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  • The Uses of the University: After Fifty Years:Introduction
  • Michael A. Bernstein (bio)

It is now almost a half century since Clark Kerr (1911-2003) delivered the 1963 Edwin L. Godkin Lectures at Harvard University, presenting what was ultimately recognized as one of the most significant and influential ruminations on the nature of higher education in the United States.1 This sustained reflection on the modern evolution of the research university, ultimately published by Harvard University Press as The Uses of the University (1963), framed discussion and debate regarding the role of what Kerr called "the multiversity" for decades to come. In this endeavor, there was no one at the time better suited to the task. An economist who had served for several years on the faculty at the University of Washington, Seattle, Kerr joined the University of California, Berkeley, in 1945. Appointed Berkeley's first chancellor in 1952, he was the mastermind behind the enormous expansion (in both capacity and excellence) that marked the campus's immediate postwar history. By 1958, as the then legendary Robert Gordon Sproul concluded his 28-year duty as University of California (UC) president, Kerr seemed the obvious and best choice as successor. [End Page 473]

Much like his tenure as Berkeley chancellor, Kerr's UC presidency mapped a powerfully transformative era in the history of the largest and most celebrated public university system in the country. Kerr oversaw the transition of three campuses to "general campus" status (at Davis, Riverside, and Santa Barbara), the creation of three new campuses (at Irvine, San Diego, and Santa Cruz), and the establishment of three additional medical schools (at Davis, Irvine, and San Diego) to complement the existing two (at Los Angeles and San Francisco). In the case of the medical campus at San Francisco, he turned that site from a local entity into an internationally renowned center of medical education, practice, and research. It was Kerr's vision to decentralize UC, seeing to the assumption by the campuses of a growing array of day-to-day operational responsibilities. But it was the development of the California Master Plan for Higher Education (in 1960) that was his greatest strategic accomplishment. The Master Plan, unique among the 50 states in its thoroughness and foresight, established a strategy for the systematic growth of California's public education networks (K-12 school districts, community college districts, the California State University network, and the UC system)—one that would, in exemplary fashion, serve the needs of a rapidly growing state population for decades. To this day, in both articulated mission and actual execution, the Master Plan stands as one of the truly remarkable and effective demonstrations of how public resources may best be mobilized in pursuit of singularly important and desirable public outcomes. No wonder, then, that its architect's musings on "the uses of the university" garnered much interest and excitement in 1963 and for decades thereafter. All this being the case, it is now entirely appropriate that a considered reassessment of Kerr's observations be made. That such a reconsideration takes place at a time of profound retrenchment and, in some cases, severe financial distress for American higher education only makes more apparent the appropriateness of the enterprise.

The five articles that follow in this special section of Social Science History seek to engage us in a consideration not only of the legacy of educational leadership afforded by Kerr but also of a wide array of questions regarding the future of the American research university. The issues they take up are of immense importance. Our nation's educational system is in crisis. Public university systems struggle with a set of fiscal constraints and financial difficulties that have been emerging for decades. Now made vivid by the economic collapse that began in the fall of 2008, the disjunction between the aspirations [End Page 474] of public universities and the resource base mobilized on their behalf has become so severe that it threatens both the quality and the sustainability of public education networks. Many venerable state systems struggle with the need to adjust their aspirations in light of severe resource constraints; others find themselves forced to abandon a commitment to subsidization...

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