With huge budget cuts looming, faculty at UCLA last week stood
up for this university in a way the UCLA and system-wide
administration have so far failed to do.
In a letter to the Board of Regents signed by every department
head in the academic unit formerly known as the College of
Letters & Sciences, the message was made clear: Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s budget proposals will end the ability of the
University of California to fulfill its mission to the state.
The professors are right. A 40 percent fee increase would all
but kill the UC’s efforts to attract students needed to help
the university conduct the research segment of its three-pronged
missions. Also, massive budget cuts would likely compel the
university to enroll fewer than the mandated 12.5 percent of
California’s high school graduates. Such a restriction would
mark a fundamental break with the university’s commitment to
access ““Â one established under a Master Plan for Higher
Education in 1960.
It almost seems too bad that UCLA faculty ““Â rather
than the UC Office of the President and the Board of Regents
““Â aren’t the chief lobbyists on higher education
matters in Sacramento. So far, the UCOP has essentially apologized
for the state regarding budget cuts. UCOP and the regents would be
wise to adhere to UCLA’s faculty’s message, lest higher
education be terminated at the hands of a new governor.
For too long, while the administrations of former Gov. Gray
Davis cut millions from the university, regents and administrators
stood silently. Every time new cuts were announced the message was
the same: It’s bad, but we’re thankful it’s not
worse.
Last year the regents, constrained by too-small budgets from the
legislature, twice resulted to raising student fees. Though student
lobbying organizations fought hard against the increases, the
regents caved in, failing to send a message to the state government
that it had better find a way to better fund public
universities.
Given their conciliation, it shouldn’t be a surprise that
the new administration in Sacramento set out to continue cuts to
higher education ““ cuts that will once again force the
regents to think about raising fees.
Right now, the university is seriously threatened. The
faculty’s defense against that threat is strong, but the
administration’s is weak. Statements by administrators like
Chancellor Albert Carnesale and UC President Robert Dynes that they
sympathize with the faculty’s concerns are not enough.
Administrators need to remind the new governor that making cuts
as huge as the ones he has proposed are the equivalent of cutting
funding for the entire UCLA or UC Berkeley campus. They must remind
the governor that if graduate fees skyrocket as he plans them to,
California will lose some of its best young minds to East Coast
schools.
Whether he knows it or not, Schwarzenegger is asking a lot more
than for the UC to “share the pain.” He is, in fact,
asking the university to cease to exist in its current condition,
with its current quality. And that’s how lobbying efforts
need to be framed.