<p>dstark, the biosciences at the UC’s will definitely get a slice of the $10 billion NIH pie. That money will be allocated for specific research activities only.</p>
<p>That’s what I hear.</p>
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<p>That’s exactly what I’m advocating - starting with Merced. The UC has no business asking the voters for more taxes until they have made a reasonable attempt at putting their own house in order.</p>
<p>^^concur. In addition, perhaps it’s time to revisit the 12.5% guarantee, and raise the admission requirement; instead, ~10% of high school graduates could attend a UC campus (if they so chose), and those with 3.00 gpa could attend a Cal State or juco and transfer in two years. (In the vast majority of California high schools, a B average in College Prep classes just ain’t that hard to achieve.)</p>
<p>Nearly all research grants allow an overhead deduction that can go to the school’s general fund and fund many school functions. So if UCLA gains $100M in new grants anour $40M can go to fund other operations with easy to manage restrictions.</p>
<p>More on the severity of the crisis from today’s edition of Inside Higher Ed:</p>
<p>[News:</a> Tarnished Jewel - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/13/california1]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/13/california1)</p>
<p>Key points:</p>
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</p>
<p>“These are far from the heady days of 2007, when Ruiz was named dean of Irvine’s buzz-attracting School of Humanities. In that year, she hired 17 new professors.”</p>
<p>WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH</p>
<p>Cry me a river. That is just so comical in this day it shows exactly what the problem is. Spending money like water for years and then wondering who stole the checkbook. They’ll lose a few people and move on. It’s never the end of the world. Plenty of young PhD’s would love to work at UC for half the pay the guys who might leave were getting.</p>
<p>My understanding is that tuition and stimulus funding will cover much of that state cut so they will be just slightly worse off overall.</p>
<p>Barrons – is that legal? Wont the NIH come after them? A grant is supposed to be spent on specified research. 40% off the top?</p>
<p>kayf, I don’t know how many NIH-funded research projects barrons has worked on, but in my experience such grants never allowed to freely funnel the money into the general fund.</p>
<p>^^^ barrons,
You’re right that the UCs will never have trouble filling faculty slots. Where they will have more trouble—potentially much more—is in recruiting and retaining the people they most want. That’s the difference between top tier schools and less stellar ones. No academic jobs go empty very long, regardless of the quality of the institution. But the top schools recruit and retain the very best people. Once the budgets of better-financed schools stabilize, it’s going to be open season on the up-and-coming stars on UC faculties. They’ll retain their share of them, but the terms of trade are shifting, and not in their favor. That’s what the UC administrators are panicked about.</p>
<p>(From the post by bclintonk)
If those numbers are correct and if they were applied linearly across the campuses, then that means that there’ll be a 20% reduction in the 17% of the budget UCLA gets from the state for an overall reduction impact to UCLA of 3.4% of the overall budget. </p>
<p>That amounts to a fair amount of money but not much of a budget hit relatively speaking and yes, this is a simplification. Most other colleges, businesses, and individuals are doing a bit of belt tightening right now also so why shouldn’t the UCs as well? If they did it right they should cut the excess including poorly performing staff, overly expensive staff, unpopular majors, and possibly even consolidate some campuses (like UCSC and UCM). I also see no issue with raising tuition somewhat as long as they do the appropriate and prudent cost trimming.</p>
<p>Overhead cost recovery is quite legal and a major reason why schools fight so hard to get the grants. A primer</p>
<p>[Research</a> Grants and indirect Costs](<a href=“Research Grants and indirect Costs - Universities, Rate, Government, and University - StateUniversity.com”>Research Grants and indirect Costs - Universities, Rate, Government, and University - StateUniversity.com)</p>
<p>Quote:
If those numbers are correct and if they were applied linearly across the campuses, then that means that there’ll be a 20% reduction in the 17% of the budget UCLA gets from the state for an overall reduction impact to UCLA of 3.4% of the overall budget. </p>
<p>If you put it that way–it doesn’t seem undoable–reducing costs 3.4%. I am reading all the related posts and deciding whether or not to change plans. My DD starts a full ride PHD program at UCLA (Behavioral Neuroscience). (She tells me this is guaranteed.) My DS starts as undergrad at Irvine as an Informatics major. Coming from the Chicago area, the undergrad will be paying OOS rates. This does appear a bit nuts under the circumstances. There are reasons I won’t go into why this decision was made. I would think Irvine would be glad to have those OOS students. If there is a huge disappointment one can always transfer. In the actual day to day student life how much noticable fallout is there going to be?</p>
<p>The problem is that the cuts are very un-uniform. Berkeley and UCLA have some middlin’ endowments…the other campuses really lag. Riverside is the largest undergrad campus, concentrated in Arts & Letters, which are most dependent upon state funding.</p>
<p>Feh.</p>
<p>Over the weekend I was at a party full of UCLA staff from a wide number of areas. I mentioned the letter from the UCSD chairs. Their idea was uniformly met with combinations of incredulity, disdain, and contempt. I don’t think UCSD will be getting much cover from the folks at UCLA if this sample was anything accurate.</p>
<p>It was pointed in passing that Riverside has the largest undergrad student population. </p>
<p>This is not just an academic [pun intended] exercise. TheMom got notice today that she’ll have to take 21 furlough days over the fiscal year.</p>
<p>
On the furlough - do you know if they can use accrued vacation days for the furlough days if they have enough accrued? If so, then it seems like the impact could be minimized if they’re given some flexibility in this area. I don’t know how many vacation days different UC employees get though. Lots of corporations are executing similar cost-cutting now - especially pay freezes, forced days off, ‘shutdown days’, etc.</p>
<p>Lucy55:
I hope there won’t be any significant impact on your kids at the UCs but until we know exactly what actions are taken it’s hard to say. As TheDad indicated it’ll likely affect different campuses and different programs on those campuses in different ways. </p>
<p>The UCs get a lot of press but I wouldn’t think they’re that unique in facing budget issues compared to other state and private colleges so if one panics and switches colleges because of this they may or may not be any better off. It also seems that it’s SOP for different publicly funded school systems to position themselves for budget preservation by very publicly stating all of the negatives that ‘might’ happen if ‘they’ have a budget cut. Some of this is an appeal to the emotions of the public and in-turn public approval concerns by politicians.</p>
<p>btw - my calculation was just based on the budget cut figure being speculated along with the reported percentage of the budget directly dependent on state funds (17%). When I checked UCSD it received even a (slightly) lower percentage of their budget from the state (around 15%). I don’t know about UCI.</p>
<p>Congrats to both of your kids on their successes.</p>
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<p>This is certainly what I’m seeing. Hard to believe the truth is a 3% reduction based on the many faculty I’ve spoken with. If it’s true, than reality has been lost in this perception and they have not gotten many candidates they want and have lost top talent.</p>
<p>when I’ve written this before I am told that the ivies are in bad shape too. Perhaps. But the ivies will not see the huge classes and over taxed resources that make profs run.</p>
<p>Numbers are being mixed here. A 3 percent reduction in budget does not come out as a 3 percent reduction in pay. Faculty making between $46K and $60K are getting furlough days equivalent to a 6 percent cut in pay…it goes up from there.</p>
<p>UCSD-D: no, you can’t take vacation to cover the furlough days. It’s complete “non pay” status.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that when you’re talking about the overall UC system budget, you’re talking not only about 10 campuses but also 5 medical centers and 3 national laboratories. The medical centers and national laboratories aren’t funded by the state, and essentially can’t be cut by the state; the campuses are substantially funded by the state, to the tune of well over 17% of their expenditures, possibly double that, and they are the units that will bear the brunt of the state-mandated budget cuts. A 20% cut to the 17% of the system budget represented by state aid can’t be measured as a uniform 3.4% cut across the system; it will be concentrated on the campuses, i.e., on the educational mission of the university, which may take a hit in the 10%-15% range. The research mission of the university will be fine in the short term, since research by and large pays for itself; but that also means the state cuts won’t much affect the research budgets of the 10 campuses, since most of that money comes form federal and private sources. (And no, barrons, there’s no room in the UC budget to siphon off a larger percentage of research funding as indirect cost recovery; they’ve already been doing this to pretty much the maximum extent the funding agencies will allow). </p>
<p>What will get whacked is educational programs hitherto paid for by the taxpayers. That means fewer places in the entering class, possibly fewer campuses, fewer undergrad courses, larger undergrad courses, more courses taught by grad students. But also little or no merit or seniority pay increases for faculty, little or no bargaining room to match competing offers in faculty retention battles, little opportunity to attract promising new faculty with competitive pay and benefits. </p>
<p>It’s sad. I’ve long been an admirer of the UC system. But this is an extremely difficult spot they’re in–unprecedented and unparalleled, because while many state universities are absorbing cuts, I don’t think any state university system has ever borne a cut as deep as this one. And there’s no obvious end in sight. If I were in charge, I’d sharply raise tuition and dramatically increase the percentage of OOS students in the entering class, and go full-tilt towards a private model by aggressively building up endowment as a buffer against further cuts in state aid. But frankly, it doesn’t matter that I’m not in charge; those steps now seem inevitable. And they will permanently change the face of public higher education in this country.</p>
<p>“Plenty of young PhD’s would love to work at UC for half the pay the guys who might leave were getting.”</p>
<p>But the UCs won’t be hiring young PhD’s. More courses will be taught by graduate students who are willing to live on very, very little, and by adjuncts who will cobble together a living. Far more courses will be taught in online-only formats, in another couple of years.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I don’t see any long-term solutions for UC. A catch 22 in trying to be more self-sufficient is that the state legislators will penalize UC in coming years when tight budgets require more cuts in state spending. </p>
<p>The state lawmakers will simply rationalize that if UC has a larger endowment and more self funding, the state can correspondingly reduce the amount of aid to UC. I don’t see any way to win the battle in future years until the economy completely turns around.</p>