<Begin Segment 35>

MM: Now in the Hawaii model, the community colleges are under the University of Hawaii, is that correct?

RK: Yes.

MM: And that's not a model that is true across the country.

RK: No, that's very unusual.

MM: For example, here in California it's two separate systems.

RK: Yeah, the California system is more akin to what we have in the rest of the country. You know, but to start with, Hawaii has a centralized public school system. The whole state is one district. Most of America starts out with the little red school house and school districts, the local school districts, which are found to be not good because of the imbalance in financial resources. And the colleges, too, the community colleges in California were pretty much local institutions although they're gradually getting to be more state institutions. In Hawaii we just jumped into state institutions. And... but putting it under the university, I got criticized by my brethren on the mainland. The community college people said, "I don't know if that's gonna work." It has pros and cons, but for a state like Hawaii which is small and which is, started out by having unification at the public school level and has a very powerful state government and very little local government, I thought that's the only way we can operate if we operate at the state level. And I think it's worked out okay.

MM: Was it ever a consideration to have it work at the state level but be on par with the UH system?

RK: I don't know if you'd call it on par. The Manoa campus oftentimes refers itself as a flagship. I don't like that term, frankly. I think in a way we're all equal. We're all tying to do the same thing in different ways. But of course, there's always competition, not only between the university at Manoa and Hilo campus, that's another story. They used to be a two-year campus and it's a four-year campus now. And then there's West Oahu, another two-year campus that's university level, and all the community colleges. But, you know this, you expect this to happen, there's some competition. But we thought this competition would be moderated if you're under one system. The university model was, the president and the board of regents ran the whole thing and then we had the, I was appointed the Vice President of Community Colleges. And I handled the community colleges and worked directly with the president and the board of regents.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.