2001 2002 Budget for Current Operations UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Office of the President October 2000 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE California’s institutions of higher education are about to be inundated by Tidal Wave II – the demographic bulge created largely by the children of the Baby Boomers. Just as their parents – Tidal Wave I – made access to college a defining issue of the 1960s, so this new generation of students, the largest and most diverse in history, is about to make the next ten years the “decade of higher education.” Tidal Wave II will create the most challenging decade the University of California has ever faced as we prepare to enroll 210,000 students by 2010 – an increase of more than 60,000 students since 1998-99, the equivalent of today’s combined enrollments at UC Berkeley and UCLA. Not even the hectic postwar years, which brought thousands of returning GIs to our campuses, posed so formidable a challenge. UC remains committed to providing access to all qualified students and we are working aggressively to address the challenge of Tidal Wave II, but with the knowledge that there is no single, one-size-fits-all solution. Each campus will adopt strategies that work in terms of its particular strengths and circumstances. And though it will require hard public policy choices from the State and uncommon resourcefulness from the University to find a place for these thousands of additional students, Tidal Wave II is within California’s means. But there is a vital difference between enrolling students and educating them. UC provides value to California only as it provides high-quality educational programs. We do the State and our students no favor if academic excellence is left behind in the rush to deal with the numbers. We know it is possible to grow in quality as we grow in size because that is precisely what UC has been doing over the last 35 years. Yet there are large differences between the 1960s and today. • Today, UC must find room for additional students much more quickly than in the 1960s, increasing our enrollment by an average of 5,000 students annually. We will grow by as many students over a 12-year period as we did over a 30-year period. • At the end of the 1960s, the drive to expand educational opportunity to traditionally underrepresented students was just gathering force; today, the means that were developed in the 1970s and 1980s for attaining diversity are being challenged nationwide, and in California have been largely abolished. We are now embarked on a major outreach initiative to improve college preparation broadly and keep UC’s doors open to students from all backgrounds. • We are living in a knowledge-based economy, one in which the capacity to innovate will play a critical role in determining which countries prosper in the global marketplace. This situation is placing new demands on research i universities, like UC, which are on the cutting edge in producing the educated people and new research findings that keep the economy growing. All the University’s commitments – to undergraduate and graduate education, to scholarship and research, to public service and to quality – must be balanced in our budget request to the State. This year’s budget request, which was developed in anticipation of reaching agreement on a new partnership with the Governor, seeks to meet these challenges and includes proposals to: • Fund the University’s merit salary program which allows us to reward the best faculty and staff; and to provide faculty with competitive salaries and other employees with salary increases that at least keep pace with inflation. • Fund an additional 6,000 students, growth of four percent, at the agreed-upon marginal cost per student. • Increase funding, as part of a four-year plan, to address the permanent budget shortfalls in several critical areas including ongoing building maintenance, instructional technology, instructional equipment, and library materials. • Provide the initial increment of funding, as part of a multi-year plan, to strengthen the quality of our undergraduate programs. Over time, the goal is to provide $50 million in permanent budget support which is equivalent to the funding that would be needed to return to the historic student faculty ratio of 17.6 to one. These proposals are included in the University’s basic budget and would be funded as part of a new partnership agreement with the State that would continue to provide public higher education in California with the resources needed to grow and the fiscal stability to plan. We are working with Governor Davis and are confident that in the months ahead we will reach agreement on a partnership that will provide us with the resources to maintain quality and meet the growth challenges of Tidal Wave II, yet hold us accountable to specific outcomes. At the same time, we are continuing our efforts to increase federal funding and to raise more private dollars. In 1998-99 we received private pledges and private gifts and contracts of nearly $1 billion – an historic high and an eloquent statement of support from the University’s friends and alumni. In addition to the 2000-01 proposals that would be covered by this new partnership and which constitute the University’s basic budget, we have identified several research, academic outreach, and public service initiatives that are a high priority to the University and would greatly benefit the State. If approved by the State, these ii initiatives would be in addition to the funding levels anticipated in a new partnership agreement to support the University’s basic budget. Academic Outreach. Educating the State’s citizenry remains at the core of our mission and our faculty are working to help improve the academic preparedness of K-12 students, especially those in educationally disadvantaged schools, to prepare more teachers, and to create more opportunities for experienced teachers to renew and expand their professional skills. The initiatives proposed in this budget build on our commitments to improve access to higher education and include: • An initiative to raise substantially the number of community college students transferring to UC, especially from those community colleges with current low transfer rates; • Providing standards-based professional development to sixth through ninth grade teachers of mathematics to ensure the successful completion of algebra by California’s secondary students; • Increasing programs to identify, prepare, and encourage students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds to attend and succeed in graduate and professional school; and, • Using the University’s research expertise to identify the root causes of educational disparity within California’s school system and using the results to devise strategies to provide greater access. Expanding Research to help the State’s Economy. Intellectual discovery in universities is proceeding with breathtaking speed. The life sciences are driving a revolution in biomedical technologies and agriculture. Computer and information sciences have ushered in the Internet and entirely new paradigms for communications and commerce. Mutlimedia technologies are creating new vehicles and new demand for the arts and humanities. These revolutions contain such rich potential for application that innovative forms of cooperation with industry are springing up to translate research into useful products. California, with the most knowledge-intensive economy in the world, is a leader in transforming knowledge into wealth. The initiatives proposed in the budget would contribute to California’s competitiveness in a variety of ways. • An initiative to expand research efforts in engineering and computer science, including support for graduate student research. To help keep California’s high- technology industries vital in a fiercely competitive international marketplace, the economy will continue to rely on cutting-edge research and highly trained graduate students. We are planning to increase enrollments in engineering and iii computer sciences at both the undergraduate and graduate levels by at least 40 percent across the UC system over an eight-year period ending in 2005-06. • An initiative to establish a universitywide multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed grants program to support basic scientific understanding of the State’s natural resources, which are critical to sustaining California’s environment. • An initiative for collaborative research between California and Mexico focusing on issues of critical economic interest, such as trade and economic development, the environment, food and agriculture, and health. • Expand access for faculty and students to the Internet2 to encourage and facilitate collaboration with researchers in industry. One of the brightest chapters in the history of American higher education is the story of the University of California and its rise from a raw frontier institution to one of the world’s most dynamic centers of learning. This ascent was far from inevitable. Most public universities in the United States not only failed to make it to the first rank; they did not even attempt the climb. It happened at the University of California because of our tradition of quality – an institutional environment in which high aspiration and achievement are routine expectations – and because the people of California and their elected leaders, through their very generous support, made it possible. The goals of our 2000-01 budget are to continue educating a growing and diverse population, preparing the next generation for a knowledge-based economy, and helping find answers to the most pressing problems our society faces. In partnership with the State, we are confident that we can meet the challenges before us and maintain the promise of opportunity to tens of thousands of students who will be arriving on our campuses in the coming decade. Richard C. Atkinson, President October 1999 iv UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FOREWORD The University of California was founded in 1868 as a public, State-supported land grant institution.