The Rhetoric of Remediation: Negotiating Entitlement and Access to Higher Education

CHAPTER 7: “The Tides of the Semi-literate”

| 92 | C H A P T E R 7 “The Tides of the Semi-literate” The state college system was in a restless state and in high competition for expanding its base and upgrading its institutions to university status, and was posed to come into conflict with the University at every stage. Kerr 2001, xxiii. The first Tuesday of November 1957 was a great day for California Democrats. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown was elected governor, and for the first time in a hundred years, Democrats held the majority in both houses. Governor Brown was to prove himself an excellent friend of higher education , and a staunch supporter of Clark Kerr in times of trouble. Kerr had accepted the regents’ offer of the presidency of the University of California upon Sproul’s retirement in July, although he was not inaugurated until September of 1958. Governor-elect Brown was initially rather critical of the University of California, characterizing it as a “Republican institution ” and “the wave of the past” (Kerr 2001, 161). He saw the state colleges as the more democratic (and Democratic) institutions, and more worthy of his support.₁ In January of 1958, as soon as the new legislature was convened , the Senate began hearings on the state of education in California. The Senate Investigative Committee on Education cited the need for “a “The Tides of the Semi-literate”| 93 | reevaluation of the primary purposes, tools, and techniques of our public education program since the event of Sputnik.”² This legislative committee, not surprisingly, found that one of the greatest problems plaguing public education in California was “lack of legislative influence” (Douglass 2000, 257). The committee also faulted the administrations of each of the three segments of higher education for failure to coordinate their efforts. The university, the state colleges, and the junior colleges were expanding, adding programs, and setting admission standards without due regard for each other, or for the taxpayer, the Senate report complained. This duplication , or triplication, of missions could ill be tolerated in the time of Sputnik. President-elect Kerr had already turned his exceptional tactical gifts to the resolution of this problem. In November of 1957 he had submitted to the regents his Long-Range Development Program, designed to bring order to what he characterized as “chaos” (Kerr 2001, 156). He set out to find ways to induce the university, the state colleges, and the junior colleges “to move toward an orderly plan” (Douglass 2000, 257). Particularly disorderly was the “growing political aggressiveness” (Kerr 2001, 179) of the state colleges in their pursuit of the PhD and the right to conduct research. The state colleges and their strong champions in the legislature had, of course, been pressing for upward expansion for some time. Sputnik’s afterburn in Washington—zealous support for higher education , especially in its research functions—further inflamed the state colleges’ ambitions: “All that federal R&D money was out there for the asking, and they [the state colleges] wanted their share of it,” notes Kerr in his memoir (2001, 176). Kerr’s memoir fails to make explicit what surely was the corollary ambition: the University of California was not about to relinquish any of its share of that federal R&D money without a fight. Never so much a combatant as a conciliator, Kerr had already taken steps to acknowledge the state colleges as a critically important segment of higher education in California. Rather than fighting all legislation to expand existing state colleges or establish new ones, as Sproul had done, Kerr sought out concessions. This was particularly true in his negotiations with Glen Dumke, president of San Jose State College, and Malcolm Love, president of San Diego State College. Throughout 1958, these two men lobbied Sacramento hard for legislation that would enable them to offer graduate degrees in engineering and in education. Their choice to push for these two areas of graduate study was inspired strategy in that time of Sputnik. To vote against legislation that would help the U.S. catch up to the Russians in technology and education was tantamount to “jeopardiz [ing] CA’s contribution to national defense” (Douglass 2000, 251). Kerr, shrewdly recognizing the power of this call to arms, pledged to support a graduate-level engineering program at San Jose State College. He also agreed to support a small research role—particularly research in education —for state college faculty (Douglass 2000, 257). In exchange...