Nostalgia and longing for the good old days make for bad public policy. The same is true for the state’s 45-year-old Master Plan for Higher Education.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision last month to extend the authority of the California State University to issue doctorate degrees in education has put the final nails into the coffin of the old relic, and the sooner UC administrators acquiesce on this point, the sooner Californians can have an honest debate about a new higher education blueprint, one that serves a 21st century California.

Unlike the original, a new plan must be more than a political peace treaty that relies on arbitrary quotas and provisions. Whether in the case of enrollment limits or state funding, a new document must be a rational product of educated debate, with flexibility to adjust with age as its predecessor never could.

Top UC brass are right to be worried; the university made out like a bandit in 1960, and they realize that any revisions would likely come at a price. But to assume that clinging to the 1960 document will avert its further erosion is both silly and untenable.

In truth, both the governor and legislators have proven willing to unilaterally change the state’s policies toward its universities on issues ranging from annual appropriations to the most recent doctoral debacle. Agreeing to revisit the Master Plan would bring the debate into the open, allowing for truly pluralistic discussion that ends in a document with both the legitimacy and meaning that our current plan sorely lacks.

Whether they like it or not, UC campuses have no