Along with the Fair Employment Practices Act, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, the Rumford Fair Housing Act, and the State Water Project, the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education stands among the greatest achievements of Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown and the liberal Democrats who bridged the New Deal and Great Society eras of social reform in the Golden State.

Rightly regarded as a major landmark in the history of American public schooling, the Master Plan, with its promise of tuition-free college attendance for all Californians, formalized the state’s pioneering and extensive system of mass higher education. As of 1960, that system enrolled over 491,000 students and consisted of three rapidly expanding parts: the seven-campus University of California; the seventeen four-year California state colleges (now universities); and the sprawling network of sixty-four local two-year community colleges. Together, California’s colleges and universities placed higher education within the easy reach of...

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