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Kerr had a different strategy. His favorite phrase, and occupation, is finding every situation's "inner logic" (from the Quaker "inner spirit''). Kerr saw Cal's future in a codification of the state's entire higher-education system—an order of excellence from top to bottom. With roles properly specified in the state constitution, each level could grow without hurting the others.
Blue & Gold. "We could have gone along with guerrilla warfare except for growth.'' says Kerr. "But it would have cost too much, and there was the problem of quality." That problem is symbolized by a treasured piece of cloth: the blue and gold hood of Cal's doctorate; had he let anyone else give it away, Kerr's faculty might have hanged him. Having been a Berkeley professor himself for 15 years, he knew its feelings. Cal's faculty is one of the most doctorate-minded in the country, and also one of the most democratically run. No new courses, deans or professors can be approved without action by the powerful Academic Senate. "The faculty can't be driven," Sproul said once. "It can only be persuaded."
Kerr himself is an exceptionally persuasive man. With his bland face, rimless glasses and inevitable blue suit, he does not look the part until the "inner logic" begins to pour out ("He could talk the feathers off a bird," says one defeathered regent). Says Political Scientist and Author Eugene (The Ugly American) Burdick. who was Chancellor Kerr's academic assistant at Berkeley: "If you made an Organization Man, he would be it. That sleek, seal-like look. In a crowd no one would see him. He has the reputation of being terribly cool. But then he's got this other thing of always fighting at the right time."
Fair Trade. Kerr stepped into the college battle on the day that the state's higher-education Liaison Committee was trying to decide how to bring peace. He took everyone to lunch, sold them all on the inner logic of bringing in a topflight private-college man to adjudicate the issue. No one had thought of doing that before. The choice was able President Ar thur G. Coons of Los Angeles' Occidental College, a good friend of Kerr's. From then on, things went well.
From his efforts emerged last spring a complex fair-trade pattern for California's higher education. Calling for $1 billion worth of building by 1970. Coons's recommendations specified the roles of the three college systems: the university, the 15 state colleges, the 63 junior colleges. State colleges do not get constitutional autonomy or the right to confer doctorates, but they get a strong new governing board, and their students may earn doctorates under Cal supervision.
The formula raises the University of California's academic standards still higher—while at the same time allowing more Californians to go to college. The terms: Cal will accept only the top 12½% of high school graduates; state colleges will draw from the upper 333%. The two-year junior colleges—to be swelled to 85 while state colleges pause—will get everyone else. In sheer quantity, the junior colleges will eventually handle 80% of the total public enrollment—leaving Cal a mere 214,000 students by the year 2000. Without the plan, Cal could easily top 250.000.