State budget may raise UC funding

By Timothy Kudo

Daily Bruin Staff

The university may receive more than expected from the state as
Gov. Gray Davis’ revision of his budget proposal allocates
nearly $124 million more than his initial budget promised.

And according to what Larry Hershman, UC vice president for
budget, told the UC Board of Regents at Thursday’s meeting in
Covel Commons, there could be more where that came from.

“We still have a shot at getting more money this
year,” Hershman said. “This ought to be a high
priority.”

In the budget, the university received about $12 million to go
toward year-round instruction. Year-round instruction is one of the
first significant steps the university is taking to deal with
“Tidal Wave 2,” the children of the baby boomer
generation that will create an influx of about 60,000 students over
the next 10 years.

According to Craig Breedlove, the director of the higher
education section of the Legislative Analyst’s Office,
students should never have paid more for summer instruction in the
first place.

He equated the costs for summer instruction to those of making
late night phone calls in which the phone company builds their
lines for a high volume of calls.

Since the university already has building space, Breedlove said
it didn’t make sense to charge them more to go to school
during the summer.

“Right now summer students pay two to three times as
much,” Breedlove said. “We think they should be paying
the same amount, if not less.”

Eliseo Ilano, the president of the UC Student Association gave a
presentation at the meeting noting the importance of increasing
funding for student services.

In the early ’90s, budgetary shortfalls forced the
university to increase student fees and cut student services by
about 25 percent.

Since that time, Ilano said, “There’s been an
increase in the dollar amount for student services, but
that’s to pay for staff salary increases.”

In past years, student fees have also dropped by about 10
percent.

Because student services have traditionally been funded by
student referendum rather than the state, Ilano asked regents to
tweak their accounting so that state funds could be used.

But according to Sandy Harrison, a spokesman for the Department
of Finance, student services are an area the government should stay
out of.

“It’s our feeling that that’s appropriate that
the students decide what services they want,” he said.

Hershman said in his report to the regents that almost all the
provisions the governor proposed were passed in the state Senate,
but that there were problems in the Assembly.

In addition to funding for summer instruction, the governor has
proposed about $300 million in outreach for next year.

The university uses outreach efforts to increase diversity and
improve California’s K-12 education.

Though people have viewed outreach’s current success
differently, Regent Peter Preuss noted the regents needed to be
sensitive to the long- vs. short-term effects of outreach since
those skeptical of outreach claim it isn’t working.

Outreach is expected to have significant effects in the next
five to 10 years, university officials said.

“We have an obligation to spend it as wisely as we
can,” Preuss said.

“This is a quagmire of sorts,” he added regarding
spending the money on the issue of long- vs. short-term
improvement.

There was also $1 million in the budget for online AP testing so
that students at schools with few or no AP classes can still remain
competitive.

“I believe we’re at the cutting edge of this,”
UC President Richard Atkinson said.