After weeks of deadlock and political squabbling, the California
Assembly passed a budget Tuesday that spells out $410 million in
cuts to the University of California ““ cuts that will most
likely lead to funding slashes in all UC non-instructional
programs, increases in student fees and enrollment growth caps for
the 2004-2005 academic year. The budget, which cleared the state
Senate on Sunday night after being nearly a month overdue, was
passed by the Assembly by a 56-22 vote. The Assembly approved the
budget after a record-breaking marathon session of 27 hours during
which Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles/Culver City,
locked the doors of the room so no one could leave. Though Gov.
Gray Davis must first sign the budget for it to go into effect, he
has indicated that he will do so. The compromise budget attempts to
fill a $38.2 billion deficit by cutting spending, raising taxes and
heavy borrowing. Even then, lawmakers and economic experts warn
that California could still face a $ 8 to 10 billion deficit next
year. Under the new budget, the UC will face an additional $111
million in cuts, which come on top of the original $300 million
Davis proposed last May. UC officials had supported the May budget,
hoping the state would only cut at most another $80.5 million. But
with the increase in cuts surpassing their expectations, UC
officials face an even greater array of distasteful choices.
Program cuts, enrollment caps anticipated A budget cut of $410
million would mean every non-instructional program at the UC, which
includes libraries, outreach, student services and administration,
would have to undergo cuts in funding, said Brad Hayward, a
spokesman for the UC Office of the President. The UC’s
state-funded research program, for example, would be cut 10
percent; student outreach to K-12 communities would be cut by 50
percent, a move Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles, said would limit
awareness of the university among Californians. “It’s
unfortunate. There’s always going to be a certain number of
families that aim for the UC, but there are also a lot of families
in California that don’t know it’s within their
reach,” she said. In addition, the Legislature has warned
that it does not anticipate the funding of enrollment growth at
either UC or California State University campuses for the 2004-2005
academic year. “That’s a very grim warning sign for
next year,” Hayward said, who added that it was an
“unprecedented” move for the UC in recent memory.
According to the Master Plan for Higher Education, which dictates
the state’s educational policy, the UC must provide access to
all eligible students. However, UC President Richard Atkinson
stated in July that, given the state budget cuts, the UC might have
to curtail enrollment in 2004-2005 by at least 5,000 students. The
7 percent enrollment growth projected for the 2003-2004 academic
year is fully funded and should not be affected, Hayward said. But
the budget did leave a small silver lining for university
enrollment. The Dual Admissions Plan, which would grant admission
to certain students provided that they first follow a strict
two-year community college regimen, will receive $1.2 million from
the state this year. The plan was passed two years ago but
hasn’t gotten off the ground due to lack of funding.
Merced campus delayed The state budget also delays by one year
the opening of the newest UC campus, Merced, said James Grant, a
campus spokesman. UC officials intended Merced to open in 2004 and
serve 1,000 undergraduates. However, specific language in the state
budget would delay the plan by one year. “We’d be
disappointed by the delay, but we’ll still be moving forward
to serve students in 2005,” Grant said. Construction at UC
Merced will not be delayed as most of the $280 million in funding
is in state bonds. Until 2005, Merced officials plan to finish
construction on their buildings and continue to recruit faculty and
staff. Merced may serve some graduate students in 2004 if newly
hired professors bring students with them, Grant added.
Additional fee hikes likely Besides program cuts, students may
have to absorb a greater fee hike, which would come on top of the
25 percent increase the UC Board of Regents approved in July. When
the regents approved the fee hike, they also voted to give Atkinson
the discretionary power to raise fees by an additional 5 percent if
the budget crisis mandated such an increase. Atkinson, who is
retiring in October, indicated that he would raise fees if the
state cut more from the UC’s budget than was anticipated in
July. Because the budget passed in the Assembly does cut $30
million more than the regents projected, such a fee increase seems
likely. UC Berkeley and some graduate schools, which are on the
semester system and begin in mid-August, have already begun
charging students the 5 percent fee increase and said they would
refund the difference if Atkinson hiked fees anything less than 5
percent. Student Regent Matt Murray said he was disappointed the
state had given the university so few options besides cutting
programs and raising fees. “The state,” he said,
“has dropped the ball,” adding that taxes should have
been raised to prevent cuts to education. Kuehl said the end result
of the budget was ugly but that the legislature had done the best
it could under a bad situation. “Although we’ve cut
everything to the bone, we’ve done our best to stem the
bleeding,” she said. But the budget does not by any means
stem all the bleeding. With a multi-billion-dollar deficit rolling
into next year and dismal financial forecasts, some people are
wondering what sort of budget crisis the state will face in 2004.
“Every expectation is that the budget is going to get worse
because most of the solution was to push the problem onto next
year,” Hayward said. “When they start to tackle that,
it’s expected that all state agencies, including the UC, will
take deeper cuts.”
With reports from Charlotte Hsu and Robert Salonga, Bruin
Senior Staff, and wire services.