Legislative Analyst’s Office criticizes Brown’s financial plans for higher education

Higher education financial plans in Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget for 2013-2014 may be largely ineffective, according to a recent report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The organization, which provides nonpartisan analysis and policy advice to the state legislature, analyzed the higher education portion of Brown’s budget proposal, which proposes an increase in funding for the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems. If approved by the legislature in June, the budget would give the UC a total of $2.8 billion – $250 million more than in the 2012-2013 year.

Experts at the Legislative Analyst’s Office agreed with Brown that the higher education system in California is currently unsustainable, but stated the proposed budget will not solve the problem, according to the report.

California currently allocates the most money to research universities, such as UCLA, that spend more per student, said Paul Golaszewski, an analyst for the Legislative Analyst Office who specializes in California education. On average, the UC spends more money per student than the CSU and California Community Colleges system, because it tends to focus more on research, according to the report.

Part of Brown’s budget includes an increase in general funding for the higher education system to $11.9 billion. The proposed budget would not directly give money to the colleges until they meet certain performance goals, like targeted enrollment and transfer rates.

This part of the budget is designed to add more efficiency to the system while preventing additional tuition increases, said H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs at the Calif. State Department of Finance. Through his proposal, Brown hopes to encourage the state’s higher education systems to improve the quality of their education, Palmer added.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office, however, stated in its report that the governor gave only vague expectations. The analysts asked for more defined goals in the report.

“(State officials said) they are working on giving specific goals and metrics, but it is already in the middle of February, when the budget is entering the legislature in early June,” Golaszewski said. “It would be better to specify what the money would be used for, such as to fund pension plans.”

The governor has also proposed a four-year tuition freeze for all state colleges. The legislative analyst’s report acknowledged that tution levels should remain stable if possible, but stated that tuition freezes are ineffective in the long run.

Tuition freezes are typically followed by major tuition increases, causing instability in tuition levels, Golaszewski said. He added that he thinks the state should focus on lowering the instability of tuition rates to avoid sudden spikes in tuition levels, instead of asking systems to freeze tuition.

But Palmer said the state does not want students to have to cover for budget shortfalls within their respective higher education systems, which is partly the reason for the proposed tuition freeze.

“We have a different view (than the Legislative Analyst’s Office) – that students should not be bearing much of the costs,” Palmer said. “You can’t have a model that continually increases costs to students, hurting them and their families.”

Additionally, Brown earmarked $10 million to develop online education in his proposed budget for 2013-2014.

The nonpartisan analysts support online courses, but question if the money for online education is necessary because the higher education system already spends a lot of money on online courses and many are already being developed, Golaszewski said.

The report also states that the UC could solve many of its problems simply by sharing and redistributing their resources with other colleges.

“Many online courses are already developed,” said Golaszewski. “The colleges need to share their resources, including online curriculum, so money is not spent to make new ones.”

Dianne Klein, a UC spokeswoman, said the UC is aware of the legislative analyst’s report and is taking it under consideration when negotiations in the legislature start in early June.

Daniel Mitchell, a professor emeritus of the UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said he believes the issues involved in the budget are long-term problems that cannot be resolved in a one-year budget. There needs to be more debate within the higher education system to adjust for higher costs, he added.

“We are following a process that would not give a long-term result,” Mitchell said. “Nothing really happens in one year for the education system.”

Email Nguyen at dnguyen@media.ucla.edu

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