- Budget Ax May Cut Future UC Enrollments
- UC President-Designate No Stranger to Hard Work
- New Campus
Survey Sketches
Work/Life Pressures on Employees - Taiwan Studies Chair Endowed
- Top Poet to Keynote Convocation
- Beach Preservation Efforts Built on Sand
- Pay Parking Here
- UCSB Chemist Synthesizes Powerful Nutrition Supplement
- Melvyl Catalog Undergoing Major Upgrade
- Lots of G.I.V.E. in Isla Vista
- Campus Adapts to Planning Needs
- CSAC, Staff Assembly Seek Volunteers
- Campus Notes
- Calendar
- Credits
Budget Ax May Cut Future UC Enrollments
The UC Regents voted
13-3 last week to approve student fee hikes of 25 percent in anticipation
of state cuts in the University's 2003-04 budget deeper than the $300
million suggested by Gov. Gray Davis. The Regents also gave President
Richard C. Atkinson authority to increase fees another 5 percent.
This means that mandatory UC undergraduate fees would increase a
minimum of $960 to $4,794 a year. Individual campus fees would be in
addition to that. If the full 30 percent increase were needed, the systemwide
total would be $4,984. Graduate, professional school, and nonresident
fees would also rise.
These fee hikes do not cover the entire 2003-04 anticipated shortfall.
President Atkinson has said he plans to seek one-time debt financing
of between $40 million and $50 million.
He also warned in a July 2 letter to the Regents that in order to
avoid further program cuts that would harm the quality of the student
educational experience at UC, constraints on student enrollments appear
likely. For 2004-05, Atkinson wrote, deeper budget cuts from the Legislature
may leave UC with no alternative but to begin cutting back on student
enrollment growth.
Such enrollment constraints are not possible this fall because all
new students have already been admitted. But continuing state budget
cuts could mean that UC would be forced to scale back its enrollment
growth plans by at least 5,000 students beginning in the 2004-05 year,
he said.
"Raising student fees and constraining new enrollments are very
painful decisions to make, and I wish we did not have to consider them.
But I am convinced that the alternative—allowing the educational
quality of the University of California to deteriorate—would be
even worse."
All non-instructional programs are taking significant cuts, including
administration, libraries, research, outreach, student services, and
Cooperative Extension. Employee layoffs are being planned or implemented
in most of these areas.
Though state Comptroller Steve Westly has said that if the Legislature
has not approved a budget by the end of July some state employees will
be temporarily paid minimum wages, it is not yet clear if this will
include UC employees. A new issue of "Our University," the
electronic budget newsletter for UC employees, is scheduled between
now and the end of the month.
In addition to absorbing state budget cuts, UC is contending with
about $100 million in cost increases for which it is receiving no new
funding. These include health benefits, energy, maintenance of new space,
and other inflationary costs.
Atkinson's letter is available at <www.ucop.edu/news/budget/regentsletter.pdf>
and a fact sheet on fees is available at <www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2003/student_fees.pdf>.
—UCOP