California Gov. Jerry Brown released
his revised 2011-12 state budget yesterday,
maintaining a proposed $500 million in
cuts to state funding for the UC system.
The budget will rely on tax extensions,
spending reductions and $6.6 billion in
unanticipated revenue to account for the
state’s $15.4 billion deficit and to spare
higher education from further financial
shortfalls. However, slashes to UC state
funding could double to $1 billion — possibly
requiring further tuition hikes — if
predicted spending and tax measurements
prove to be unsuccessful.
UC President Mark G. Yudof said
additional cutbacks would place an
overwhelming burden on the already
financially constrained school system.
“A cut of this magnitude would be
unconscionable — to the university, its
students and families, and to the state that
it has served for nearly a century and a
half,” Yudof said in a statement released in
response to the revised budget.
According to Yudof, students would
likely shoulder the costs of closing the
budget gap.
“We have been engaged in a three-year
exercise in coping with wholesale cutbacks,
and by now the magic bullets all have been
spent,” Yudof said. “What this reduction
most likely would mean, as the governor
noted, is the need to yet again raise
tuition.”
Additionally, the potential $1 billion
reduction would impact campus faculty,
staff and facilities, Yudof said.
“Doubling the cut would reduce the
state’s contribution to the university’s core
funds — monies that pay professors and
staff members, light the libraries, maintain
the campuses, and all the rest — to roughly
$2 billion,” Yudof said. “State funding of
UC at this diminished level has not been
seen since the early 1990s, a time when the
university enrolled 80,000 fewer students.”
According to UC Office of the President
Media Specialist Steve Montiel, the UC
Board of Regents will discuss possible
solutions to the current proposed budget
figures at their meeting today and tomorrow
at UC San Francisco Mission Bay.
“The governor has now proposed a
billion dollars in cuts that would be necessary
if tax extensions aren’t covered,”
Montiel said. “The options that are going
to be discussed at the Regents’ meeting on
Wednesday are based off a $500 million
cut and what we can do for options over the
next five years to maintain quality, access
and affordability as best we can.”