Under this new structure, the purposes of university systems and the roles of a statewide coordinating board were to be accomplished through a more objective treatment of what otherwise would be political decision processes. The events that led to the creation of Cal State Monterey Bay, however, suggest that politics never really relinquished its traditionally dominant place in the process, and it is difficult to avoid an impression that the accouterments of rationality that developed during the decades since adoption of the Master Plan never fully took hold. In this respect the situation is not much different from the political decisions that resulted in the placement of public universities in unexpected locations before the Master Plan. Their delegated powers prove illusory in a politically charged situation. These, however, are comparatively minor questions.
Different perspectives persist.
The most popular one is that the CSU system was given a lot of land and buildings and the promise of additional money to convert barracks, orderly rooms, service clubs, dispensaries, and PXs into university classrooms and ancillary facilities. If the gift truncated certain established processes, reordered campus priorities and frustrated the discipline the systems ostensibly have come to accept as part of the state's Master Plan, so be it. This report reviews the steps by which authorities at all levels did not adequately address that question. The university is there, and that will not change. Still, something might be learned from the experience.