Legislators Told 25% Cut for UC Is ‘Not Workable’

UC President David P. Gardner told legislators seeking budget relief Thursday that a 25% cut in state support next year was “unreasonable and not workable” and would “fundamentally alter the character” of the university as well as jeopardize the state’s economic future.

UC Irvine Chancellor Jack Peltason, who will replace Gardner on Oct. 1, told the lawmakers “recovery would take decades.”

Searching for solutions to the state’s expected $11-billion budget shortage, a two-house budget conference committee had asked the University of California and the California State University systems to assess the effects if their funds were cut 25%.

Gardner told the committee that such a reduction, amounting to about $530 million, would wipe out the equivalent of all state funding received by four of UC’s campuses--Irvine, Riverside, San Francisco and Santa Barbara--or a 30% reduction in faculty and staff.

Closing one campus is not a practical move, the UC president said, because “it cannot be shut down except through a careful, time-consuming and costly process . . . undoubtedly taking several years under the best case.”

Another option would be to refuse admission to all 30,000 new freshmen and transfer students who are expected in the fall, but Gardner said the savings would be only $200 million and the public would be outraged.

A third alternative would be to raise student fees from $3,000 to $8,000, which, Gardner said, would make UC’s nine campuses twice as expensive as the University of Michigan, now the costliest public university in the country, and would drive away many low- and middle-income students.

A final possibility would be to eliminate next year’s spring semester but, Gardner said, “how you would put the institution back together again, I don’t know.”

“So you are telling us there is no way to reduce your budget by $530 million?” asked Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley).

Gardner replied “there are some things that could be done,” such as gradually reducing enrollments, eliminating academic programs and professional schools, raising student fees and imposing tuition for the first time, but warned that all these moves would take several years and that he sees no possible cuts approximating 25% for next year.

“A university is not like a spigot that you can turn on and off,” he said. “It has taken 125 years to build UC. It would not take much or long in the current fiscal environment to do damage that would take generations to correct.”

Peltason said UC is “one of the greatest magnets the state has” to attract new business and industry and that the impact of a 25% funding cut in a single year “would be felt well into the 21st Century.”

Opening the hearing, the first of several the budget conferees plan, Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), the committee chairman, said “California is at a crossroads. Some basic decisions must be made about the future of the state and, first and most important, is what is the state investment in education going to be?”