<Begin Segment 41>

MM: The recommendations that you made in "A Statewide System and Beyond," how many, how many of those were implemented? How many of them are in place today?

RK: It's hard to say. Our recommendations are mostly, are pretty general. And we have some specifics, but one of the interesting -- this happens, I think, to most of these, especially so-called master plans. It's in the general direction but as things change, so forth, and what we, what I found out, and I should have known, but the, because with the community colleges we did it and we had a plan for execution which we were able to do with legislative support. But the statewide master plan, it's much, university plan was much more difficult to administer or to implement. And what I found out is that people are very much interested in what we were doing while we were doing it, but once the report was out it was pretty much ignored, each one went his own way. "Well, we passed another hurdle." [Laughs]

MM: Right.

RK: You know that feeling.

MM: Yes, yes.

RK: And then the regents change and the new president comes in, and, you know, the wheel is invented again.

MM: Right, right. Clearly master plans are momentary --

RK: Yeah.

MM: -- blips on the screen.

RK: I'm afraid that, I think their implementation record is pretty dismal. But hopefully they do point out to problems, they do point out to potential areas of growth and we were hoping that that would do, that would do it. That's why our plan was called "A Statewide System and Beyond." But I don't think people got the, really understood the implications of that. We really thought, while we stressed undergraduate education, University of Hawaii especially should become more of an international institution. We started the East-West Center. But East-West Center was becoming another research university in the sense, with the emphasis placed on esoteric research almost. And we thought that we needed an organization that reached out and made good connections with the institutions in the Far East and drew students and exchanges with all these institutions. I think lately they've been trying more of that. But I think we should have, the University of Hawaii should have had an earlier start.

MM: And based on what you said earlier in terms of the geographic location of Hawaii, I mean, it's a real natural thing.

RK: Yes, it is.

<End Segment 41> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.