A draconian budget plan laid out Monday by California Gov. Jerry Brown would slash higher education along with other already beleaguered state agencies.
In an effort to tackle an estimated $28 billion budget shortfall, the newly elected governor would strip $1.4 billion from public higher education institutions. The reductions would include $500 million each in cuts for the University of California and California State University. Additionally, $400 million would be carved from the budgets of the California Community Colleges.
The reductions constitute an 18 percent cut in state support for California State; 16.4 percent for the University of California; and 6.5 percent for community colleges, officials from the systems reported. [Updated from previous version].
While embracing the need for collective sacrifice, University of California President Mark Yudof said the reductions to the system constituted a “sad day for California.” The proposed reductions, he noted, would mean that collective student contributions to the cost of education would for the first time exceed contributions by the state.
“The crossing of this threshold transcends mere symbolism and should be profoundly disturbing to all Californians,” Yudof said in a released statement.
The $500 million reduction would mean that the state’s annual per-student contribution would fall to $7,210, compared to the $7,930 students now pay at the University of California on average. The student contribution has risen steadily amid the throes of the economic crisis, which has prompted a series of hikes in tuition, dubbed “fees” in California. Yudof said his “sense” was that the university would not implement another tuition increase to deal with the proposed budget reduction, but that he “cannot fully commit” to that course.
The tuition increases have sparked massive student protests, and faculty have questioned whether the cuts will worsen the quality of what is often regarded as the nation’s premier public university.
Charles B. Reed, chancellor of California State University, suggested Monday that the cuts would limit access.
“We will work with the administration and the legislature to minimize, as much as possible, impact to students. However, the reality is that we will not be able to admit as many students as we had been planning for this fall,” Reed said in a statement.
Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott was similarly foreboding, saying in a statement that the budget reductions would mean “up to 350,000 students will be turned away next year.”
A last-minute budget deal in October was designed to restore funding to public higher education in the state, but Brown’s plan would reverse those gains.
In a statement issued Monday, California’s Legislative Analyst's Office pointed out that the cuts actually restore higher education funding to its traditional place within the state's budget. Brown's proposal would provide about $9.8 billion in general fund support for public colleges and universities in 2011-12, which is about 11.6 percent of the total general fund spending. That percentage is about the same as the average share higher education has received over the past decade, the LAO noted. Of course, that average includes several years of significant budget reductions.
In a joint statement Monday, the heads of the three impacted systems -- Yudof, Reed and Scott -- suggested cuts to the institutions were counterproductive to economic recovery.
"It is clear the governor wants to engage Californians in a full and open discussion about what size of government they are willing to support. As leaders of the state's three public higher education systems, we are eager to participate in that conversation," the statement reads. "Given the vast demographic shifts underway in California, now is not the time to shrink public higher education, but to grow it. The road to recovery from this recession and prosperity far beyond it runs straight through our many campuses. These universities are the economic engines of California."
— Jack Stripling
University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau ($500,000 salary) response to Gov Brown's budget.
ReplyDeleteGov Brown inuguration $100,000. Chancellor Birgeneau hires $3,000,000 consultants to do his work and the work of Chancellor's many vice-chancellors.
University of California Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.
A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Competent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up to $150 million of inefficiencies….until there was no money left.
It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.
In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. Merely cutting out inefficiencies will not have the effect desired. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC President, Board of Regents, and California Legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple oversight check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, Academic Senate, Cal. Alumni, financial donors, benefactors await the transformation of senior management.
The author, who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way senior management work.
(Cal (UC Berkeley) ranking tumbles from 2nd best. The reality of University of California Berkeley’s (UC Berkeley) relative decline are clear. In 2004, for example, the London-based Times Higher Education ranked UC Berkeley the second leading research university in the world, just behind Harvard; in 2009 that ranking had tumbled to 39th place.)
University of California,Berkeley.