The dream is over : [electronic resource] the crisis of Clark Kerr's California idea of higher education / Simon Marginson.

pt. 1. A city upon a hill : Clark Kerr and the California idea of higher education -- An extraordinary time -- Clark Kerr -- Clark Kerr and the California idea -- The uses of the university -- Martin Trow : higher education and its growth -- Bob Clark : the academic heartland -- Whither the California idea of higher€education? -- pt. 2. Crossing the waters : the California idea in the world -- The idea spreads -- Participation without limit -- The spread of science -- The global multiversity -- Systems and stratification -- American universities in the global€space -- Enter the dragon -- Higher education in China and the United States -- pt. 3. Bringing it all back home : the California idea in a more unequal America -- Higher education after Clark Kerr -- The impossibility of public good -- The impossibility of taxation -- Economic and social inequality -- Unequal opportunity -- Higher education and the economy -- Higher education and society -- Epilogue : after the dream.

The Dream Is Over tells the extraordinary story of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California, created by visionary University of California President Clark Kerr and his contemporaries. The Master Plan's equality of opportunity policy brought college within reach of millions of American families for the first time and fashioned the world's leading system of public research universities. The California idea became the leading model for higher education across the world and has had great influence in the rapid growth of universities in China and East Asia. Yet, remarkably, the political conditions supporting the California idea in California itself have evaporated. Universal access is faltering, public tuition is rising, the great research universities face new challenges, and educational participation in California, once the national leader, lags far behind. Can the social values embodied in Kerr's vision be renewed?