Block describes impact of painful cuts on campus
Photo by Stephanie Diani.
With UCLA facing a shortfall of approximately $131 million for 2009-10, students, faculty and staff will unfortunately feel the pain of cutbacks in many ways, Chancellor Gene Block told the UC regents Wednesday, July 15, at their meeting in San Francisco.
"We recognize that general-fund reductions of this magnitude will affect the UCLA community in profound ways," Block told members of the regents' committees on finance and compensation, prior to their vote approving President Mark G. Yudof's budget reduction plan, including furloughs. The full Board of Regents approved the plan today (July 16).
Along with the heads of other UC campuses, Chancellor Block presented a sobering report to the regents about the combination of permanent budget cuts and what will hopefully be temporary cuts that will be required.
The huge $131 million
gap left by the loss of state funding to UCLA is being widened further by approximately $26 million in cost increases for utilities, benefits and retirement contributions that have been left unfunded by the state. Together, the salary reduction and the educational fee increase for 2009-10 will result in a savings of approximately $37 million, leaving UCLA with $95 million to $100 million in long-term or permanent cuts.
The impact on the campus will be felt broadly:
- Faculty recruitment will be limited to 25 searches to yield between 12 and 17 new hires. "This is an astoundingly small number for a big institution," Block said. Typically, UCLA hires between 75 and 100 faculty annually.
- Since February, UCLA has reduced its workforce by 428 positions, including 36 ladder faculty, 95 lecturers and 109 teaching assistants. "And these numbers obviously will increase during the current year," Block added.
- Campus departments have canceled 162 job requisitions; these positions will go unfilled.
- UCLA will reduce general fund support by 50 percent ($6 million) for research centers and by 40 percent ($8.9 million) for clinical teaching services. Student services will be cut by 10 percent.
- Housing and parking services will have to contribute 40 percent more ($2 million) to campus resources.
- The chancellor's commitments to fellowship support, community programs, capital projects and other initiatives will be reduced by $5 million.
- UCLA will save between $5 million and $10 million by consolidating IT services, reducing central administrative costs and expanding its energy conservation program.
- The university will use approximately $18 million in reserves to give the campus time for additional administrative/academic restructuring.
Students coming this fall will find fewer courses to take — the campus is projecting 165 fewer courses for the fall quarter, a 10 percent drop compared to fall 2008, Block said.
They will also find larger classes, which are expected to exceed an average of 60 students per class. "We've already seen a 20 percent increase in the average class size over the last three years, due to increases in student enrollment not covered by state support," Block explained.
And students will be served by fewer faculty, instructors and teaching assistants. Fewer teaching assistants will mean fewer lab sections and small breakout groups. Increased faculty workloads, along with fewer teaching assistants, will limit opportunities for faculty-student interaction.
As faculty workloads increase, their scholarly output may decrease, he noted. "And that, of course, is the hallmark of a great research university." It will also mean fewer opportunities to build critical strength in emerging areas of scholarship and add to the already difficult job of retaining faculty.
"With the reduction in faculty, we'll need to reduce undergraduate enrollment levels to guarantee that students can graduate on schedule with the high-quality education they expect from UCLA," Block said.
The loss of students and faculty will hamper UCLA's efforts to achieve diversity. The impact of the cutbacks on student diversity "worries me greatly since UCLA has been making gains over the last few years, and those are precious," Block said.
Salary and programmatic reductions will hit junior faculty especially hard. "This is a group that really struggles to make ends meet in Los Angeles," he said, as do UCLA employees in the lower-income brackets. Salary reductions will critically worsen their financial difficulties. "We recognize that," he said.
Staff will find fewer advancement opportunities as positions close, the chancellor said. "We're going to lose some outstanding and talented staff … because of program closures."
In concluding his report, Block said the impact on UCLA "is going to be profound, painful, and we're going to do the best we can to manage through it."
The chancellors of the other nine UC campuses also told the regents about the drastic cuts they are making and how their campuses plan to absorb their share of the funding cuts. You can read their testimony
here.
