In the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, California in the United States famously combined the principles of excellence and access within a steep three-tiered system of Higher Education. It fashioned the world's strongest system of public research universities, while creating an open access system that brought college to millions of American families for the first time. Since 1960, the Master Plan has been admired and influential across the world. Yet the political and fiscal conditions supporting the Master Plan have now evaporated. California turns away hundreds of thousands of prospective students each year, and the University of California, facing spiralling deficits, finds it more difficult to maintain operating costs and compete with top private universities for leading researchers. The paper discusses the rise and partial fall of the Californian system as embodied in the Master Plan, and identifies general lessons for Higher Education systems.

中文翻译：

---

天空是灰色的：加州高等教育总体规划的矛盾结果

在 1960 年的高等教育总体规划中，美国加利福尼亚州在一个陡峭的三层高等教育系统中结合了卓越和准入的原则。它塑造了世界上最强大的公立研究型大学系统，同时创建了一个开放访问系统，首次将大学带给了数百万美国家庭。自 1960 年以来，总体规划在世界范围内受到推崇和影响。然而，支持总体规划的政治和财政条件现已消失。加州每年拒绝数十万潜在学生，而面临不断攀升的赤字，加州大学发现维持运营成本和与顶尖私立大学竞争领先研究人员的难度更大。