California Campuses Plan Walkouts over Budget Cuts

It's no secret that California has been slowly suffocating in a lethal amalgam of fixed spending requirements and catastrophic revenue losses. Among the public institutions hit hardest by the lack of funds is higher education. Students and faculty are so upset by looming fee hikes and budget cuts that they've organized campus walkouts Thursday.

Flaws in the state's fiscal footing run deep. Among the problems (and this is not an exhaustive list): a two-thirds legislative majority is needed to pass the budget or any other spending measure; the wacky initiatives process introduces, on average, ten new ballot propositions each year; and an increasingly disappointing body of politicians continue to defer tough choices and kick the crisis can down the road. As New York Times columnist David Brooks recently put it, "Californians have voted to tax themselves like libertarians and subsidize themselves like socialists."

Such fiscal disaster been devastating for the three tiers of California public higher education – the University of California, California State University, and the community college system – that award 75 percent of all the bachelor degrees in state. Developments within the UC system particularly warrant a spotlight.

According to an article from The Economist, California lawmakers decided to cut $2 billion from higher education in their attempt to close the budget gap, and "the UC alone has lost a cumulative $813m of state funding in the last fiscal year and the current one, a cut of 20%." According to UC president Mark Yudof, since 1990, state spending per student in the system has fallen 40 percent. The article highlights this impact with projections from The Public Policy Institute of California, a non-partisan think-tank, which "projects that California's economy will face a shortfall of 1m college graduates by 2025, depressing the prosperity of the entire state."

Further complicating things is the system's implementation of necessary budget cuts. The debate has centered on the standard issue of whether to cut across the board or selectively cut "underperforming" areas (some have even suggested entire campuses). The UC Office of the President and the Board of Regents have implemented a system-wide furlough plan, which could also be called a salary reduction because furloughs cannot be taken on teaching days. According to the Office of the President web site, "the furloughs/salary reductions plan for faculty and staff approved by the Regents in July took effect Sept. 1 and is expected to generate $184 million in savings." Additionally, President Yudof says campuses are working towards laying off 1,900 employees, eliminating 3,800 positions, and deferring hiring of about 1,600 positions (according this UC web site, the system employs more than 170,000 faculty and staff).

Meanwhile, in early August, amid budget cuts, the Board of Regents approved raises and other benefits for UC executives.

Most recently, the Office of the President released a statement that confessed that additional fee increases are likely, including mid-year fee increases in 2009-10 (beginning in Spring of 2010, a $585 increase for resident undergraduates and between $579 and $654 increase for resident graduate students; double all fees for a full academic year) as well as fee increases for 2010-11 ($1,344 increase for resident undergraduates, and between $1,332 and $1,506 increase for resident graduate students). According to the statement, Patrick Lenz, UC vice president for budget, justified the potential fee increases this way: "While consideration of a fee increase is always a serious concern, revenue from an increase would mean fewer jobs eliminated, fewer cancelled classes and a lesser curtailment of student services than would otherwise be the case."

A strong fear has set in among students and faculty alike. According to the respected research university rankings conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, UC Berkeley, the oldest UC, offers the best public higher education in the world, and the nine other campuses are all distinguished and recognized as well. Many worry that without swift and effective action, the system's decline will force it to become more expensive and exclusive, all while losing the renowned faculty and resources that have established its academic prestige.

Some faculty and students have decided to take matters into their own hands. The University of California Student Association (UCSA) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have unanimously endorsed a faculty walkout on Thursday, and the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) have agreed to stand in solidarity with the faculty that participate. According to the UC Faculty Walkout web site, at last count there are 1,146 faculty signatures appended to an open letter that calls for the walk-out should three demands not be met: "No furloughs or paycuts on salaries below $40,000," "the immediate institution of the Academic Senate Council's July 29 recommendation regarding the implementation of furloughs," and "full disclosure of the budget." The July 29 recommendation refers to a system-wide implementation of furloughs that can be taken on teaching days.

Joshua Clover, Associate Professor of English at UC Davis and a supporter of the walkout, believes that the only way to deal with the budget cuts is to make tough choices that he thinks the Office of the President and Board of Regents have been avoiding. He said in an email: "I think that the burden is on the UC Office of the President to be transparent about the budget situation, rather than secretive and disingenuous, as they have been." Clover also believes that there is a crisis of priorities: "the restructuring program being conducted by the administration is not the only course ... it disproportionately harms students and the lowest-paid members of the UC community." When it comes to the way the Office of the President has implemented furloughs, says Clover, it was by way of "autocratic fiat."

"In the long term we need to convince the public and thereby the legislature that higher education is valuable and reverse the steady slide in the percentage of its budget that California commits to UC, CSU, and community colleges," says Richard Scalettar, a physics professor at UC Davis and supporter of the walk-out, in an email. "Perhaps that is not a very pragmatic response, but I'm afraid that is the very difficult bottom line to solving this problem."

"The UC system will endure," says Scalettar. "But will it endure with relatively low tuition so all Californians can aspire to a high quality education, or will it transform into an exclusive, high tuition institution affordable only to the wealthy? That's the question."

Count on The Cram to report on the September 24 walk-outs occurring across the state. Indeed, the UC system is not unique in its position, and similarly troubled institutions of higher learning throughout the country are looking to California as the debate carries on.