Schrag: Do We Want a University of California? State Budget Cuts are Permanently Damaging Higher Education in Our State

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

Old news: Like most other major state programs, California's public universities and colleges are up against devastating budget cuts in the coming year, and probably longer. Those cuts will drive up fees, force larger classes and eliminate courses, services and programs.

What's new is the increasing certainty among a growing number of people that the funding compacts the universities made with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger during the last fiscal crisis put them on a long-term downward trajectory that will continue to erode quality, limit access and permanently damage what for decades was the nation's premier system of public higher education.

In the view of one of those people, professor Stanton Glantz, a researcher at the UC medical school in San Francisco and former chair of UC's faculty Committee on Planning and Budget, the compacts were "a giant political blunder."

The agreements promised long-term fiscal stability in return for short-term cuts. In fact, they cut UC's base funding in the expectation that the university would make up the difference in student fees and private contributions. But Glantz says the gap is too great: "You can't fundraise your way out of it."

The only alternative, absent more state funding, would be enormous fee increases.

Glantz says the question for the governor and the Legislature is, "Do you want to have a UC, meaning a high-quality institution?"

So far, he says, "The de-facto decision is no."

Berkeley, UCLA and maybe UC San Diego will survive, "but the rest of the system will fall apart."

A couple of recent UC faculty reports document the story. One pleads with the administration and regents to, in Glantz's view, "put the discussion on a reasonable factual basis" and get past their fear of crossing the governor.

The point was reinforced last week by a report from the independent Campaign for College Opportunity, which found California's public higher education institutions – both universities and community colleges – have "still not recovered from the cuts … earlier in this decade."