In his latest blog, Chris Newfield laments the absence of an adequate plan to save higher education generally and the University of California in particular. Reflecting on the latest Regents’ meeting, Newfield observes that UCOP and the Regents are feeding each other’s fantasy that UC can survive this latest financial crisis without an infusion of state funds:
Between the Regents’ desire to protect the legislative Democrats from the University, and their desire to avoid responsibility for layoffs, they will support further borrowing and campus cuts spread out over 2-5 years. UCOP and the Board are locking in years of campus cuts where there is already nothing left to cut, but without ever actually saying so.
Evidence of the real harm done to higher education by the financial crisis is everywhere-from the suspension of admission to some graduate programs at research universities like Columbia, Princeton, and NYU (as well as our own campus), to academic hiring freezes, to higher dropout rates of economically disadvantaged students. Here at Berkeley, we’ve already seen how a knee-jerk preference for cuts as a response to lost revenues has meant the abandonment of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI), a pioneering research center for the study of social justice, led by faculty and students of color. The Institute is threatened with dissolution on the grounds that it has not brought in enough money from outside, that a new director can’t be found, that repair costs on the historic Anna Head Complex run into millions of dollars. But the annual cost to the university was just $350,000 – less than the salary and benefits paid to some Associate Vice-Chancellors.
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association