Provost King welcomed Don Crawford, Executive Vice Chancellor at the Santa
Barbara campus to membership on the Academic Planning Council (APC).
1. Systemwide Issues Regarding the Future of Graduate and Professional Education
The APC had a lively discussion about recent national studies of issues in graduate and professional education
and considered what its own role should be within UC on these issues. Because the problems may be quite different
from discipline to discipline, and because there is ample evidence that the disciplines are grasping the situation
and beginning to address it, the APC concluded that it should not address the shape and nature of graduate education,
which should properly be a campus and disciplinary concern, but should instead focus systemwide attention and advice
on (1) ensuring that there is a solid rationale for any emerging graduate enrollment plan, and (2) sustaining the
existing systemwide processes that promote programmatic excellence, particularly through continued careful review
of proposals for new degree programs. The APC members emphasized the importance in these reviews of attending to
the existence of good job markets, sound curricula, quality faculty, and reasonable times to degree.
2. Health Sciences Enrollment Planning
Vice President Hopper recounted for the APC the history of health sciences enrollment planning in the University,
described the detailed interest government officials in Sacramento have taken in health sciences enrollment issues,
and pointed out how the dramatically changing health care environment has generated increasing questions about
what is needed and concerns about how those questions will be addressed within UC. He noted in this regard the
recent establishment of the President's Commission on Medical Education and the Academic Council's interest in
creating a Health Sciences Committee.
Vice President Hopper will proceed with reconstitution of the Health Sciences Committee (HSC), which is a subcommittee
of the APC, and will keep the HSC and the APC apprised of the progress of the Commission on the Future of Medical
Education.
3. The California Virtual University
The Governor announced recently that California would not be joining the Western Governor's proposed virtual university,
but that he would be working with California's institutions of higher education to create a California Virtual
University (CVU) instead. Rather than develop a degree-granting institution, which is the Western Governors' intent,
California's version would be a catalog of courses available through existing colleges and universities and a mechanism
for marketing them here and around the world. The members of the APC felt strongly that it is important for UC
to take a leadership role in the development of the CVU and to consider carefully how it will interface with the
University as we know it. Provost King agreed and will seek mechanisms for the involvement of appropriate UC persons
in the process.
4. Systemwide Planning Issues on the Agendas of Selected Administrative Groups and Senate Committees
Issues of note under discussion by other committees this month included the Academic Council's interest in accountability,
governance, and faculty salary scale and fund source issues, UCPB's inclusion in its priorities for the year of
the new budget initiative's implementation and health sciences issues, and the Student Affairs Vice Chancellors'
efforts to anticipate the effects of the possible passage of the California Civil Rights Initiative.
The next APC meeting will be held on November 11 in Oakland.