grenier, Judson A.: A History of the California State University and
Colleges. Long Beach, CA: CSUC, 1981.
Gilbert, Benjamin F. & Burdick, Charles: Washington Square, 1857-1979; The History of San
Jose State University. San Jose State University, no date.
Gilford, Dorothy M.: ··Statistical Snapshots of Adult Continuing Education." Journal of Higher
Education, XLVI, No.4 Guly/August 1975), pp. 409-426.
Houle, Cyril: The External Degree. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973.
Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education: Report (Assemblyman John
Vasconcellos, Chair). Sacramento, CA: California Legislature, 1973.
Report on Higher Education (Frank Newman, Chairman of the Task Force on Higher
Education). Washington, D.C.: United States Office of Education, Department of Health,
Education and Welfare, 1971.
University of California President's Task Force on the Extended University: University of
California Degree Programs for the Part-time Student -A Proposal. Berkeley, CA: University of
California, 1971.
Archival Material
Reports (CSU,_Office the Chancellor):
Academic Master Planning in the California State University and Colleges, 1972-73
through 1976-77, May, 1972.
Commission on External Degree Programs: Report to the Chancellor, June, 1976.
The Consortium: Report of Institutional Self Study, Prepared for the Western Association
of Schools and Colleges, January, 1976.
Dumke, Glenn: "Some Proposals for Change in the California State Colleges" (Paper
presented to the CSC Board of Trustees' Committee on Educational Policy, Los Angeles,
January 26, 1971).
Graham, Thomas: Evaluation Report, External Degree Programs of The Consortium of the
California State University and Colleges, January, 1977.
Instructional Television in the California State University and Colleges, no date. McCabe,
George: Should the State of California Finance Off-campus Instruction by
the California State University and Colleges? A Study of the Issues, 1979. Program for
Innovation: The First Two Years, November, 1973. SaIner, Marcia: Continuing Education
in the California State University and Colleges,
September, 1976. Siroky, Frank: The Need for External Degree Programs in California -A
Final Report, 1977.
Statistical Abstracts, 1985. Task Force on Continuing Education: Report, July, 1977. Task
Force on Off-campus Instruction: Report. September, 1975. CSUC, Division of
Continuing Education, Office of the Chancellor: "Continuing Educa
tion Fiscal Status Report, 1976." Correspondence Files, Academic Years 1971-72· through
1977-78. Hicks, Wyman: Estimates of Future Costs of External Degree Programs (Report
to the
Commission on External Degree Programs), no date (c. 1975). Los Angeles Basin
Educational Liaison (LABEL): Plan of Operation (Prepared by
William Bright), December, 1975. Status Report on the CSUC Educational Programs
in Ventura County, no date. Gerth, Donald R.: Personal Archives (CSU Sacramento).
Minutes of the Academic Senate of the CSUC, 1972-1977. Minutes of the CSUC
Board of Trustees, 1972-1977.
CHAPTER 5
Published Sources
California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC): Report on Instructional Television in
California Postsecondary Education. Sacramento, CA: Author, 1975.
California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC): Degrees of Diversity -Ojj-campus
Education in California. Sacramento, CA: Author, March, 1980.
Gerth, Donald R. & Grenier, Judson A.: A History of the California State University and
Colleges. Long Beach, CA: California State University and Colleges, 1981.
Archival Material
CSUC Reports (CSU, Office of the Chancellor): External Degree Programs, Report to the
Chancellor (Final Report of the Commission on External Degrees, Leo Cain, Chair), June, 1976.
Graham, Thomas: Evaluation Report, External Degree Programs. The Consortium of the
CSUC, 1976-77.
McCabe, George: Should the State of California Finance Off-campus Instruction by the
California State University and Colleges? A Study of the Issues, 1979.
Report of the Proiect Team on Academic Programs (Alex Sherriffs, Chair), May, 1979.
Task Force on Continuing Education (Stephen Horn, Chair): Report, July, 1977. Social
Systems Research Center, CSU Dominguez Hills: External Evaluation of Consortium
Programs, 1979-80.
CSUC, Division of Continuing Education, Office of the Chancellor: Correspondence Files, Academic Years 1977-78
through 1982-83. Minutes of the Commission on Extended Education, 1977-1982. "Reimbursement Guidelines and
Formulas Governing Extension Program Operation;' no date (c. 1974-75). The Consortium, Correspondence Files and
Reports, 1977-82. Gerth, Donald R.: Personal Archives (CSU Sacramento). Minutes of the Academic Senate of the
CSUC, 1977-1982. Minutes of the CSUC Board of Trustees, 1977-1982. ----.CHAPTER
Published Sources
California Postsecondary Education CommisSion (CPEC): Director's Report, May, 1986.
Commission for the Review of the Master Plan for California Higher Education: Issue Paper
Number 14, "Continuing Education in California's Four Year Colleges and Universities"
(Prepared by Marcia SaIner), February, 1987, draft.
Commission for the Review of the Master Plan for California Higher Education: Issue Paper
Number 15, "The New Information Technologies in California Postsecondary Educational
Institutions" (Prepared by Julia Fahrenbruch), February, 1987, draft.
Oakland (CA) Tribune: "Contra Costa threatens suit to bring state university campus to Concord"
by Frank Wootten, Thursday, July 16, 1987, page A-lO.
148
Archival Material
CSU Reports (CSU, Office of the Chancellor):
CSU Off-campus Instruction, Final Report, January 31, 1984.
CSU Continuing Education Statistical Digest, 1984-85.
CSU, Division of Extended Education, Office of the Chancellor:
Correspondence Files and Reports, Academic Years 1982-83 through 1985-86.
The Consortium, Office of the Chancellor:
Correspondence Files and Reports, 1982-1986.
CSU Commission on Extended Education (CSU Fresno):
Correspondence Files and Reports, 1982-1986.
Minutes of the Academic Senate of the CSU, 1982-1986.
CSU Continuing/Extended Education Deans:
Responses to requests for information about ongoing activities from:
Roy Dull, Dean, CSC Bakersfield James Fikes, former Dean, CSU Fresno
Donna George, Dean, CSU Long Beach Ralph Meuter, Dean, CSU Chico
Dawn Marie Patterson, Dean, CSU Los Angeles Lee Porter, Dean, CSU San
Bernardino Anne Townsend, Assistant to the Dean, San Diego State
University Jo Volkert, Associate Dean, San Francisco State University
D. Wayne Williams, Dean, Cal Polytechnic University, Pomona
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS WITH:
Robert Arellanes, CSU Sacramento
Hal Best, CSU Fresno Ralph Bohn,
San ose State Universi
ar es Burdick, San Jose State University Leo Cain, San
Francisco State University Joseph Corbin, CSU
Stanislaus, retired Peter Dewees, San Francisco State
University Ray Doyle, San Francisco State University,
retired Roy Dull, CSC Bakersfield Glenn Dumke,
Chancellor, retired Gerhard Ehmann, CSU Fullerton,
retired Roy Endres, CSU Sacramento Richard
Farnsworth, CSC Stanislaus, retired Donald Fletcher,
Office of the Chancellor Donald Gerth, CSU
Sacramento Clayton Gjerde, San Diego State
University, retired Harold Haak, CSU Fresno
Leo Kibbey, San Jose State University, retired Richard
Lundstedt, Office of the Chancellor. George McCabe,
Sonoma State University Joan Holly McGrath, CSU
Dominguez Hills, retired Thomas McGrath, Sonoma
State University, retired Ralph Menter, CSU Chico
Ralph Mills, Office of the Chancellor Carroll Mjelde,
Sonoma State University William Murison, Humboldt
State University Ambrose Nichols, Sonoma State
University, retired Roderick Peck, CSU Long Beach,
retired David Quatro, CSU Fresno Keith Sexton,
University of California Extension Harold Seyfurth, San
Jose State University, retired Edward Spencer, CSU
Fresno, retired David Walls, Sonoma State University