At a legislative hearing today, the heads of California’s three college systems and other speakers agreed on a fundamental point: The state’s 50 year-old master plan for higher education remains fundamentally sound and largely intact but is under unprecedented strain.

It takes decades to create a great university system, but this achievement can be destroyed relatively quickly, as a result of competitiveness and lack of financial support, warned University of California President Mark Yudof.

Yudof cited the first signs of a “brain drain,” with other universities luring away professors facing furloughs, hiring freezes and larger classes. There is understandable angst and anger on campus among students who see higher fees and fewer course offerings.

Yudof spoke at the first of five hearings of The Joint Committee for Review of the Master Plan on Higher Education, led by Assemblymember Ira Ruskin, a Redwood City Democrat. Created in 1960, the Master Plan guaranteed an opportunity for an affordable higher education for all Californians. It ensured admission of the top eighth of high school graduates to the University of California; the first third to a California State University campus, and  admission to community colleges to all high school graduates.

Now, that opportunity is slipping away for some students, Community College Chancellor Jack Scott said. The system – the largest in the world – “has never been more popular,” with enrollment up 3 percent over a year ago. But not only is the state not funding these additional students, it cut the system’s budget 8 percent. With limited options, colleges laid off faculty and dropped courses.

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said that funding is back to the 1998 level, when there were 100,000 fewer students in the system, complicating the goal of increasing the number of annual college graduates from 98,000 to 120,000.

Budget cuts dominated the hearing, but the committee is charged with taking stock of whether the Master Plan can meet 21^st century needs.

In 1960, then UC President Clark Kerr led the effort to establish the Master Plan at a time that the state and community college districts were building topsy-turvy in anticipation of a baby boom and in response to a surge in population. The Master Plan’s three-tiered system created order and purpose and produced college grads in abundance.

Now, with 40 percent of jobs expected to require a college degree, the state faces a sharp shortage of college graduates – one million by 2025, unless the state takes measures to boost the graduation rate, according to projections of the Public Policy Institute of California.

All three college systems presidents said they are working closer together and said one goal is to make transferring easier. Yudof said a UC commission on the future will consider expanding online education, as one way to reduce costs.

Brian Murphy was the chief consultant to Legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of the Master Plan in the mid-1980s. Today he is president of DeAnza College in Cupertino. Clark Kerr was a labor economist, he testified. From the beginning, he understood the linkage between the success of the master plan and a vibrant state economy. Those who see “short-term tax advantages” over the need for long-term investment in higher education “don’t understand how capitalism works,” he said.

Additional panelists were scheduled for this afternoon.