The Covid19 pandemic presents unprecedented challenges to higher education. Lost revenues from tuition and fees, housing and services, performances and athletic events, as well as plummeting state funding, endowments, and investment yields, will make recovery difficult for all institutions, and impossible for some. As many as one quarter of colleges in the United States may not survive the crisis.
At Berkeley, the pandemic has already cost an estimated $200 million; for the whole UC system, the total loss is projected at $2.7 billion by June 30 — all of this in a matter of months. To put that in perspective, the deficit when Chancellor Christ assumed her post was $160 million, a deficit that took three years to eliminate through cuts and new revenue streams. Now, with the deficit growing and costs of Covid protocols to re-open the campus mounting, many of those very revenue streams are themselves jeopardized, appearing as unstable foundations of a healthy budget. For example, with borders closed and populations around the globe fearful of travel, revenue from non-resident tuition will dwindle to a trickle. And private giving? Never in recent history have so many hands been reaching for the same pools of private wealth.
Meanwhile, the California state contribution to UC will also diminish; the Governor’s current proposal reduces the already anemic UC general funds by 10-15%, unless federal aid is forthcoming. And while one might expect the federal government to support the public universities that educate four-fifths of the country’s undergraduates, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos instead appears to be favoring religious and small conservative institutions with emergency federal funding for higher education.
With little left to cut in the university budget that will not diminish the quality of education and research, UC must not retreat from the campaign for public support of higher education. (We applaud Michigan governor Christine Whitmer, who launched a “free college” program for all essential workers in her state.) Chancellor Christ and President Napolitano must insist to those in Sacramento and Washington DC that public universities like ours are even more important in the Age of Covid. Our research will help the state, the country and the world discover the best ways of dealing with the dramatic consequences of the pandemic on our social and economic lives, to say nothing of our politics and public health. And our teaching will remain the engine of social mobility in the United States, a critical counteracting force against the woeful inequalities that the pandemic has surfaced so dramatically.
Even if we succeed in obtaining increased support from the state and federal government, the campus will face enormous difficulties in the coming years. Quite apart from the imperative to ensure the health and safety of all who work and study on campus, the Berkeley Faculty Association believes we should meet these challenges guided by a set of clear principles that reflect the public mission of the campus.
- The breadth and quality of undergraduate and graduate education must be sustained. To that end, we cannot sacrifice lecturers, librarians and support staff, small but excellent programs, or educational practices that simply cannot be “scaled up.”
- We must ensure that research budgets are sustained so that faculty can continue to support the university’s public mission and maintain its global reputation. Graduate students are a vital part of research and teaching on our campus, and their work must also be supported, quite likely in new ways and for longer, as they confront an unprecedented collapse in the job market.
- There should be no layoffs until capital reserves are depleted. Early retirement schemes should be favored over layoffs, and increased individual health insurance and pension contributions must not be used as stealth salary cuts.
- Furloughs and cuts, where necessary, must be steeply progressive. Across-the-board reductions of any kind, whether to salaries or departments, hit the vulnerable hard while insulating the wealthy from sacrifice, and risk destroying small gems within the university.
Wendy Brown, Paul Fine, Mara Loveman, and James Vernon for the Berkeley Faculty Association