It turns out that no public university is immune to crises.
Facing what Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling “financial ruin,” the University of California is beset with its largest budget cuts since Ronald Reagan was governor nearly 40 years ago.

Schwarzenegger is proposing cuts of 20 per cent to the annual UC budget, or nearly $2 billion USD in state funding. UC is the fourth largest public university system in the United States. Sixty per cent of its funding is from state grants, with 29 per cent from student fees and 11 per cent from general funds and endowments.

The cuts are leaving each of UC’s 10 campuses struggling to stay above water amid double-digit shortfalls. Some have it even worse. At Berkeley campus, the yearly deficit is now predicted at $145 million, while Santa Barbara is facing a $45-million shortfall.

To make up the funding gaps, the university has begun taking drastic measures.

UC’s board of regents convened June 18 to approve, among other things, an immediate 9.3 per cent student fee increase, following another 10 per cent increase earlier in this same fiscal year. Though faculty members have begun taking voluntary pay cuts—after all employees were forced to take up to eight per cent pay cuts in the spring—layoffs are expected in the next fiscal quarter.

Tutoring has also been cut deeply, along with education abroad programs and state-funded diaspora students associations. In all, student services are facing an eight to 20 per cent cut across the board. Compounding the problem is the record number of students admitted to UC this year.

UC’s woes are not uncommon among public universities in the United States, where the recession has led every state to cut its grant funding for higher education. This fiscal year alone, 26 states cut funding for public universities by tens of millions of dollars.

Florida State University is struggling to make up a $32 million shortfall, while Clemson University cut nearly 500 jobs while raising tuition in June. In January, Arizona State saw cuts of $55 million from its annual $400 million in state funding, leading to the layoff of another 500 employees.

For students at a UC, the pain of a new budget crisis is only beginning to come into focus. Many administrators have begun privately floating the idea of making UC a three-year institution to reduce costs, according to Elliot Rosenfeld, the university news editor of The Daily Nexus, a student newspaper at UC Berkeley.

“The state sees no way out, they pass this along to the UC’s leaders, and they pass this along to the students. It seems like new organizations are cropping up every day, and students are joining to voice their displeasure,” said Rosenfeld. He noted more students now have to take on part-time or full-time jobs to cover their fees.

“But everyone persists. We go with the grind, and live with the increased fees, but the future doesn’t look good.”