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July 1, 2003
To: The UCSC Community
From: Chancellor Greenwood, EVC/Campus Provost Simpson
Re: Budget Reductions and Strategies
The following message is being sent to the UCSC administrative email tree on behalf of Chancellor Greenwood and Campus Provost Simpson, in order to inform our community of the steps the campus will take this year to address reductions in state funding and to announce the strategic and decisive longer-term measures the campus will pursue.
Their letter to the campus is on the web at: planning.ucsc.edu/ebc/07-01.framework.html.
The following information is provided as background and context:
- The State of California is facing the most significant financial challenge in its history. This problem is both systemic and long-term. Although there is no resolution to budget discussions in Sacramento as of this writing, we expect permanent cuts in UCSC's final 2003-04 budget to total at least $12M, approximately 10 percent of our total state-funded budget. Additional reductions for the coming fiscal year are likely, and further cuts for the following year are almost certain.
- Juxtaposed against this sobering financial picture is the obligation of the University of California to accommodate an increasingly larger and more diverse student population. UC Santa Cruz expects to enroll an additional 1000 students in fall of 2003, and the State Department of Finance has recently forecast a need for UC to provide access to an additional 12,000 students beyond that previously projected for 2010. This will require that UC Santa Cruz continue to plan for campus growth, both for development of our academic programs and to accommodate regular year, on-campus enrollments beyond 15,000. The campus is beginning now to examine its long-range development plan.
- Even as the campus addresses the challenges of budget cuts and the opportunities of enrollment growth, there is heartening evidence of superior academic quality, achievement, and potential. Specifically, the campus' recent two-year planning process (planning.ucsc.edu/plans2001/) highlighted pervasive evidence of quality and underscored exciting opportunities before us as we plan for the UC Santa Cruz of 2010.
- Confronted with the seemingly contradictory imperatives of accommodating increasing enrollment demand, fostering an agenda of instructional and research excellence--all while operating on a reduced budget, the campus could pursue certain strategies in the short term. Many of our sister institutions, for example, have chosen to increase class size and suspend investments in infrastructure. These are not, however, strategies that can be sustained over time, if we are to preserve and enhance the quality of the academic programs that are central to our distinction and our ability to accommodate a growing and increasingly diverse student population.
Maintained by:pioweb@ucsc.edu