Budget cuts to the UC system are changing all levels of UCLA from faculty to students

Professor Albert Courey has been watching UCLA class sizes increase for at least the past year.

“We used to have 25 students in a discussion section at most,” said Courey, professor and chair of the chemistry and biochemistry department. “Now all of our discussion sections in our freshman and sophomore levels are filled up, and we have had to increase enrollment capacity to at least 30 per section.”

The effects of cuts to the University of California have slowly started popping up at UCLA ““ larger classes, difficulty retaining faculty and higher student-to-teacher ratios.

In the past 10 years, state funding for UCLA has decreased by about half ““ about $1.4 billion has been cut from the UC system since 2009. It’s a trend of declining support that escalated once the Great Recession hit.

Individual campuses will not feel the hit of the latest trigger cut thanks to reserve funds, but experts have questioned how sustainable the strategy is.

Either way, the cuts have forced administrators to think of ways to cut costs and save money while still trying to maintain the quality of the university’s education.

UCLA has begun condensing academic programs, reducing the size of its faculty and staff and recruiting more nonresident students. Last year it welcomed the biggest incoming freshman class ““ about 5,800 students ““ in its history.

Saving for a rainy day

By anticipating the probability of reduced state funding, the UCLA administration has been relatively prepared in recent years with a “rainy-day fund” and have been able to absorb much of the cuts to the UC. Originally cut in 2009-10, $55 million in state funding was restored to UCLA the next year. UCLA administrators then set the returned funding aside for future years.

UCLA administrators expect to hold more than $25 million in reserve funds this year in case there is another decline in state funding, said Steve Olsen, vice chancellor and chief financial officer of UCLA.

When deemed necessary, some of the “rainy-day” reserves have been used to improve and maintain undergraduate education while avoiding further cuts to department budgets, he said.

About $16 million in reserve funds were used to hire new graduate teaching assistants for “bottleneck” courses. These are prerequisite courses necessary for progressing through popular majors and general education requirements, Olsen said.

“The sense is that we have weathered the storm thus far very well,” said Andrew Leuchter, chair of the Academic Senate and professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. “But we are very concerned that quality is at risk. We are not sure how we can absorb more cutbacks in the future and maintain both the access to and the quality of our (academic) programs.”

Increased nonresidents

The increased recruitment of nonresident students by the UCLA administration contributed to the influx of freshmen in 2011-12, and UCLA experienced an increase in nonresident applicants this year ““ a 69 percent rise in international freshman applications and a 48 percent increase in out-of-state applicants.

Since nonresident enrollment became a priority in 2007-08, new revenues from the increased tuition nonresidents pay is about $40 million annually, Olsen said.

Olsen said administrators are viewing this year’s larger-than-expected freshman class as an anomaly that will not continue. An unexpectedly high number of high school seniors accepted UCLA’s admission offer, he said.

More likely, future classes will return to fall 2009 and 2010 numbers ““ closer to about 4,600 students, Olsen added.

Still, with the current freshmen moving on to become sophomores next year, the chemistry and biochemistry department will have to increase class sizes for other courses such as organic chemistry, Courey said. As the ratios of students-to-TAs and students-to-faculty increase, the students are going to get less individualized attention, Courey said.

Departments finding ways to cope

Several individual departments have begun finding ways to supplement their shrinking budgets.

The economics department has augmented its budget with the help of its Board of Visitors ““ a group of distinguished alumni who provide funding and advice, said Roger Farmer, a distinguished professor and chair of the department.

The history department, meanwhile, shortened lower-division discussion sections by one hour this year.

Maria Ornelas, a graduate student and teaching assistant in the history department since fall 2010, teaches three 50-minute sections, as opposed to the two one-hour-and-50-minute sections she was responsible for before this year, she said.

The history department felt it was being inefficient in its use of its budget for TAs, Ornelas said.

“It is just such an accelerated pace for a history class,” Ornelas said. “I have noticed that I have to get to the bottom line.”

Six-figure donations from alumni and friends of the UCLA history department and tuition from summer sessions have helped cushion the blow of inadequate funding to the history department, said David Myers, professor and chair of the history department.

Small departments like women’s studies have also had to offer more summer classes than in the past to supplement their budgets, said Jenny Sharpe, professor of English and women’s studies and chair of the women’s studies department.

“(The decline in funding) does hurt smaller departments ““ like ours ““ differently because we have smaller budgets and not a lot of wiggle room,” Sharpe said.

“Everybody thinks somebody else is doing better, but when you talk to people across the divisions, we’ve all been affected. I think it’s very important that we work our way out of this together.”

Losing faculty

In Myers’ two years as chair, the history department has made only three hires while losing “eight or nine” faculty members to retirement or resignation, he said.

“There is no longer an automatic assumption that if someone retires ““ or leaves for another institution ““ that they can be replaced,” Myers said. “It’s not a 1-to-1 ratio.”

Patrick Geary, a distinguished scholar in medieval history, left UCLA in December after 18 years as a history professor and has yet to be replaced.

In Geary’s view, the quality of a UCLA education has declined considerably since 2009.

“It’s been very hard, and you just get to the point where you feel that UCLA is going to turn into Cal State Westwood or Westwood Community College or something like that in the future,” Geary said.

According to Geary, he is the third of three senior professors in his field to leave without being replaced in the last six years. The losses were a significant blow to an already small specialty, Geary said.

The university is operating under a partial faculty-hiring freeze. Since 2009, academic departments have left at least 47 full-time faculty positions unfilled ““ like Geary’s ““ saving $6.8 million, according to a budget plan released by UCLA officials in February 2011.

The slow hiring trends will continue for several years, according to the budget plan.

Last year, the economics department hired four assistant professors, Farmer said. The new faculty members did not make up for the six vacancies left over from the previous year of no hires, he added.

“The number of students is going to increase faster than we are going to be able to hire new faculty to teach them,” Farmer said. “If that persists, I would hope the university would provide resources so we could give students the education they deserve.”

The economics department is focusing on recruiting assistant professors who are then trained to become tenured professors, Farmer said. Over the next six to eight weeks, the economics department will be flying out doctorate students from all over the world to interview for positions at UCLA, he added.

In the few instances when hiring is permitted, some departments have to share resources.

The history department is working with the English department to conduct a joint search for one new faculty member, Myers said. The new professor will teach in one of the two departments or in both.

“(A joint search) is not unheard of, but it’s not common,” Myers said. “But I suspect in this age of diminished resources, it will become more common.”

The university’s economic problems were not the deciding factor in his departure, Geary said. He took a position with one of the world’s most prestigious history research institutions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

“This is not an issue that is a problem of the administration,” Geary said. “These are very fine people who have the right values. But they constantly are being undermined by the voters of California who have decided that excellent higher education is not worth paying for.”

Students paying the price

Students have not only had to cope with an almost 50 percent increase to tuition since 2009 but have also paid the price for the decline in state support of higher education at the campus level as well.

Xuming Yu, a third-year statistics student, said it was relatively easy to get the classes he needed when he was a first-year and difficult but not impossible last year.

Now Yu is waiting to see if he will get into Statistics 101B this quarter ““ a class only offered once a year that he needs to graduate.

“If I don’t get into that class again next year, I’m screwed,” Yu said.

Not only is it getting increasingly difficult to enroll in certain classes, said Kendall Brown, a third-year psychology student, but classes are also growing in size.

With all of the cutbacks, students like Aranzazu Medellin, a fourth-year American literature and culture student, have fewer course options than in the past.

“I’m going to officially become a double major (in Chicana/o studies), and I’m taking more classes for that major than I am for English,” Medellin said. “Most classes being offered this quarter, I had already taken.”

Students spend a relatively short amount of time at UCLA compared to professors or administrators and have less time to see the impact of budget cuts.

But fourth-year sociology student Jay Aquino, eating lunch on the A-level of Ackerman Student Union, said it’s in the atmosphere.

“It changes the environment you are in,” Aquino said. “It’s less about learning and more about graduating. That type of environment ““ for me ““ is very disconcerting.”