As California headsthrough January, ever closer to the magical date of February 1, allCalifornia citizens face a startling truth: the state is rapidlyheading toward becoming, for lack of a better word, broke.
GovernorSchwarzenegger has already designated February 1 as the proverbialpoint of no return, after which, if the state legislature doesn’ttake immediate and decisive action, the state will no longer besolvent enough to keep hanging out checks. Rather, state workers andthose expecting tax refunds may instead expect to receive IOUs. Asfun as it might sound to receive such a novelty item from the state,the novelty may wear off faster for those who rely on the stategovernment to pay their bills and buy food.
Another victim instate’s projected $42 billion budget shortfall is theintricate system of colleges within the state. The community colleges will surely take a hit,though they already rely on less money in researchfunding than the California State Universities, which in turn rely oneven fewer research funding dollars than the University of Californiasystem.
Accordingto new reports, the UC system is beingdirected to cut 2009 freshman enrollment by about 6 percent, orbetween 2,000 and 2,500 new students. Interestingly, there is no“typical” pattern here, as each UC school has chosen differentprocedures to follow. The entire UC system is being forced to cutback a total of 2,300 new students, though some of the UC’s areincreasing enrollment, while others prepare to cut back by more than 10percent.
Accordingto new reports, UC Berkeley and UC Merced willincrease its freshman class, by 80 and 155, respectively, whileUCSD and UCSB face student cuts of between 6 and 12 percentagepoints. UCLA’s project change is very minor. According to UCPresident Mark Yudof, the enrollment cut “actually is amodest reduction in that it aims to bring our enrollments into linewith our resources over several years rather than in a single year.…Infuture years, of course, we hope the state will be able to focuson investing in California's human capital and provide the resourcesnecessary for expanded opportunity in public higher education.”The UC regents also agreed to freeze the salaries of some of its topadministrators. The UC system currently educates about 220,000students every year.
The CSU system ispreparing to cut nearly five times the number of enrollments as theUC system, down about 10,000 new freshman admittances. However, theCSU college system only serves about one-third of the number ofstudents that the UC system does, serving about 45,000 per year.
Boththe CSU and UC system will endure projected budget cuts of more than$130 million as the budget is tightened to deal with the mountingdeficit. Already there have been executive orders to haltconstruction on newly planned projects on public campuses, such asnew buildings and renovations to some older structures. CaliforniaState University Dominguez and Easy Bay are both victims to the cashshortage, each containing units that were planned to undergorenovations, or to be completed projects. All CSU’s have alsobeen ordered to go on a hiring freeze since January 9, when CSUChancellor Charles B. Reed requested the CSU universities to do so.According to Reed, the CSU system will fall nearly $16 million shortof the funds necessary to run the CSU system in 2009-2010. Reedsummed up the CSU situation as such: “We have… beenforced to suspend and shut down state-funded design and constructionprojects on all of our campuses in response to the state’sfreezing of $600 million in general-obligation and lease revenuebonds used to finance these projects. Unfortunately, hundreds ofprojects will be affected including libraries, performing artscenters, classrooms, administration buildings, seismic upgrades,laboratories and more.”
What will be differentabout the typical UC and CSU campus next year? For all CSU's, and forsome exempt UC’s, there will be significantly less constructionof new buildings, and a likely plateau of new programs, at least forthe coming year, as the universities work to make enough money tostay in business.