Budget bottom line: cuts

By Cynthia Lee

Facing budget cuts, the UC regents are trying to decide which of their spending priorities should be funded or dropped from next year's spending plan.

After consulting with campus executives and student and Academic Senate leaders, Wyatt R. Hume, provost and executive vice president, recently returned to the regents meeting last month in San Francisco with his recommendations.

The critical priorities that should stay in next year's budget are student mental-health services; salary increases to make faculty salaries competitive and restore the scale system to health; and graduate-student support, the regents heard.

"If we do have to take substantial cuts, we may need to reduce our spending on core academic support, as difficult as that will be, including instructional equipment — these words hurt — instructional technology, libraries and facilities maintenance," Hume said. Doing it this way would give campuses maximum flexibility to advance their own academic priorities, he said.

Meeting the growing mental-health needs of students has been a recommendation echoed by several regental committees over the years, most recently by the UC Campus Security Task Force, formed in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings last year. To hire additional staff, increase resources for prevention and intervention programs and augment mental-health staff salaries, the regents have allocated $8 million next year to narrow a $40-million gap in funding for these services.

"We must adhere to at least $8 million," Hume urged.

Raising faculty salaries to make them competitive with those paid by peer institutions and fixing the faculty scale system need to remain a high priority, he said. The regents want to spend $20 million next year as part of a multiyear initiative. "The president and I are absolutely united on this issue," the provost said. Both leaders also agree that "whatever we are able to do with respect to cost-of-living adjustments for faculty, we must also do for staff."

Finally, the regents should follow through on plans to enhance graduate-student support, essential to the state's economy, he said; $10 million has been allocated for that. "We must do all we can to protect and build on our investment in graduate-student support."

Hume described in grim terms the potentially painful impact of the proposed cuts. Campus leaders have said they may have no other option but to leave some faculty positions unfilled to make up for funding shortfalls in critical areas, he said.

Students could see a reduction in student services, larger class sizes and a narrower range of courses offered. "They would very probably take longer, perhaps much longer, to graduate, and therefore will have to pay more — or much more — for their college education," Hume noted. But, he added, "we will not lower our standards."

Campuses are currently advancing plans to create inter-campus administrative systems and other systemwide efficiencies that could produce roughly $40 million in savings — money that the campuses could keep.

But, bottom line, Hume said, the magnitude of the proposed cuts far outstrips the savings UC can achieve, no matter how aggressive the plan.

"Accordingly, we do need to consider raising student fees. This is not my wish, nor, at the moment, is it my recommendation. Rather, I urge the state to take the long view and reverse the long-term decline in public education," Hume noted. Several communication initiatives are being launched to help show Californians how critical UC is to the state's economy, health and quality of life.

The regents may take up the issue of student fee increases next month. The chancellors have unanimously agreed that student fee increases should go no higher than 10%.