The University of California's Board of Regents should adopt a plan today to cut $813 million from UC's budget, a regents committee recommended Wednesday, even as professors, researchers, nurses and other UC employees argued strongly and loudly at the regents meeting in San Francisco that doing so would destroy the world-class university.
"Disinvesting in the University of California is like eating our seed corn," astronomy Professor Sandra Faber of UC Santa Cruz told the regents. "The university is the most powerful economic engine in the state," but its future is in jeopardy because UC is already having trouble attracting and retaining the top-flight academics the university depends on, she said.
One after another, UC's 10 campus chancellors told the regents about brilliant professors being lured away by more lucrative salaries from other prestigious universities, while they've been forced to lay off or eliminate the positions of hundreds of employees.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said it will take students an extra half year to graduate, the result of courses being eliminated. Others echoed that problem and said they've already reduced library hours, barred access to qualified students, shrunk research budgets and quit recruiting faculty.
"How many vaccines or ways to protect our planet from climate change won't be had because of these cuts?" asked Chancellor George Blumenthal of UC Santa Cruz.
The spending reductions have been made necessary by a loss of $813 million in funding from the state, which is grappling with a $26.3 billion budget deficit.
Cost-cutting plan
The regents' committee recommended a cost-cutting plan by UC President Mark Yudof that closes the university system's budget gap in four ways: faculty furloughs, increased tuition (approved by the regents in May), debt restructuring and campus-by-campus cuts intended to address about 40 percent of the shortfall.
Yudof vigorously defended his plan as the only way to address a steady decline in state support for the university, but he borrowed a line from a speaker and said it was, in fact, "an anti-stimulus plan."
"We have a plan that is fair, but no one is happy with it," he said.
Earlier in the day, UC employees marched loudly outside the Mission Bay campus where the regents met, shouting "Layoff! Yudof!" and "Chop from the top!" The protesters were joined by UC critic Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who evoked the Berlin Wall and People's Park and even Vietnam as he vowed shifting more control of UC finances to the state. (His bill to do so is stalled in the Legislature.)
Challenge to regents
But Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a regent, upstaged some of the drama by challenging the regents and each chancellor to "stand up and fight" instead of passively accepting the cuts. He urged them to endorse AB656 by Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont, a bill making its way through the Legislature that would tax oil companies and direct the money to California's colleges and universities.
"We can fight fiercely in retreat, or we can stop and fight fiercely for the university," Garamendi told his colleagues, winning applause from the professors and other employees in the audience.
Regent Monica Lozano, chair of the Finance Committee, said it was inappropriate to put the chancellors on the spot, and they didn't respond to Garamendi. But the lieutenant governor succeeded in firing up enough of the regents that they agreed to consider the bill - or at least do a better job of presenting UC's woes to state lawmakers and the public.
In the end, the regents committee voted 11-1 to recommend that the full Board of Regents adopt Yudof's plan when their meeting resumes today. Only Garamendi voted no.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/16/BACA18PA83.DTL#ixzz0Ls3vawNX
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