UC regents warn that freshman enrollment will be curtailed without state funding

The UC Board of Regents, meeting on Thursday, Nov. 20, in San Francisco, adopted a budget request for 2009-10, along with a resolution to curtail freshman enrollment next fall if the state does not provide sufficient funding. The warning to the state was adopted a day earlier by the regents' finance committee.

 

UC's budget calls for $815.4 million (15 percent) more than it received in 2008-09. The state's portion of this increase would be $530 million. UC's operating budget currently totals $5.4 billion, money that comes from the state general fund, student fee revenue and other UC fund sources. 
    

"The situation we face is serious, and some very tough choices are ahead of us," UC President Mark G. Yudof told the regents. "We need to preserve access and affordability to the greatest extent possible. We also need to ensure that we're providing students access to an education of the high quality they expect of UC. And we can't leave the state with the impression that we can continue doing more and more with fewer and fewer resources."

 

While the budget plan for the next fiscal year does not call for student fee increases, it does say that if the state does not provide sufficient funding to UC, then a 9.4% fee increase will be necessary. 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will consider UC's budget request and then announce his budget proposal in mid-January. Depending on the level of funding the governor outlines for UC, the regents will then decide in early 2009 whether student fee increses will be necessary. They will also discuss whether to curtail freshman enrollment in the fall at a future meeting.

 

"If we're going to turn students away, we ought to know who's going to be left out," said Regent Eddie Island, a member of the finance committee. Whether it's underrepresented minorities or students from small towns across the state, he said, the regents should know how an enrollment limit will affect diversity, among other UC values, and then act with great care.    

 

Regents said they were reluctant to constrain access to the university, but that state elected leaders should understand the impact of continuing budget cuts to the university. UC currently enrolls 10,000 more students than it receives state funding for, at a cost to the campuses of $120 million. UCLA is over-enrolled by about 1,475 undergraduates, all in the College of Letters and Science. And the state's per-student spending for education at UC, adjusted for inflation and enrollment growth, has fallen nearly 40 percent since 1990 — from $15,860 in 1990 to $9,560 today in current, inflation-adjusted dollars.

The loss of state funding is already affecting academic programs at UC campuses. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and two other UC chancellors made presentations earlier to the regents about how their campuses were being impacted by budget cuts. Campuses overall were experiencing delayed or reduced academic programs, slowed faculty recruitment, reduced class offerings and fewer student services. The campuses are working hard to achieve administrative and business efficiencies, UC officials said.   

The budget request for 2009-10 includes:

• A 5 percent compensation program to cover faculty and staff salary increases and health benefit cost increases.

• $228 million to cover UC's contribution to the UC Retirement Plan. While no specific amounts have yet been set, the budget plan assumes a 2 percent employee contribution (possibly a redirection of employees' current deductions now going into their Definied Contribution Plan) and a 9.54 percent UC contribution, beginning in July 2009.

• $31 million from the state for pressing needs in instructional technology and equipment, building maintainence and libraries. 

"We need to forcelly articulate what it takes to keep the University of California great," Yudof said. "This is an honest statement of what it takes to sustain quality."

 

To read more about what UCLA's senior leaders are doing to cope with fewer resources and worsening budget cuts, see this story.