Low budget may force class cuts

Rising costs and budget shortfalls are forcing UCLA departments to make cuts that could make it more difficult for students to enroll in classes they need to graduate.

Higher enrollment and costs, coupled with the state’s inability to increase funding to public universities, mean individual departments are paying more and more money out of their own budgets.

To compensate, many departments have begun trimming back course offerings and staff, especially teaching assistants and non-tenured lecturers.

But in a school where space and enrollment are already perpetual problems, fewer classes may make it difficult for students to fulfill curriculum requirements by the time they are supposed to graduate, some officials said.

Departments were warned months ago that the state’s financial problems could force cuts, said Bruce Beiderwell, director of the UCLA writing program, which provides courses that fulfill UCLA’s writing requirement.

But because the state budget was up in the air until just last week, the university could not provide actual numbers around which to plan.

Some departments planned for the worst, and scaled back their fall quarter course offerings, said Jennifer Wilson, assistant vice provost of the Honors Program.

New freshmen who attended later orientation sessions over the summer were among the first students to feel the effects of these cuts ““ by the time they began enrolling, few courses were still open that could fulfill general education or university requirements.

Judi Smith, vice provost for undergraduate education in the UCLA College, said administrators were able to secure additional funding from the chancellor’s office to open up enough extra classes.

“We have not heard that there is (still) a large unmet demand,” she said.

But hundreds of students encountered trouble when trying to enroll this quarter, said Bob Samuels, a lecturer in the writing program and president of the University Council of the American Federation of Teachers, a union which represents some UCLA faculty and staff.

And the situation is likely to get worse in winter quarter.

Though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not cut funding to the University of California as officials had feared, state spending still is not enough to offset costs associated with higher enrollment and other expenses.

“Even though the state gave us exactly the same amount as last year, (costs go) up,” said Tom Lifka, associate vice chancellor for student academic services. “So it’s a cut.”

This year’s state budget will not cover increased costs associated with higher enrollment, health care, employee benefits, energy or maintenance, according to a Sept. 29 letter from Steven Olsen, UCLA’s vice chancellor for finance, budget and capital programs.

Samuels said departments are seeing their temporary funding get cut first. Temporary funding pays for, among other things, salaries for non-tenured instructors such as lecturers and graduate student teaching assistants.

Language and writing departments are especially hard-hit by these cuts, since many of their courses are taught by non-tenured faculty, Samuels said.

He added that these departments will likely have no choice but to cut classes.

“We’re going to have to cut a certain number of each,” he said. “We already have giant wait lists, so this is going to be a disaster.”

But Smith said at this point the College expects to once again be able to secure enough funding from the chancellor’s office to prevent major cuts.

“We will work hard to maintain the offerings that are critical to our students,” she said. “That may mean that there are fewer electives or that classes are slightly larger than usual.”

But Beiderwell noted that the writing program does not currently offer any electives ““ since all of the classes fulfill graduation requirements, deciding where to cut will be especially difficult.

“I do think we’re facing the possibility of cuts in the winter term that will significantly affect undergraduates and undergraduate progress to degree,” he said.

Beiderwell said the writing program will probably cut around 30 classes, each of which could have enrolled about 20 students. He stressed that they will not completely eliminate any courses. There will simply be fewer sections offered for each course, meaning fewer students can enroll in each one.

Other departments also said any cuts could affect students’ abilities to fulfill graduation requirements in time.

Gregory Schopen, chairman of Asian Languages and Cultures, said his department expects cuts to classes that fill the university’s language requirement.

“A significant if not a large number of undergraduates trying to fulfill their language requirements are going to be turned away from our classes,” he said.

In past years, Asian Languages and Cultures has cut staff and other expenditures in order to protect course offerings, he said.

“We are so close to the bone in terms of staff and other expenditures that now we really have to look at cuts to teaching,” he said.

Departments often have little flexibility with their budgets. Tenured professors’ salaries are guaranteed, and account for 80 percent of the College’s budget, Smith said.

Schopen said the department has not yet discussed how it will deal with graduating seniors who need to complete their language requirements, but he noted that the “vast majority” of students enrolled in language classes through the department are non-majors trying to complete university requirements.

“That’s obviously in the back of our minds, because we have to protect those students and we have to protect our own majors,” he said.

On top of costs associated with higher enrollment, departments are incurring new costs related to financial pressures the university has been feeling for several years.

Wilson said departments are now being asked to contribute money out of their own budgets to pay for utilities, building maintenance and health care. The chancellor’s office had paid these bills in the past but can no longer cover the costs without help.

“(The UC Office of the President) has not been providing enough money to the universities, presumably because they haven’t received enough from the government, to pay for the rising costs of utilities and health care budgets,” Wilson said. “That has been coming out of the chancellor’s pot over the years. There’s been no compensation from UCOP and so it’s completely depleted.”

And over the long term, administrators are faced with the looming problem of over-enrollment. Currently, UCLA is over-enrolled by about 1,250 students, Lifka said.

Over-enrollment results from higher-than-expected matriculation rates as well as current students taking extra time to graduate.

Smith said the College particularly has a serious problem with over-enrollment, which is magnified in impacted majors.

She encouraged students not to put off graduation requirements until their third or fourth years and noted that the College offers many required classes based on the number of freshmen and sophomores who need them, not on the number of seniors who have not yet completed graduation requirements.

Lifka said he believes UCLA will ultimately have to confront the over-enrollment problem.

“I don’t see how we can go on indefinitely being over-enrolled,” he said.