In the face of anemic economic growth nationwide, the bust of the dot-com boom and the ongoing post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism, dozens of states are experiencing staggering fiscal crises. California is, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, among 40 states (and the District of Columbia) that are reducing spending to address fiscal problems in 2002.
As part of efforts to alleviate that hemorrhaging, many states are shying away from raising general taxes and are, instead, cutting their budgets, including dollars earmarked for education. Wisconsin legislators, for example, confronted with a $1.1-billion deficit, were battling over proposals to ax as much as $108 million from the 26-campus University of Wisconsin (UW) system, which received $882 million from the state last year. In response to its fiscal uncertainty, the university temporarily froze admissions and suspended hiring, and in May, William Messner, chancellor of UW Colleges, said that the university might be forced to turn away qualified applicants for the first time.
In California, where personal income-tax revenues suffered the sharpest one-year drop since World War II, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office in May projected a $23.6-billion state shortfall for the coming fiscal year. California, along with 25 other states, has raided its “rainy day” fund and, like 16 other states, plans to tap its share of the national tobacco settlement to help make ends meet. Late last year, Gov. Gray Davis implemented a hiring freeze on non-essential state employees.
As part of his May revision to the 2002–’03 budget, the governor proposed cuts in education. The University of California may see a $162-million reduction, leaving it with $3.2 billion from the state. Those cuts include: $32 million, or 10 percent, of funding from research programs; $29 million in a one-time cut from UC’s $150-million budget for equipment, library materials, deferred maintenance and instructional technology; and $28 million from K–12 outreach efforts. The final budget plan will be the product of negotiations between the governor and State Legislature.
Many resources, however, were saved, such as capital expenditures for the four California Institutes of Science — which includes the UCLA-UC Santa Barbara California NanoSystems Institute — where funding was shifted from the General Fund to lease-revenue bonds.
“As a state institution, the University of California will participate in the actions that must be taken to balance the state’s budget,” UC President Richard C. Atkinson wrote in a budget update sent to all UC faculty and staff. “But we need to make every effort to do so in a way that preserves the quality of our institution.”
Academic administrators are even more concerned about what will happen in 2003–’04. Conventional wisdom, according to UCLA Vice Chancellor for Finance and Budget Steven A. Olsen ’77, says that Gov. Davis’ budget reflects the impact of an election year, and that many cuts have been delayed. “But they can’t put it off forever,” Olsen says. “Next year, it’s going to be tough.”
In preparation for what may come, UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale has implemented a partial hiring freeze on staff and asked that the campus — which will enroll some 4,200 freshmen in fall 2002 — begin planning for possible reductions in resources as high as 8 percent over the next two years.
To learn more about what UCLA confronts as it strives to compete effectively in the marketplace of higher education during a time of severe budgetary shortfalls, UCLA Magazine Senior Writer Marina Dundjerski ’94 talked with Chancellor Carnesale.
How deep might the cuts be?
We’re planning for a number as high as 8 percent. Not with that as an expectation, but recognizing that even if it’s a number smaller than that, it probably would not be applied uniformly. Therefore, cuts would have to be greater in some places and less in others. So we’re having everybody look at that 8-percent range.
And there is a hiring freeze.
Yes, it’s a “soft” hiring freeze. For example, it doesn’t apply to any positions that are essential for our academic missions, like the faculty, or to those positions necessary to meet our contractual obligations. We don’t want to find ourselves unable to hire in areas where we really need people because we have hired people in the areas where we need them less. So the hiring freeze is aimed at helping us to be better prepared if bad things should happen.
How does UCLA plan to maintain its competitiveness in an atmosphere of budgetary uncertainty?
The important thing in developing a strategy for how we’re going to compete is to keep our eye on the ball. And the ball is people: retaining and recruiting the very best faculty and staff and attracting the very best students. Whenever we make expenditures in any area where we have some flexibility, we should always ask ourselves: How will this contribute to recruiting and retaining the very best people?
In recruiting and retaining the best faculty, salary matters, but it’s not the most important thing. Faculty tend to be most concerned about the work environment, support for graduate students in their field and the quality of life for their families. Salaries are important, to be sure, and if we were to fall markedly behind, it would become a major factor. But it is these other areas that generally seem to be first on the list of faculty concerns. In the work environment, for example, they might be concerned about the quality of the library in their field. They might be concerned about laboratory facilities, and how much of an investment can be made to modify and equip laboratories for their use. They want to be sure that they can recruit the best graduate students with whom to work on their research. It turns out we’re starting to have some difficulties competing with private universities for graduate students, primarily because they are able to offer more attractive financial packages.
Finally, there’s the quality of life for their families. Housing is substantially more expensive in the neighborhood of UCLA than it is in all but a very few other places in the country. There are concerns also about the quality of schools and the availability of child care. All of these things are related to resources. Even though they’re not seeking money for themselves, faculty do seek adequate resources as they relate to the work environment, graduate students and the quality of life for their families.
Graduate students have similar concerns having to do with resources and support, and undergraduate students tend to be concerned about things like class size. Our ratio of students to faculty is about double what it is in the elite privates. Undergraduates also worry about housing, its availability on campus and, of course, its cost in the Westwood area. And senior administrators worry about the same kinds of things — housing, child care and the like, and to some extent salaries, where we have to be competitive.
Now, what we have going for us is at least as important: superb academic programs, superb faculty, superb libraries, superb facilities. But these are not available in all academic fields. And notice that I was not able to include superb arrangements for housing or superb schools. We’re certainly working to expand and improve child care on campus, but even that does not meet the demand.
What are the strategies?
There are two kinds of things that one can do: Make the best possible use of the resources available to us, and expand those resources.
On the academic side of things, we’re focusing our resources more than before, concentrating on areas in which we are already excellent or where we must achieve excellence. We’ve been investing more, for example, in the College of Letters and Science — there’s no such thing as a great university without a great college. We’ve been investing in areas where we are or can be a national leader. These are areas like genetics and society; the UCLA in LA initiative, which has to do with the connection between a great public university and a great metropolitan area; the visual arts; and the California NanoSystems Institute. And we’re concentrating more on interdisciplinary activities, because that is where UCLA is already a leader and is an area that is essential if we are going to help solve some of the major problems that face society.
What are some ways in which UCLA is making better use of its resources?
One example is to make better use of our facilities. Just this past summer, we expanded our summer school enrollment by 40 percent. We’re expanding internships in Washington and Sacramento, where students can get real-life experience related to government. We’re reviewing our curriculum and readjusting the number of units for some of our courses so there will be better opportunities for each student to schedule 15 units a quarter and stay on track to graduate in four years. And finally, in terms of the best use of resources and being able to attract the best people, we are ensuring that we make the kinds of investments in our capital programs that relate most to recruiting and retaining the best faculty. That includes things like student housing for both undergraduate and graduate students; modifying and enhancing our libraries; and building new laboratory facilities like those under construction now for physics and astronomy, and new research buildings like those for the life sciences and medicine. These are things that are important to attracting the best people.
Then we get down to enhancing our resources. We certainly hope that the state budget will improve, and we expect that it will improve, so in time that will produce more resources. With respect to federal funds, we’ve been very active and very successful in attracting more research funds from the federal government, funds that are competitively awarded. As a matter of fact, in the past four years, the funds from federal research have grown by more than 50 percent on the UCLA campus. We’ve been extraordinarily successful.
Finally, of course, and extremely important because of the versatility of the funding, is Campaign UCLA, the raising of private funds to enable us to be truly competitive with the great universities in the world. Here the success has been beyond what anybody would have imagined, but not more than is required to meet our needs. We didn’t underestimate the needs; we underestimated the generosity of the alumni and friends of UCLA, so much so that we’ve been able to expand our goals and aspire to meet even more of our financial needs on the campus, needs related to ensuring that this university is the place at which the finest faculty, students and staff come together and collaborate to produce the very finest teaching, research and service.
Some professors have cited concerns that public universities are becoming faculty training grounds for private universities. Having worked at both privates, as provost of Harvard, and at publics, as chancellor of UCLA, what are your thoughts on this?
As I’ve said, competing for, recruiting and retaining the best people are increasing challenges. At the same time, I think it’s important not to overstate it. One of the reasons why other universities are constantly trying to recruit UCLA faculty is because we have an excellent faculty. That’s the principal reason. In that respect, as my mother would have said, “This is a good problem.” Surely we would not prefer a world in which other universities did not admire our faculty and did not seek to attract them to their own campuses. The current situation demonstrates the excellence of our faculty.
The more that the resource gap between public and private universities widens, the more difficult our challenge will be. But I hope we never see the day when the best private universities aren’t trying to lure our faculty away. I just want to make sure that the rate at which they’re successful doesn’t increase and that we continue to attract some of their best faculty to UCLA as well.
