Our colleagues at the University of California Riverside are seeking our support as they face a strangulating 11% cut to their campus budget, substantially greater than other campuses. The distribution of state funding among the campuses is shaped by a number of factors that severely disadvantage UCR, including:
- Counting PhDs as 2.5 times as costly as undergraduates; UCR has fewer PhD students than other campuses.
- The “rebenching” that was supposed to have been introduced 7 years ago to compensate less well-funded campuses has been slowed down because it relied on increased state funding to UC – funding that has not been forthcoming.
- A substantial proportion of state funding was earmarked for particular centers and projects at the more prestigious campuses.
- The high proportion of undergraduates at UCR who are California Residents (96%) as compared to Berkeley (76%) and UCLA (77%) means UCR is denied an important source of revenue in the form of non-resident tuition.
In an era when public universities are forced to seek private funding, the older campuses with greater prestige and accumulated advantages are better able to exploit opportunities to increase their revenues. The widening gap between campuses means that those educating under-represented minorities are also the most under-funded.
If you wish to support our colleagues at Riverside struggling against draconian cuts in their budget, then you can sign the petition here. The inequality among our campuses makes it all the more urgent to continue the push for more state funding and the $66 fix.
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.