The State Budget Crunch Has UCI, CSUF Rethinking Their Budgets
The state budget crunch could slow down the University of California, Irvine’s ambitious expansion plans and lead to an increase in student fees at California State University, Fullerton.
Already, as the current fiscal year’s state budget gets slashed, faculty salary increases have been halved and the universities suddenly are in the predicament of having more students than they have money for.
“We’ve gone from a mild recession to a severely under-performing state economy,” said CSU Chancellor Charles Reed. “The next 24 to 36 months will be hard on everybody.”
Last month, Gov. Gray Davis, faced with a budget shortfall caused by a year of plummeting tax revenue and soaring energy costs, ordered freezes on state hiring, non-essential travel, equipment purchases and consulting contracts.
Under the state constitution, the governor cannot order the systems to freeze hiring or expenditures, but he did ask that UC and CSU comply with the orders, to a level that “would not interfere with meeting their educational mission.”
“That cost the UC system $90 million initially, although some of it got added back through electricity-related refunding,” said UCI chief budget officer Roy Dormaier. “Also, we’re still taking all the students that we agreed to take.”
UCI had been planning a 50% growth in enrollment during the next 10 years. Enrollment this fall at the campus is at 21,885 students, up from 20,212 last year.
“We hope to still grow, but we don’t know what our budget allocations are going to be like,” Dormaier said. “One option is to slow or reduce enrollment growth.”
A revision to the state budget passed by the Legislature and signed by Davis cut salary increases for UCI staff from the 3.5%-to-4% range, to about 2%.
UCI also is reducing regular and deferred maintenance, and funding for construction, instructional equipment and for library materials.
Meanwhile, Davis also has asked all state agencies, including the UC and CSU systems, to plan for a 3% to 15% reduction in state funding in the next fiscal year.
Of the University of California’s $16 billion annual budget, about $3.3 billion comes directly from the state. About $3 billion comes from the federal Department of Energy for three research labs operated by UC, and the rest comes from across-the-board federal funding, patient revenue from UC hospitals, food-service revenue at the system’s campuses and facilities, student fees and private support.
UCI gets approximately 9% of the UC system’s state funds and student fee income, about $340 million this year.
California State University hasn’t reported specific numbers for its Fullerton campus.
“Campuses develop enrollment targets and we then work those into the budget requests,” said Colleen Bentley, Long Beach-based director of public affairs for the California State University system. “We’ve got to look very carefully for next year’s budget, especially if it’s going to be less money, to make sure we don’t over-enroll.”
At the moment, the CSU system has about 7,700 more students than it now is budgeted for, meaning those students are unfunded.
“We’re not going to be able to keep doing that,” Bentley said.
The entire system has 313,000 students with Cal State Fullerton counting 30,357,a school record enrollment, up nearly 2,000 from 28,381 last fall. CSUF now is the fifth-largest in the 23-campus CSU system.
The CSU budget is proportioned among the campuses primarily based on enrollment.
CSU administrators are going to be asking the state for full funding of enrollment growth, estimated to be 4% next year, or 12,030 new full-time students. CSU trustees also are asking for a 4% salary increase for its 42,000 faculty and staff, which would total $89.5 million.
Trustees also have mulled a student fee increase if state revenues continued to plummet, they said.
A 10% reduction in CSU’s general fund allocation would mean $260 million less in its budget, while a 15% reduction would mean $390 million less.
And with 76% to 80% of CSU’s budget in salaries, some of the effects would fall on faculty and staff.
The California State University is the largest four-year university system in the country. n
