Task Force IV was charged with articulating the principles guiding the development of graduate and continuing education in the California State University, with a particular focus on the policies and practices most relevant for preparing our students for full participation in California's emerging new economy.

The California State University plays a critical role in this economy, for it is the particular genius of our graduate and continuing education programs that they combine those elements most in demand during the current period: the highest quality intellectual work, a practical and applied approach which engages students directly in the real world of work, and a responsiveness to emerging topical areas of social and economic importance. Our programs share many elements of traditional academic graduate programs, but their fundamental identity lies in their orientation in the world of practice.

Our focus in the following pages is less on traditional graduate programs and the classic disciplines--where the CSU enjoys a strong tradition of excellence -- and more on those programs which could be called "applied and professional." These are engaged programs of demanding intellectual quality--in biosciences, multimedia, teacher preparation, nursing and the allied health fields, business, social work and the other "helping" professions, and a myriad other fields. Often these programs appear strongest in fields bearing traditional labels, as in the programs in literacy and bi-lingual education which have emerged in departments of English Literature or Linguistics.

It is clear that post-baccalaureate instruction must be a full partner with undergraduate education in the CSU if the CSU is to meet the changing needs of California. Increasingly, our undergraduate students look beyond the B.A. and B.S. degree for entry into the rapidly changing and increasingly complex economy. Throughout the state the demand for graduate and continuing education in applied and professional fields is exploding, as working men and women take time to learn new skills, retrain, or reach beyond what they know. In the CSU alone, annual enrollment in continuing and extended learning has passed 300,000 and shows every sign of maintaining its growth trajectory.

What principles ought to govern the growing graduate and continuing education portion of the CSU's Mission? How can our programs be more responsive and agile in meeting the growing needs of California? How do we provide appropriate support services and learning opportunities for these new students? How do we identify, initiate, and fund these programs? What new partnerships will we seek in developing programs that respond quickly to the changing demand?

To answer these questions, the Task Force sought advice and help from many quarters. We spoke with community and business leaders about their views on what the CSU ought most care about in these areas. We consulted broadly among our colleagues in graduate and continuing education programs; we received formal recommendations as part of a report prepared by the Council of CSU Graduate Deans. We surveyed the literature on the employment trends marking the new economy in California, and conducted a systematic focus group with leaders of California businesses. Additionally, we reviewed relevant prior reports, particularly the CSU Statewide Academic Senate report on graduate education (Dinielli report) and annual reports of the CSU Extended University.

Time after time we heard the same things: there is an ever-growing demand for education beyond the Bachelor's Degree which has not been met with optimal response by the CSU. There is especially a demand for new, applied, and professional programs that prepare people for emerging industries and the rapidly changing work environment. The CSU needs to be more flexible and accessible in how it provides this education. We must make it easier for working men and women to pursue lifelong post-baccalaureate learning.

Looking at public higher education alone we lag even further behind national trends. (See Figure 2.) Total graduate enrollment in the public sector is about half of what it is nationwide. Given that nationwide more than eighty percent of master's degree education is in applied fields, -- precisely those fields most in demand in the current California economy -- this situation jeopardizes the long-term vitality of the California economy, and the economic prosperity of our citizens.

Over the past six years, the drop in public graduate enrollment in California has been mirrored by a dramatic increase in enrollment in private and proprietary institutions. (See Figure 3.) Together the lower overall percentages of available public graduate education and the increasing percentages of enrollment in private and proprietary institutions provide some explanation for why California's overall participation is below national norms. When the distribution of graduate education is skewed towards more expensive private institutions, post-baccalaureate instruction is simply less affordable to the overall population. Decreasing participation percentages in public graduate education translate into decreasing overall participation within the state.

There are two obvious problems embedded within this comparative picture: first, total aggregate enrollment in graduate programs is not adequate for the long-term growth of California's most aggressive industrial sectors; second-and equally critical from a public policy perspective-the access to professional and graduate programs is not sufficiently available to people of diverse backgrounds and limited means. Currently a third of the CSU's master's degree candidates are members of minority groups and more than 80% are part-time. Only the public sector can offer the availability of high quality, lower-cost programs providing entry into the new growth fields for the majority of mid and lower-income Californians.

Nationwide, between 1969 and 1989 there was a 48% increase in awarded master's degrees. By the 1990's nearly one fourth of all academic degrees were master's degrees. While the nation was producing more master's degrees, the CSU rate remained stable and hovers at slightly less than twenty percent.

Reduced access to graduate education is particularly critical to California now because national changes in master's degree education have been in directions that fit California's current needs. The 1970s and 1980s were not only a period of increased master's degree production in American higher education; they were also a time of master's degree transformation. Delivery, content, and educational focus were altered and by 1989, 83% of master's degrees were categorized as professional, leaving increasing smaller percentages to the traditional liberal arts and sciences programs. Furthermore, an increasingly smaller percentage of master's degree students are en route to a doctorate. Instead they seek the more interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary experiences that bridge the gap between academe and the non-university workplace. Increasingly, today's master's degrees focus on integrating and applying knowledge to real-world problems

The argument for enhanced participation in graduate education is an argument for the applied education vitally needed in today's and tomorrow's workplace. To fail to meet this obligation at the turn of this century would be akin to failing to meet the needs of baccalaureate instruction at the middle of this century. Whereas a baccalaureate degree was more than sufficient for the learning needs of most of the population during the early years of the California State University System, today, graduate degrees are more commonly required, even as an entry level credential. Increasingly, California citizens are finding that education which ends with a baccalaureate degree is not adequate for the needs of a rapidly changing work place or for their enhanced individual learning needs.

Access to graduate education is not the only issue in post-baccalaureate education; access to continuing or "life-long" learning is also important in this economy. In every contact of this Task Force with business leaders, labor and community representatives, or public officials, the need for continuing education arose as a major issue. Clearly, the CSU must offer a full range of responsive programs: skill-specific professional training, language and communication skill development, degree or certificate programs, on-line and on-site tailored programs for firms or public agencies, life-skills development, and a myriad of specific programs addressing rapidly changing technologies.

The CSU enrollments in continuing and extended learning programs already reflect this growing demand. With annual enrollment now exceeding 300,000, virtually every campus reports a demand for more programs. In some areas-multi-media, computer programming, executive business training-some campuses can fill virtually every scheduled class. CSU continuing education programs now reach over 320 communities in California, in all 58 counties; they employ over 5,200 faculty, offering over 200 professional certificate programs alone.

Continuing education is a major institutional asset of the California State University and is currently a massive operation; however, given the emerging context, it is an underutilized resource. Additionally, its historical entrepreneurial operating structure provides lessons for the programming and organization of other elements of the post-baccalaureate area.

The themes which characterize continuing education are the same themes which dominated our conversations with civic and business leaders about how best to meet the growing need for graduate, professional, or life long learning. The communities that CSU serves want education available on demand, at times which make sense to working people, on calendars determined by the concrete educational needs of students rather than the artifice of an academic calendar reflecting the agrarian 19th century. They want programs with a wide variety of entry points, providing a variety of "exit" certifications. They want programs that are interdisciplinary, topical in focus, and professionally linked to the actual problem-solving world in which men and women work.

These are program elements long associated with continuing education. Our challenge is to make them integral to all post-baccalaureate programs, with an appropriate mix of pricing and fee options to both support the programs and keep the widest range more affordable for our fellow citizens.

The increasing complexity of California work force tasks and the need for increased intellectual competencies in workers creates a context where post-baccalaureate learning and economic prosperity are inextricably connected. Post-baccalaureate instruction provides access to the life long learning needed for a well-educated work force. It provides vitality for the economy and enhances overall human growth and development. Through graduate degrees, professional certificate and credential programs, and continuing education units, post-baccalaureate education can respond to California's increasing economic and social needs.

The California Master Plan has always recognized the CSU responsibility for delivery of high quality post-baccalaureate education. From its inception, the CSU has been mandated to offer post-baccalaureate educational opportunities responsive to California's public, social and economic needs. If the CSU is to meet the increased post-baccalaureate demands of a changing citizenry and workforce, and, if it is to play its proper role in assuring that the citizens of California have the same level of access to graduate and continuing education as enjoyed by citizens in other states, then it is essential that a way be found to fund an expanded role for applied and professional post-baccalaureate education within the context of constrained public resources. Our conversations with business and industry leaders have made it clear that they need a better educated work force and that they are willing to contribute to the cost of it. In turn, they rightly expect us to provide the learning experiences needed in real time and in ways that meet the needs of their work force. Working together through effective partnerships we can meet the post-baccalaureate needs of California.

Today's CSU post-baccalaureate students are older, more likely to be full time employed and more likely to be raising children. To take seriously the obligation to provide life long learning, we must provide services congruent with the needs of our post-baccalaureate students. While campuses have made incremental changes in student support services to accommodate a changing student body, most student services are aimed at baccalaureate student needs. A full commitment to life long learning mandates that appropriate student services be generated to meet the particular needs of the post-baccalaureate student. At the post-baccalaureate level, we must provide the academic advising and career placement support services important to student success. We must make it possible for students to invest in their own life-long intellectual development; if this means child care availability, health coverage options, or operational schedules conducive to the part-time student, full time worker, we must find ways to provide them or make them available.

Our commitment to meeting the rapidly changing and burgeoning demand for high quality post-baccalaureate instruction must be made with full recognition that there are only limited public tax dollars available for addressing this goal. The growth in post-baccalaureate students cannot compromise either the quality of or the access to baccalaureate programs. A commitment to meet post-baccalaureate needs must coexist in an interdependent fashion with the commitment to continue to meet the needs of a growing population of undergraduate students. The long term interests of California citizens and its work force demand we do both.

Finally, the CSU should commit to the life-long needs of our undergraduate students. To this end we support an open-door policy for our own alumni/ae, including the development of instructional vouchers, guaranteeing access to our own continuing education programs for alumni.

The economic trends, together with the aspirations of California citizens, demand that the CSU actively foster graduate and continuing education as an essential part of its mission. This investment will yield dividends for the economic vitality of California and the personal prosperity of its citizens. Towards these ends, we offer the following principles that guide our recommendations:

• Post-baccalaureate education is an essential and integral part of the mission of the CSU.
• The CSU must be committed to engaging new needs of the state; creating responsive programs that meet changing needs; hiring excellent faculty and staff and investing in their professional development; using flexible, convenient calendars that maximize educational availability for students; and creating on-going relationships with business, the public sector, and the diverse communities we serve.
• The CSU must provide appropriate support services, including career placement, congruent with the diverse needs of post-baccalaureate students. We must be especially responsive to the needs of the part time student, full-time worker.
• The CSU must ensure quality instruction in post-baccalaureate education providing adequate support services including laboratories, library holdings, physical space, and a technological infrastructure consistent with this instructional mission
• The CSU must commit to the life long learning needs of our alumni/ae.

Rationale: This Task Force reviewed the current practices governing program development and funding within the CSU. We concluded that the creation of a responsive, agile, and comprehensive post-baccalaureate "system" was made significantly more difficult by bureaucratic and regulatory requirements which keep programs artificially separate, and slow to innovate.

At the broadest institutional level, we see no rationale for keeping the planning for continuing education and other post-baccalaureate programs separate. We propose that future academic planning at each campus fully integrate the programs of continuing education into a comprehensive "mix" of fee-supported and state-supported programs. This would allow much greater flexibility in designing programs which combine low-cost/full access elements with higher cost/targeted market elements.

Additionally, students are often confused and sometimes frustrated by seemingly random separations in operations that often employ different rules and regulations, registration procedures and locations, and fee payment arrangements. Regardless of how we institutionally delineate internal operational functions, student contact should be impervious to this differentiation. A collaborative approach that involves all stakeholders in designing a more institutionally responsive, "student friendly" approach to post-baccalaureate education will better serve everyone.

We support a system which reports all credit-generating activity on each campus, seeks ways of using continuing education to "fill in" curricular gaps or meet special demands in certain courses, and streamlines the approval process for generating new pilot programs. Indeed, throughout the curricular design process, we see the need for greater degree integration that produces a time to degree efficiency: in teacher education, technical and professional Master's programs, and the legal fields.

At the regional and state level, we support the development of multi-campus teaching and research institutes and consortia, thus maximizing the reach of talented faculty on several campuses. The CSU has a unique capacity to serve regional needs - particularly in emerging industry clusters - by combining the programatic strengths of several campuses. The wider use of distance learning technologies, where pedagogically appropriate, will facilitate post-baccalaureate programs that provide both degree and certificate programs for under served communities.

The CSU should explore multi-campus faculty appointments, the use of "lead" campuses for specialized programs, and widen our range of international consortia. Many of these ideas have antecedents in the current system, but the CSU has not hitherto had a strong commitment to developing the full potential of programs which reach beyond specific campuses. This has to change if we are to respond effectively and efficiently to the increased demand for new post-baccalaureate programs. We must capture the synergies available to us as a system.

Recommendations:

1A. Coordinate graduate and continuing education functions to develop a

seamless system of post-baccalaureate education

• Reflect all credit generating activity on FTE reports
• Employ a mix of state support and self support to provide post-baccalaureate instruction that meets state needs
• Integrate appropriate state support and continuing education operations to better serve students
• Streamline program approval processes for continuing education and certificate programs
• Encourage an aggressive and innovative continuing education agenda that utilizes campus strengths and builds partnerships
• Develop appropriate accountability systems to assess program effectiveness.

1B. Enhance collaborative efforts across institutions

• Develop responsive programs that involve two or more campuses
• Facilitate and expand joint degree programs with other institutions
• Identify lead programs which utilize system-wide faculty
• Create core courses that bring together faculty expertise from multiple campuses, using distance learning where pedagogically appropriate
• Facilitate flexible faculty assignments to better meet the needs of post-baccalaureate students
• Expand student exchange relationships between CSU campuses
• Use technological advances system-wide to provide improved student services in admissions, registration, financial aid, and advising.
• Expand multi-campus research programs, outreach programs, service projects, centers and institutes to meet the changing needs of California

1C. Provide more efficient sequencing of degree options to reduce time-to-

degree

• Create tracks combining teacher credential, baccalaureate, and masters degree
• Form partnerships with international institutions to grant dual degrees
• Create integrated BA/MA BS/MS degrees where appropriate
• Form partnerships with other entities, e.g., law schools to create integrated masters/law degree

Rationale: Our Task Force faced the reality of the university's fiscal condition as more fully delineated by Task Force #2. Our first and guiding principle was that graduate and continuing education constitute fundamental elements of the mission of the California State University, and that the people of California will continue to demand more from us in both areas. At the same time we recognize that historically the university's central function has been perceived to be undergraduate education, and that-in the main-it has been the undergraduate programs that have financed the graduate.

How, then, to finance the growth and expansion of the graduate function during a time of limited state resources? One direction we propose is the greater integration of self-supported continuing education programs into the overall mix of post-baccalaureate offerings. An assessment of program cost, student demand, importance to the state, relevance to the mission, and opportunity to find supplemental support are some factors to consider in pricing determinations. With a responsible and flexible pricing structure, program development can be responsive to opportunity rather than simply to the availability of state dollars.

An additional benefit to greater integration of self support and state support programs is that the very existence of choice creates enhanced overall opportunity. When some students choose more expensive programs because they are more convenient or better suited to their needs, their self-selection creates space in more traditional settings for other students. To understand this phenomena, consider the flexibility that current summer or winter session programs offer not only to the participants but to departments in meet increased student demands.

A second proposal is to self-finance the graduate elements of the university to a greater degree than we do now. This Task Force believes it will be necessary for the CSU to finally establish fee differentials between the graduate and undergraduate programs, consistent with current Trustee policy.

The rationale for fee differentials is fairly simple and has been elaborated in the report of Task Force #2. Suffice it to say here that we believe fee differentials are justified on three bases: first, the cost of delivering graduate education is often significantly higher than undergraduate; second, the long-term financial benefits to students who complete graduate work are significant, and it is appropriate that students share some reasonable portion of the cost of financing their own futures; third, in many fields, CSU programs are hugely under-priced, and consequently often under-funded and unavailable, when compared to competing institutions.

Our support for graduate fee differentials has three companion recommendations. First, part of the function of any graduate fee increase must be to improve the quality of graduate programs. Second, part of the program costs that are offset by increased fees are those student services that will make real our proposals for more flexible scheduling and innovative programs. We have watched with concern the thousands of Californians who have left public graduate institutions to pay hugely more to private and proprietary institutions. Many of these Californians do so because they can get courses when they want them, with more customized student support services. We must be equally responsive.

Third, any fee differential must be accompanied by an increase in financial aid for those unable to pay. A significant expansion of graduate aid is central to maintaining the very mission of the CSU. A basic element of our identity is our accessibility to men and women of limited financial means. Affordability cannot be limited solely to the undergraduate realm, especially if we are right that more and more Californians will see post-baccalaureate education as required for their own future. Therefore, we support an extension of current trustee policy regarding institutional financial aid: 1/3 of all moneys generated through graduate fee differential shall be committed to graduate financial aid.

Finally , we propose that financial aid programs be designed to include the fee-supported continuing and extended education programs. Through a tax on continuing education fees or through other mechanisms, we need to make these programs more available than they are now.

Recommendations:

2A. Price/value graduate education appropriately

• Develop a judicious, responsible, flexible pricing program to include state support programs
• Institute differential graduate fees to reflect added cost as well as added benefit to the student, with the understanding that graduate programs will benefit
• Establish graduate level course fees based on a per unit charge

2B. Make graduate education more affordable to all Californians

• Provide financial aid for graduate and continuing education
• Price self support programs to provide aid
• Create CSU sponsored loan programs
• Expand graduate assistantships for appropriate instructional and administrative positions
• Expand paying internships with employers, community organizations, and social services
• Seek additional private support for scholarships and endowed fellowships

Every university lives a necessary tension between enduring intellectual traditions and the demand for innovation and change. Part of academic life is the careful consideration of the new, reasoned review, and due deliberation. At the same time, this Task Force has been impressed with the number of times faculty and students complain about the glacial pace of innovation.

The academic bureaucracy associated with new course and program development is too slow and cumbersome, and too centralized. Faculty should be supported when they respond to the demand for new programs. We propose the development of fast-track approval processes and the widening of "pre-approval" pilot programs. Additionally we seek assistance from both WASC and CPEC in their oversight roles to work with us to create processes that facilitate rapid innovation. We are specifically proposing that the CSU designate three or more campuses to experiment in the design and organization of new graduate and continuing education programs, and that they be released from most of the internal system bureaucracy to pursue innovation.

At the same time that we propose an aggressive approach to developing new programs, especially in those areas of the society and economy expected to show sharp job growth, we know that new programs come at a cost. As in baccalaureate education, in the graduate arena, not all new programs can be funded with additional resources; when they are, it often means funds must be redirected from elsewhere. We believe new program development will require cutting or shrinking other programs--either on the basis of shrinking enrollment or on the basis that the programs do not meet the anticipated needs of our students and the State of California.

While we seek greater flexibility in course and program design, we also seek a more flexible infrastructure-both to support academic programs and to make our offerings more accessible to students. A repeated critique of the academic enterprise is that we obey only our own calendars, while the entire working world operates on other rhythms. A move to year-round calendars would help, coupled to a much wider variety of short-course options, night and weekend courses, off-site programs, and distance learning opportunities.

We support the full utilization of the physical plant-and all the attendant changes in staffing patterns, support and maintenance-and the proliferation of new course and program patterns which make education more accessible to working adults. While several of our campuses currently operate year-round, none operate twenty four hours a day or seven days a week. Besides pragmatic limits due to student scheduling choices, the other limits of further expansion for all campuses lie in the operating costs (for faculty and support staff, as well as the infrastructure) associated with wider utilization. The limits imposed on the CSU for further capital expansion mean that we will have to use our existing infrastructure far more efficiently if we are to meet the increasing enrollment pressures.

While the CSU faculty are talented, committed and hard working, none of the institutional flexibility can happen without significant investment in the support services required for both faculty and students to succeed. At the most basic level this means a continued investment in the traditional educational infrastructure-libraries, research facilities, training laboratories, instrumental complexes, student counseling and support programs. It also means a major investment in contemporary technology-both for faculty and for students. It means a system commitment to building the technical infrastructure, where the economies of scale of a large, multi-campus university system can reduce the cost of education services.

At the same time, an investment in infrastructure has a new meaning when the demand is often for "just-in-time" programs, occupationally-specific or community-located. Often, the intellectual resources will be those created right now by the faculty (and, often, by the students). These newer kinds of resources require up-front investment in program development, often greater technical support staff, and often support for building partnerships off-campus. As in any human endeavor, creativity and innovation are more likely in an environment of support and incentives. We believe that the CSU must create a wider range of incentives for faculty to engage in innovative post-baccalaureate program design, or to work off-campus or in partnership with agencies, businesses, and community organizations. New professional degree or certificate programs require startup funds, and a willingness to take chances that not all new programs will succeed.

A more flexible schedule, greater access to career services and post-baccalaureate student support services, and more customized courses and programs are services especially critical to the university's success in meeting the expanding need for lifelong learning. Many of our most creative, new curricular ventures will emerge from interdisciplinary, applied, professionally linked areas where working men and women need continual learning.

Recommendations:

3A. Facilitate curricular innovation

• Implement more nimble course and program approval process
• "Fast-track" processes
• Cut review time in the system office
• Invite WASC and CPEC to joins us in creating processes that facilitate innovation.
• Establish quality parameters for program continuation
• Develop incentives for program innovation and mechanisms to pilot new programs
• Use criteria to determine the success of pilot programs
• Develop improved communications so that successful innovations are shared system-wide
• Encourage interdisciplinary program development with structures that facilitate it

3B. Promote full utilization of existing physical plant

• Facilitate integration of year round operations utilizing full plant capacity
• Employ flexible scheduling
• Use innovative and multiple academic calendars
• Offer more late night and weekend classes as needed (use a 24-hour day and a 7-day week).
• Use distance delivery and on-site instruction when appropriate
• Utilize learning environments that utilize off campus resources, practitioner skills and global settings

3C. Ensure investment in support services

• Utilize financial strategies that recognize cost of administrative, support services and technological infrastructure
• Ensure library adequacy
• Ensure a technologically adequate infrastructure
• Enhance support for research facilities and instructional equipment.
• Encourage externally funded research
• Build resources for a research and development component into program innovation
• Identify resources to fund development costs of entrepreneurial efforts
• Build financial strategies that nourish ongoing development and adaptation
• Enhance placement services and career advising to facilitate student transition to the workplace.

3D. Create more flexible hiring, professional growth opportunities, and remuneration practices for faculty

• Provide incentives for teaching off hours and/or non-traditional academic calendars
• Use adjunct faculty, professional practitioners, and staff where appropriate
• Compensate faculty for overloads
• Create flexibility in workload computation
• Invest in the professional growth and development of faculty and staff
• Insist doctoral institutions provide faculty prepared to teach
• Value interdisciplinary instructors who bridge traditional boundaries
• Utilize joint appointments between campuses
• Explore joint university-industry faculty positions

3E. Value innovation and reward it

• Create program development start-up funds
• Provide incentives for innovative curriculum development
• Create more "student friendly" processes
• Create convenient, one-stop services to meet needs of working adults and parents
• Make international exchange and global learning a more fundamental part of the graduate curriculum
• Better integrate student services and academic program support
• Disseminate information system-wide about successful innovation

3F. Enhance post-baccalaureate education by appropriately integrating technology

• Use technology to enhance instructional effectiveness and learning achievement
• Bring supplemental expertise to campus and take the campus to off-site locations
• Enhance support services for technology utilization
• Improve prospective student knowledge of programs
• Improve student admissions processes and evaluation processes
• Facilitate student progress with easy information access and convenient services

3G. Establish expedited approval for pilot projects

• Allow individual campuses to experiment on a trial basis
• Let the size and stability of the system reduce the risks of experimentation

At the heart of post-graduate education is a duality which is not often understood. On the one hand it is an area of the most "practical" education-often tied explicitly and immediately to the world of work and employment. On the other hand it is often the arena for the most abstract, theoretical, and personal intellectual work. The great majority of our students seek both elements, and then a third element: they look for connections to the communities in which they live, and most often work. We have been struck by the serious civic intentions of our students; they want to make a living and they also want to make a difference.

With awareness of the importance of connecting learning to application, faculty build programs which engage the hearts as well as the minds. They often look for programs which ground the academic work in the immediate worlds outside the academy-in the workplace, the community, the neighborhood. But it is often very hard to do this; so much of academic programming and program design takes place only on campus, and sometimes responds narrowly to academic discipline pressures.

We believe that the expansion of graduate and continuing education can best be accomplished in partnership-with other educational institutions, with business and community organizations, with public agencies and private firms.

These partnerships have many dimensions: new programs developed off-campus in the work site; faculty serving as mentors for community leaders seeking technical skills or planning expertise; business and community leaders serving as mentors for graduate students, who can also intern off-campus; new technologies shared between proprietary owners and public universities in programs aimed at "growing" the expertise in developing the technologies; new licensing and patent programs sharing the profits of new products; external advisory programs that aid in the development of program content and design.

When by partnership we mostly mean institutional partnerships, then the university must build on its already considerable experience in forming new joint ventures and offering joint programs. Additionally, there is a broader "partnership" this Task Force wants to propose: a new partnership between the CSU and those who graduate from it. We know that the undergraduate alumni will be sought out for continuing support for the CSU; we propose a reciprocal support for the continuing education needs of our alumni. If we are right that life long learning will be an increasingly central element of every working man or woman's life, then the CSU must concretely demonstrate its availability to our own graduates.

Accordingly, we propose the development of a CSU "Passport," granted to every undergraduate upon graduation, inviting the graduate back for a couple of free or substantially reduced post-baccalaureate fee based courses or continuing education units. When tied to a life-long career counseling program, this passport would confer life-long association with an institution which no longer sees undergraduate studies as the end of the road.

Recommendations:

4A. Facilitate development of targeted programs

• Identify as high priority those new programs that respond to expected growth areas in California's economy
• Establish structures to facilitate coordinated efforts to develop new programs in high need areas
• Work with professionals in the areas most needed by California to design and deliver programs to meet these critical needs
• Create new programs that promote economic development by responding to industry and community needs

4B. Commit to ensuring access to graduate and life long learning programs that are essential to the state's economy

• Create a California State University Passport, which confers reduced fee or specified/limited free continuing education courses and life-long access to career counseling for every CSU graduating senior.
• Use alternative delivery systems where pedagogically appropriate
• Develop new programs within the context of the communities interests and needs

4C. Increase partnership opportunities

• Enhance labor, community based, government, business, industry and social service internships
• Make appropriate use of community talent as adjunct faculty
• Create faculty internships and opportunities for "mini-leaves"
• Create exchange programs for employees
• Enhance graduate student placement services
• Wider use of advisory boards in program development
• Create more site-based programs for working adults
• Create interdisciplinary degrees that meet particular work place needs
• Link graduate thesis research to community needs, when applicable
• Expand dissemination of community-based thesis research
• Develop educational/labor force clearing house
• Share facilities and equipment
• Use "bartering" to obtain needed equipment

In summary, a strong commitment from the CSU to provide post-baccalaureate education to meet the needs of the contemporary California economy is essential. This report articulates the rationale for this position and provides concrete suggestions to accomplish this imperative. The CSU has the desire, talent and ability to successfully take these steps. For the good of California, its citizens and its work force, we must act to bring about these recommendations as quickly as possible.