UC may face 15 percent cut in budget in upcoming year

By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Staff

SAN FRANCISCO “”mdash; The University of California could be
facing a substantial fiscal hurdle in 2002-03, according to
discussions held by the Board of Regents during its meeting on
Wednesday at UC San Francisco.

Larry Hershman, vice president for the budget in the UC Office
of the President, informed the board to prepare for a possible 15
percent cut ““ or $450 million ““ of the UC’s
overall budget, as announced by Gov. Gray Davis.

Attributing the forthcoming cuts to a slowing state economy and
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hershman told the board not to rely
on its partnership with the state for much relief.

The partnership is an agreement between the UC and the governor
that outlines a commitment by Davis to raise state funding to the
university in proportion to its growth.

This entails a 4 percent annual increase to the State General
Fund base, plus funding for enrollment growth and an additional 1
percent increase for ongoing building maintenance, instructional
equipment, instructional technology and libraries. The partnership
ends in 2002-03.

Regent William Bagley suggested the university cut back on
growth to maintain quality of services in the UC.

Another suggestion made was to raise student fees, which
Hershman said were already about $2,000 below the national average
among comparable public universities.

Students throughout the UC pay $3,426 in student fees per year,
not including individual campus fees.

There have been no fee increases in the last seven years,
Hershman said, but rather reductions of 10 and 5 percent from
undergraduate and graduate fees, respectively.

If these reductions were undone, the university could recover
$45 million from its budget.

Regent Ward Connerly said student fees should have been raised
while the state’s economy was thriving during the late 1990s,
when the university could afford to do so.

“We should raise fees in good times rather than
bad,” Connerly said.

“But it’s driven by politics, and now we have an
artificially low fee structure to catch up to.”

UC Students Association chair Kenny Burch said that though
student fees have not increased in recent years, the cost of living
for students has.

“The notion of raising fees is ignorant of the full cost
to attend (a UC),” said Burch, a graduate student at UC San
Diego.

He noted that in the same period that student fees remained
constant, the cost of living near flagship campuses like Berkeley
and UCLA have risen 20 and 18 percent, respectively.

Fee increases would be counterproductive to outreach efforts,
dissuading students from attending the UC due to financial costs,
he said.

The state’s priority should lie in educating its students,
Burch said, citing that in the last 30 years, 20 new prisons were
built in California while no additional UCs were added.

“When times get rough, that’s when you find out what
the state’s priorities are,” he said.