Fifty years ago, California’s vision for higher education was captured in the California Master Plan. The promise was bold and revolutionary and set California apart: there would be a place in college for all who wanted it.

California became a global model and economic powerhouse. We were transformed.

The promise also sparked the very words that we hear chanted time and again at protests and rallies across the state-accessibility, affordability, quality and diversity. These principles have become fundamental to the missions of  U. California, the California State U. and the California Community Colleges.

California families and students have come to expect education as a fundamental right. Today, this promise and rightful expectations are threatened.

Enrollment in all segments is being curtailed. Staff is being reduced and both staff and faculty are being furloughed. Our administrations are consolidating extensively running on barebones. We have seen unprecedented increases in tuition, increased class sizes, course reductions, and drastic cuts in student services.

The state has effectively abandoned the greatest public higher education systems in the world and lost sight of the vision and promise of the Master Plan.

In 2009-10 public higher education in California experienced funding cuts of $1.7 billion and 226,000 students are currently not funded by the state. Compared to 20 years ago, California’s public universities and colleges have roughly half as much state money to spend per student.

Our priorities are misaligned. California spends 45 percent more on prisons than universities. While providing for public safety is important, it is not our prisons that have made California what it is today. It is the knowledge, innovation, technology, and research produced by the greatest minds in the world fostered by California colleges and universities.

Our elected officials and voters must be reminded that education is an investment and an engine for economic and social mobility. Our schools have the capacity to foster scientific and humanitarian research as well as to promote service to the state and country. In order for the state to remain competitive, it must reinvest in education.

We must not abandon the promise of the Master Plan. It is time for the state to reaffirm its own role in the Master Plan by restoring state support. Public education demands a new approach to public investment and a drastic paradigm shift in government financing.

Although seemingly broken, the promise can and must be repaired but it must also be enhanced and realize the significant change California has seen since 1960.

Today, it is necessary to focus our efforts on an ever-changing and increasingly diverse state. We are no longer serving families from college-going legacies and mostly middle-class backgrounds. More and more first-generation and economically disadvantaged students are entering our universities and colleges.

The Master Plan must respond to this diversity and ensure that our schools resemble the demographics of our state and continue to commit to providing affordable higher education to all.

The plan must also affirm higher education’s role in ensuring that all students have the preparation necessary to succeed. We must alter the sharp distinction between higher education and K-12 as was assumed in the Master Plan of 1960. With drastic disparities in educational opportunities for our youth, colleges and universities must strengthen relationship with local school districts across the state and see their challenge as our own.

At this time in our history, it is critical to reaffirm our commitment to the promise that was made by our leaders 50 years ago-a promise that all Californians have come and should continue to expect.

On this, the 50th anniversary of the Master Plan for Higher Education, leaders and representatives from all three segments will be reaffirming our commitment to these promises by joining efforts in an advocacy day in Sacramento. We must ask our elected officials to do the same. As our systems will advocate, we must “put our money were our greatest minds will be-next year and the next 50 years.”