(NAME-MCE) Tarnished Jewel

[Anselmo Villanueva]

For related stories, go to
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/13/california1

Tarnished Jewel

July 13, 2009

University of California, revered worldwide for excellence, considers
a bleak future as budget cuts threaten programs, recruitment,
retention and access.

There’s blood in the water, and Vicki Ruiz knows everyone can smell it.

“The privates have come calling,” says Ruiz, dean of the University of
California at Irvine’s School of Humanities. “I’ve lost very valued
faculty members to Yale, to Northwestern, to Penn, to Pomona, to
Scripps, as well as to even.… ”

Ruiz trails off, then gives a few more names, sounding a bit surprised
to mention them: Lehigh University and Fordham University. Fine
institutions to be sure, but not the sort Ruiz expects to lose to in a
bidding war.

“We are not able to put together the counter offers that we have in
the past,” she says soberly.

These are far from the heady days of 2007, when Ruiz was named dean of
Irvine’s buzz-attracting School of Humanities. In that year, she hired
17 new professors. This year she hired four, even though nine searches
had been planned. Ruiz has no illusions about returning to 2007 levels
any time soon.

“We’re going to be a smaller school,” she says. “I think that’s
certainly in the near future.”

The budget crisis facing the University of California, a 10-campus
system serving 225,000 students, is without precedent. According to
the latest projections – and these numbers change all the time – the
system can expect last year’s $3.61 billion state budget to be reduced
by about $813 million or approximately 20 percent.

The university, however, is well financed from other sources like
private gifts and grants. Its annual budget is $19.2 billion, only
about 16 percent of which comes from the state. To put that budget
figure into perspective, consider the fact that $19.2 billion is
actually slightly larger than the gross domestic product of
Mozambique. But while much of the larger university budget focuses on
big research projects and specialized programs, the state funds are
the key factor when it comes to paying for academic staffing and the
undergraduate experience.

Given the university's dependence on state funds for vital aspects of
operation, many university officials say the proposed cuts will force
layoffs, damage retention, stall recruitment, reduce take-home pay for
all employees, increase class sizes and limit accessibility –
particularly for California's poorest students. There is even talk
that the University of California cannot continue to exist as a
10-campus system, as evidenced by a letter from 23 San Diego
department chairs who recently proposed that one of the younger
campuses -- Merced, Riverside or Santa Cruz – be shut down.

A Difficult Case

Despite the dire warnings – and many say such doomsday scenarios are
justified – the University of California in some ways has a difficult
case to make. As one of the world’s premier public institutions,
faculty and administrators have to convince state residents that an
$813 million cut for a system with a total budget of $19.2 billion
will have devastating consequences. In short, they have to confront a
public that may be asking: So what?

Jack Miles, a professor of English and religious studies at
California’s Irvine campus, concedes it’s difficult to make the case
for continuing a robust and expensive research enterprise when
elementary school teachers are losing their jobs and the state is
writing IOU’s to pay its bills.

“It’s harder now [to make that case] than it would be in flush times;
I don’t know that it has ever really been easy,” says Miles, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of God: A Biography. “The American
tradition has always struggled more than the European to be
wholehearted in support of research or, on the side of the humanities,
of arts or criticism.

“There are always people who call it frills and say ‘Who needs that?
Who needs a symphony? Who needs a library?’ Those voices will always
be around, and they become more compelling at a time of triage.… You
may think that if you just provide the basics for everybody all will
be fine, and you can skip the frosting on the cake. It may not
actually work that way. It may be that you have to spend some money at
the top.”

If the University of California hopes to sustain itself, officials
will have to make a compelling argument that the state’s economy is
inextricably tied to the “frosting on the cake.” Officials have tried
to make this case, but Miles sees the state’s master plan – wherein
the University of California serves as a research engine with
competitive admissions for undergraduates, and California State
University concentrates primarily on delivering bachelor’s degrees and
specific areas like teacher education, as well as providing master's
programs – as threatened by the crisis.

“These cutbacks would simply blow the master plan finally and
definitively out of the water,” says Miles, describing a worst case
scenario. “UC would be no longer a research university; it would be
cranking out bachelor’s degrees. That’s the darkest vision.”

Amid the cacophony of voices, however, are faculty who say the darkest
vision is a trumped up scenario put forward by the leaders of a
wealthy institution trying to reduce its bottom line. That’s the case
that was made by the leader of the University Council of the American
Federation of Teachers, which represents lecturers and librarians in
the California system. Arguing that employees should not be subject to
furloughs or salary cuts, Executive Director Karen Sawislak questioned
whether the state’s undeniable financial crisis is in fact shared by
the university.

“California’s fiscal meltdown does not mean that UC is suffering an
equally dire crisis,” she wrote to the California president’s office
in an e-mail that’s circulating among faculty members. “Indeed, many
university operations (i.e., auxiliary enterprises, hospitals)
generate substantial profits for the institution and fundraising and
capital expenditures remain robust. The union does not yet see the
justification for across-the-board cuts in employee compensation.”

Furlough Proposal on Table

Seeking to cut costs, California President Mark Yudof laid out a
proposal Friday that would mandate furloughs for all university
employees paid with state funds, exempting those paid on grants and
graduate students. Employees on the lowest end of the pay scale –
making up to $40,000 – would take 11 furlough days or the equivalent
of a 4 percent salary reduction. For those making over $240,000, 26
furlough days or the equivalent of a 10 percent salary reduction would
be required. The proposal, which would generate an estimated $515
million in savings, is headed for the Board of Regents' approval
Wednesday.

In the interest of “equity,” Yudof had considered forcing furloughs on
employees who are paid without state dollars. He decided against that
idea, which had been widely criticized by faculty who said it wouldn’t
generate savings and would make it impossible to hire postdoctoral
researchers, who are the workhorses of any research enterprise. During
a press conference Friday, Yudof said faculty dissuaded him of the
notion that exempting some from furloughs would create two classes of
employees and hurt morale.

“It could happen, yes, but I think the faculty has been quite mature
about it,” he said.

California’s tenured and tenure-track faculty are not unionized, but
about 35 percent of the system’s other employees, including lecturers,
are in collective bargaining units. Those employees will now have to
decide whether to accept the furloughs or face layoffs.

The furloughs will only address about one-quarter of the state funding
deficit. Program cuts and layoffs will be used to cover another 40
percent of the budget gap, and previously instituted student fees --
classified as tuition in other states -- will address an additional 25
percent of the deficit. The last 10 percent of the deficit will be met
by cuts in the president’s office.

The impact on hiring is expected to be substantial. At Berkeley, for
instance, faculty searches are expected to fall from about 100 a year
to 10 in 2009-10. There’s concern, however, even about the few hires
that may be authorized. Frances Hellman, chair of Berkeley’s
highly-regarded physics department, says she’s not interested in
undertaking a faculty search if there won’t be sufficient funds to
offer competitive start-up packages.

“I would rather not be trying to hire than to try to hire with my
hands behind my back,” says Hellman, whose department has housed 20
Nobel laureates.

Amid all the doom and gloom, California officials are still talking
about preserving excellence. But what does that mean in this
environment?

“That kind of statement can either sound wonderful or it can sound
like they’re going to ask me to do more for less pay,” Hellman says.
“… I’m not going to ask [faculty and staff] to do the same amount of
work for less play. We’re going to have to find ways to eliminate
pieces of jobs.”

Cutting Programs Great and Small

Few observers of California’s fiscal crisis say it will result in a
fundamental reshaping of the higher education landscape, but it is
certain to imperil some core services as well as some of the unique
programs that have brought character to the system. Among these
programs is the “Dickens Universe,” an annual event that draws
hundreds of scholars and members of the public to California’s Santa
Cruz campus for discussions of Charles Dickens and the 19th Century.

John Jordan, director of the Dickens Project, says the program expects
to lose all funding within a year. This is regrettable for Jordan
personally because he'll potentially lose this part of his job if
other funds aren't located, but Jordan also says the community will
miss out on something that had become truly special. Scholars present
papers at the conference as they would at any other, but there are
also dances, teas and wine tastings – all designed to bring the 19th
century to life for a few days in Santa Cruz.

“This is the most important Dickens conference in the world, certainly
the most important regular Dickens conference in the world,” says
Jordan, a professor of literature at Santa Cruz.

The conference had an annual budget of $64,000 a year, but with money
getting tight the Dickens Universe was forced to compete with other
multi-campus research programs for funding. Ultimately, outside
reviewers considered 139 proposals and only funded 27 percent of them.
The reviewers, who were faculty from California and many other
universities across the country, sought to fund programs that have a
systemwide impact and enhanced the university’s competitiveness. While
many programs met that standard, the university only provided $12.4
million in funding for the $346.4 million in proposals submitted.

“Many excellent proposals are not funded,” Leslie Sepuka, a system
spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail to Inside Higher Ed.

Apart from niche programs like the Dickens Universe, cuts of major
support services and degree programs are on the chopping block as
well. The California Poison Control Center, which is administered by
the university’s San Francisco campus, will be eliminated. That will
make California the only state in the nation without poison control
services. The Irvine campus has also halted admission to its doctoral
program in education.

Higher Cost, Lower Quality

Even as California’s students pay more, they find that they’re getting
less in the way of services. The Board of Regents approved a 9.3
percent tuition increase for next year, and Victor Sanchez is still
trying to figure out what he’s getting for his money. The Santa Cruz
senior and Los Angeles native says the Ethnic Resource Center, which
helped him acclimate to life in Santa Cruz, has curtailed programming
and internship opportunities due to funding cuts.

“The folks who come here are witnessing and experiencing what are
catastrophic times, and it’s evident that we are paying a lot of money
for what seems to be a lower quality education,” Sanchez says.

Among the changes that will potentially distress students are
reductions in academic offerings. The University of California at Los
Angeles, for instance, is considering a proposal that would
dramatically reduce offerings of English as a Second Language classes
that are required for many students.

In recent years, UCLA has offered about 25 ESL courses during the
traditional academic year. The chair of the department of applied
linguistics, where ESL is housed, has now proposed that only about
seven courses that receive state funding will be offered over the span
of fall, spring and winter, according to a longtime lecturer in the
department.

“I think there’s a lawsuit here,” says Linda Jensen, a lecturer who
joined UCLA in 1988. “This is discrimination. UCLA tells them they
have to take a class, and then they can only take it during summer
school.”

Olga Yokoyama, chair of the department, could not be reached for comment.

Many of the students in ESL classes are from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds, and often seek work during the summers, Jensen says.
Reducing ESL offerings during the academic year will make it more
difficult for these students to work, and those international students
who would otherwise return home will be forced to stay in the U.S. By
moving the required courses to the summer, however, UCLA all but
guarantees it will boost enrollment in more expensive summer classes.

“There’s something very wrong with the educational system when it
becomes just about raising money,” Jensen says.

Dysfunctional Model

There is no question that California’s fiscal crisis has prompted some
serious soul searching. Russell Gould, chairman of the university’s
Board of Regents, announced Friday, for instance, that he and Yudof
will co-chair a commission to examine fundamental questions about the
university’s future. How big should the university be? Should
California change the way it delivers curriculum? What alternative
revenue streams are available?

“We can't keep limping along like this from budget cycle to budget
cycle,” Gould said.

The commission is sure to run the numbers, issue reports and spark
conversations across the system and in the Legislature. But the subtle
changes that are already happening in California are, in many ways,
the product of administrators and faculty making their own decisions
about how best to move forward in a state where the economic landscape
has shifted like the tectonic plates that lie beneath their feet.

During a recent meeting with fellow administrators, Stan Nosek
illustrated the extent to which Californians in higher education are
rethinking things. Nosek, vice chancellor for administration at
California’s Davis campus, is nearing retirement, and he now believes
his position should be eliminated when he steps down. Since there will
be so few capital projects in the near future, Nosek thinks it’s best
that his position be merged with that of the vice chancellor of
resource management and planning, who oversees capital projects.

“It was kind of shocking to hear someone say 'I recommend that my
position no longer exist,' ” Nosek recalls of the meeting. “I think
that was a point for a lot of folks that they said ‘Wow this really is
serious.’ ”

While Nosek’s announcement had a dramatic effect, he fully
acknowledges that a little administrative reshuffling won’t come
anywhere near addressing the University of California’s fundamental
problems. Like many in the system, Nosek sees the university’s fiscal
problems rooted in the state’s political problems. To appease
lawmakers, Nosek says the university has cut deals that weren’t in its
ultimate best interest.

“I certainly believe we have been part of the problem as far as
leadership in higher education at UC, because we have allowed the
political process to have too much influence on what we do in
operating the university,” Nosek said.

The university has turned to the political process through ballot
measures, for instance, to try to fix its financial woes. University
officials lobbied Californians intensely to pass the initiatives,
which would have extended tax hikes to preserve a revenue stream for
higher education. The initiatives failed, and Nosek was among the
Californians to vote against them. He saw the measures as yet another
example of California failing to address fundamental problems, and
using accounting gimmicks and stopgap measures to delay true reform.

“I didn’t vote for any one of those propositions and didn’t intend to,
because it would continue the dysfunction,” Nosek says. “Honestly, I
didn’t even think twice.”

As he heads toward retirement, Nosek says he simply has no idea what
the coming months and years will hold for the University of
California.

“There is no light at the end of this tunnel,” he says. “There is no
bottom that we know of yet.”

— Jack Stripling