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The Regents of the University of California
 

Clark Kerr was the right man for his time

BY WERNER Z. HIRSCH

Clark Kerr began his education in a little schoolhouse on the outskirts of Reading, Penn., and was not satisfied until he had reached the presidency of the most prestigious research university in the country. In the process, he created an altogether new higher education system.

He and I became colleagues in 1949 in the Berkeley economics department — he was a senior member while I was a newly hired Ph.D. The department had a tradition of passing a bassinet from one family to the next as new babies arrived. Our newborn son received it from Clark.

In 1951, the regents established campus chancellorships, in part, to rein in an all-powerful, authoritarian president. Kerr was the first Berkeley chancellor. He soon discovered that neither he nor his colleagues had been given specific responsibilities, roles or rights. The president had arranged for him to move into a small office (which had been previously used by teaching assistants) lacking a reception room and, until 1956, a receptionist. Correspondence, time permitting, was handled by a stenographic pool.

Clearly, President Sproul was less than enthusiastic about having a chancellor. There was no academic plan to guide him, for example, in dealing with the “tidal wave” of students just around the corner. Kerr, in his autobiography, reports that one of the most venerable and powerful regents, when asked about his preferred student body size, replied that since 75,000 people could fit into the stands at Memorial Stadium, this number would be the proper enrollment ceiling, allowing all students to attend football games.

While Berkeley’s academic standing was high, there were indications that a midstream correction was needed to attract and retain quality faculty and students. A more consultative leadership with shared governance appeared to be in order. Moreover, Kerr became convinced that California’s higher education system needed to adjust itself to new conditions if it were to meet the expected challenges, accommodate the tidal wave and make universal student access possible.

Kerr and such colleagues as Dean McHenry of UCLA, encouraged by Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, started work on the Master Plan for Higher Education in California. Its hallmark was equal educational opportunity and universal access for Californians to higher education. Completed in 1960, it made California the first state to guarantee in-state qualified high school students access to quality education within a three-tiered system; e.g., community colleges, state universities and UC.

So what led to the dismissal of President Kerr, who had proven himself an able and patient arbitrator inside and outside the university? When Gov. Brown was defeated by Ronald Reagan, Kerr lost a great supporter on the Board of Regents. Brown had been a great admirer of Kerr. Kerr had helped educate him to better understand the university and assure its greatness, and for that, Brown was grateful, he often told me.

One manifestation of their mutual confidence in each other was that the university experienced what was probably the greatest financial stability during this period. Politics, more than any other factor, forced Kerr from holding a formal leadership position in higher education. Consequently, just as Roy Jenkins is often referred to as the best prime minister Britain never had, so unfortunately Clark Kerr may have been the best education secretary the United States and California never had.

Hirsch is professor emeritus of economics.