The University of California is a premier research university.
Four campuses are members of the prestigious American Association
of Universities (AAU). A senior UC official said that very soon,
two additional campuses would achieve that status. A chancellor
noted that each of the nine universities was the equivalent of
a top-ranked university and all would be members of AAU if it
were not for the politics of belonging.
UC also plays a unique role in the hearts and minds of Californians.
The ultimate goal for many high school teachers and high school
principals is to graduate students capable of competing for a
UC spot. A former regent described the university system as providing
the standard of quality for the state and then told his personal
story of the difference the university had made in his life. Virtually
every person we interviewed expressed pride in the university
and its accomplishments. Many repeated personal stories about
the difference that their attendance at the university had made
in their lives, similar to the former regent's story. Most mentioned
the university's outstanding performance on recent rankings of
graduate programs.
There is less agreement about the degree to which the university
is a single entity. A former regent described UC as "a group of
semi-autonomous campuses with primary responsibilities resting
with campus leadership to develop a distinctive mission. The amount
of central coordination is not strong or dominant." A chancellor
described the university as an "anomaly." He said, "Constitutionally,
organizationally, and functionally it operates like one university
when it isn't." A current regent said, "The reason the university
works at all is that it is largely decentralized in terms of education.
The chancellors have a lot of authority and should have."
The degree of decentralization brings both advantages and disadvantages.
A senior system administrator told us, "We now have a high degree
of decentralization compared to where we were before. We've grown
from a single University of California with branches to what are
functionally nine co-equal campuses." While the university has
systemwide policies, most educational and academic decisions are
made at the campus level. Because of shared governance, many entities
deal with academic policies. The point of initiation can be a
chancellor, the Academic Senate on a campus, the provost, or even
the Council of Chancellors. Ultimately, any initiative could be
examined by all of these groups.
Even though the university includes nine separate campuses with
considerable autonomy, a strong common culture and the size of
the system disposes faculty and administrators to work with their
counterparts on other campuses rather than turning to outsiders.
A campus administrator said, "We tend to work very closely together
and to talk more with one another than with outsiders. Our unified
budget limits competition among the campuses, strengthening the
system." Those we interviewed believe strongly in the value of
the system organization and the advantages of exchanging information.
A chancellor said, "The clout of the nine campuses is tremendous.
We don't act as a group all of the time and when we do we have
great power."
Some respondents described a down-side to the system arrangement.
A chancellor identified UCLA as an institution that might be better
off going in its own direction, but quickly added that the good
of the system and the good of the state were best served by sacrificing
individual benefits for the sake of the whole. Apart from the
fact that some campuses (San Diego was also mentioned) might be
better off on their own, the most serious criticism of the system
had to do with the degree to which every campus seeks to emulate
Berkeley and UCLA. Such homogenization is expensive in terms of
the duplication of doctoral and professional programs. It also
impacts adversely on innovation and flexibility. Any effort to
reduce duplication must, at some point, confront what most observers
agree is the strongest example of faculty governance in the United
States.
The 1879 ratification of the state constitution granted to the
UC Board of Regents powers that lead some to describe the university
as "the fourth branch of government." When the state Legislature
passes bills affecting the university, lawmakers usually include
a clause explaining that the statute will only go into effect
if the Board of Regents passes a comparable resolution. During
the 1970s a series of court decisions laid out the separation
of powers implied by constitutional status in terms of tuition,
academics, and other areas of board responsibility. The university
has its own retirement system, an asset that was used to fund
one major campus strategy for responding to the state's fiscal
crisis of the 1990s. The university also has the capacity to shift
funds between accounts, an element of flexibility that helped
the university preserve student numbers and services during fiscal
cutbacks. While the state can prescribe the proportion of Cal
State's fees to be used for student aid, they have only a gentlemen's
agreement with the UC system.
This autonomy, according to a long-term observer of Sacramento
politics, gives the university enormous bargaining power. UC representatives,
however, still pay attention to the priorities of the Governor
and the Legislature because of the state's power to determine
budgets. Several years ago, a UC lobbyist asked an influential
legislator what right he had to ask detailed questions about the
UC budget. The answer was, "I have the money." A former CPEC official,
after noting that nothing in the constitution requires the state
to appropriate funds, described the university's tendency to dwell
on the diminishing portion of funding provided by the state as
"bullshit." He added, "The state appropriates 80 percent of core
support and UC cannot get by without central or core support."
There are signs of a changing relationship between state government
and the UC system. Recently, UC Board of Regents meetings have
been contentious and the focus of much more attention from the
media and the public. A regent described his first six years on
the board as "very boring" and the next three years as "sheer
panic." A chancellor said legislative term limits create real
problems: "We don't know the people we are working with and they
don't know us. Universities are hard to understand and we're going
to be dealing regularly with brand new people."
The university recognizes that relationships with state government have changed. A campus business officer noted, "The Governor and the Legislature have the purse strings. We try to pay attention to what they tell us." This is a marked change to the historic approach to "fill legislative halls with blue jackets and gold ties" in a political interchange where "We take no prisoners." A CSU administrator told us that UC, with greater constitutional autonomy, has been much more willing to acquiesce to elected officials. The administrator added, "While UC's constitutional status gives them many degrees of freedom, the [freedom] seems to have diminished."
There are significant differences of opinion both within and outside
the board concerning its appropriate role. A chancellor told us,
"The Regents' role is to set policy, to set the rules and regulations
for the university at large. They are then supposed to delegate
operations to the president who in turn delegates to the chancellors
who in turn delegate to vice chancellors and so on." New regents,
who tend to be activist, are not particularly happy with this
definition. A regent appointed by a previous Governor told us,
"Regents do attempt to influence the actions of chancellors of
individual campuses through both formal and informal means. Every
time something happens on any campus, some regents want to establish
a new regulation and a central staff to manage it to try to insure
that universities behave as they think they should."
A newer regent expressed frustration with "the love/hate relationship"
between the board, the administration and rest of the university:
"Regents come to the board with particular interests but the establishment
doesn't want the Regents involved. The Regents then lose interest
and simply follow administrative recommendations." He described
the question of how to channel Regents' interests for the best
use of the university as "a major issue." One of his newer colleagues
on the board reflected this position as well, noting that some
of the regents are trying to get more power at the board level
because "You want to feel that your work counts for something.
You don't want to be a rubber stamp."
Regents do seem disengaged from many of the decisions an outsider
might ordinarily expect them to consider. They don't evaluate
chancellors. They don't evaluate the president and they don't
receive information on the relative performance of campuses. In
the absence of any formal evaluation process, a regent told us
the board relies on national rankings of graduate programs, adding,
"When the rankings came out last fall, it gave everybody a lift."
Regents do not get involved in actions involving academic personnel.
Curriculum decisions typically do not come to the board either.
A regent who had served on the board for well over half of his
total term had very little information about the Regents' role
with respect to graduate programs. He asked rhetorically, "Why
do five universities have medical schools?" He thinks that Regents
should be involved in approving new doctoral programs but he is
not sure if this is the case.
Much of the work on the budget is also done without the Regents'
knowledge. The formula used for distributing the UC appropriation
to the campuses is not approved by the Board of Regents. The 7.25
percent tuition increase in the 1996-97 UC budget message developed
by the UC administration came as what one regent described as
"a big surprise to Regents and students at a public meeting."
The same regent acknowledged, "The sheer magnitude of the university
leads to many surprises, but the board has given the new president
a clear message that they will tolerate some little surprises
but they do not want big surprises."
There are at least two or three different ways in which buildings
can be funded. A regent told us that very few of the buildings
actually constructed came before the Buildings and Grounds Committee.
Campuses can sometimes build parts of a building even if funds
for the entire building are not available. This same regent described
his view of the budget process: "The board receives a report in
October on negotiations with the Governor. In November, they decide
to go along with it. The process is very fluid and difficult to
understand. Regents do get involved with student fee issues."
We heard at least three explanations for the more activist role
new regents are taking. The first, widely heard among those within
the UC system, emphasized the changing character of the board.
One university administrator noted that at one time Regents were:
people who had close associations with the university and who viewed being on the board as a great privilege and who understood relationships between boards and managers. The board now has fewer people who have ever run large enterprises. It is made up of housewives, doctors, contractors with small businesses, lawyers with small businesses, and accountants with experience in regulatory agencies. As a result, people who do not understand the difference between running the university and governing the university are trying to do both.
Those who criticize the composition of the current board are not
in agreement about how it should be changed. One regent argued
that younger members are needed and that members should be chosen
less on the basis of the size of their contribution to the Governor's
campaign. Another said that the board would benefit if it "included
fewer lawyers and more business folks."
A former regent said he was not sure that the Regents had ever
been representative of the demographics of the people of California
or that it should be. He was not convinced that a board with more
representative characteristics would make an improved contribution.
A second explanation for board activism favored by newer regents
and those close to them has to do with the degree to which a former
president, David Gardner, tried to keep activities close to the
Office of the President. That experience, plus public reaction
to the way the board handled his retirement package, we were told
by a regent, has induced a bias among many regents to be distrustful
of the president's office and to be doubtful of whether it knows
how to manage. A regent who participated in the retirement decision
added, "While the staff served us badly on the retirement package,
we served ourselves badly as well. The publicity from this action
was very damaging to us and very embarrassing to us." The regent
continued by noting, "The system was badly in need of reforms
when Peltason [Gardner's replacement] was hired but none were
forthcoming."
Some regents also complained about staff motivations and responsiveness,
as well as the accuracy of the information they provide. One,
obviously irritated by staff comments about board micro-managing,
noted with some determination that regents would get involved
in whatever they consider important. The regent forwards questions
from students and other constituents directly to chancellors and
other staff members. Responsiveness among chancellors varies greatly,
"all the way from I'll get you an answer right away to five months
have gone by and we haven't heard a thing." This same regent noted
that affirmative action administrators were very unresponsive
in providing information about preferential admissions, adding,
"If administrators had been more responsive, it might not have
prevented the problem but it certainly would have helped."
A third explanation of increased activism by the Regents holds
that the Governor has a political agenda and has appointed regents
to carry it out. This explanation occurs with about equal frequency
among internal constituents of the university and those close
to the Sacramento political scene. A legislative aide in describing
the stand-off between the president and the Regents in the implementation
schedule for ending preferential admissions noted that the Regents
did not listen or take advice in the deliberation process before
setting a deadline for implementing the policy. He added, "Anyone
should know that a policy cannot be changed in mid-cycle without
opening yourself to a number of lawsuits." The board, and particularly
its most vocal members, looked completely past this concern, according
to the aide, "because the issue was so politically important to
them."
The combination of past mistakes and present activism insures
interesting board meetings. Most meetings are held in an auditorium
on the San Francisco medical campus, chosen, we were told, in
the vain hope that the inconvenient location would discourage
unwanted public participation. Visitors to board meetings have
to run a gauntlet of uniformed UC security officers who sometimes
outnumber the participants they are there to search. Once inside
the auditorium, participants are separated from the stage on which
Regents sit around a table by a number of tiered rows in which
staff members and invited guests are seated. In each aisle, a
security officer dressed in civilian attire watches spectators
rather than the board meeting.
Meetings rarely start when scheduled, follow no time line that is discernible to visitors, and are frequently interrupted by closed sessions. Information about agenda items is hard for visitors to obtain in advance or at the board meeting. Describing these meetings as public relations disasters would probably do them too much credit. Since acting on the affirmative action issue, board meetings have been frequently disrupted by student protesters. Affirmative action has been an enormous drain on board morale and energy. At one meeting, students seated in the spectator section rushed the board and slightly injured a security guard. Later that afternoon, one regent told us, "The forthcoming initiative on civil rights to be voted on this fall will take the Regents off the hook. If it passes we're mandated by the voters to do what we did. If it doesn't, I'll vote to reverse." California voters did pass the initiative, which attempts to end the use of race or ethnicity in admissions support programs or related services.
A second important function involves managing the processes that
define and sustain an organizational culture that keeps individual
campuses from moving into their own orbits. Central among these
processes are academic personnel, admissions, and the curriculum,
all of which are coordinated through the office of the system
provost, whose major challenge is to address all potential points
of conflict. Perhaps the most sensitive of the processes the provost
oversees is the "transfer, consolidation, disestablishment, and
discontinuation of programs" (TCDD). TCDD amounts to a form of
due process for faculty threatened by collaborative activity undertaken
to improve academic efficiency and synergy across campuses. Partly
because of the UC culture, the process relies much more strongly
on carrots than sticks. The relative emphasis on carrots troubled
at least one regent who told us he would like to see substantially
more authority over Ph.D. programs lodged in the Office of the
President.
A third key function of the Office of the President has to do
with negotiating the annual budget with the Legislature and the
Governor, ideally with the support of the Board of Regents. Part
of the challenge here is to reconcile the campus budget process,
which largely faces inward, with the system budget process, which
is focused outward. Established procedures for relating the system
budget to academic planning are, in the words of one system administrator,
"enormously cumbersome and do not accomplish much."
The president's office manages these multiple tasks through a
staff described by a UC faculty leader as numbering from 1,100
to 1,200 employees. System executives would not provide a precise
figure, arguing that the numbers would be meaningless because
the figures include the UC press, agricultural extension, the
total extension program, the overseas program, and certain other
systemwide initiatives. This argument falls largely on deaf ears
among UC faculty, who express concern not only about the numbers
but also the bureaucracy. The same faculty member who furnished
the estimate of the numbers added that "Some parts of the central
office look on the faculty as a pain in the ass."
One metaphor we heard for understanding the role of the Office
of the President compared the system to a dog sled and the president
to someone standing on the back of the sled. Our informant added:
The University of California cannot be taken on its face value as a single university operating in many locations. It must be seen as a system in its own right. The president of the university is not a leader who can say anything about programs or curriculum without generating a letter from every department in the system asking him what the hell business is it of his how any subjects are taught. Leadership out of the president's office is a strange thing. The president can talk about the quality of education, about the cyber-library, about telecommunications, and about the role of the university in research. But he cannot talk about how well calculus is being taught.
The Academic Council serves as the executive committee of the
Academic Senate. The chair and vice chair of the Academic Council
attend Board of Regents' meetings and regularly participate in
discussions, although they cannot vote. There is also a statewide
Academic Assembly composed of representatives from each campus
proportional to size plus the chair and vice chair of each campus
senate. The Academic Assembly meets by statute once a year and
acts mainly to confirm events that have already taken place. It
can, however, inject itself into any issue and can introduce new
legislation. The Academic Assembly also confirms the Academic
Council chair and vice chair and is keeper of the rules.
Campus senates are called divisions. Divisions generate policy
as well as implementing it. If a division generates policy, it
must convince the other eight divisions to support its position.
Divisions may also take other actions involving policies that
apply only to their own campus. Currently there are tensions among
divisions and between some divisions and the Academic Council.
The source of power of the Academic Senate, including its authority
over academic programs and admissions, is in the standing orders
of the Board of Regents and dates to the faculty revolt of 1919.
Faculty view the authority of the Academic Senate as constitutionally
established. The senate must be consulted on appointments, promotions,
and tenure. Divisions make recommendations on academic personnel
that chancellors are unlikely to contravene, although technically
they could. A regent told us that tenure and curriculum decisions
never get to the board, adding that the president's office gets
involved on a policy level but most of the decisions are made
at the campus level.
Faculty influence extends well beyond the formal structure of
the Academic Senate. Faculty members are dominant in the selection
processes for presidents and chancellors, first of all determining
who appears in the pool and, second, in narrowing the pool to
ten. Once the pool of candidates is down to ten, the Regents'
committee and faculty members work together to reduce the pool
to from three to five finalists who are invited for interviews.
The process produces the single name that is advanced by the Regents'
committee to the entire Board of Regents. Thus, a majority of
the board is not involved in selecting a new president other than
by endorsing the selection of a subcommittee of their peers. The
process is very similar for chancellors. Not surprisingly, most
leaders come from within the system, many through the Academic
Senate.
Some regents believe the selection process for chancellors and
the president is too private and does not provide for sufficient
involvement of a majority of the Regents. During our study, the
Regents introduced a motion to change the process to have the
top three candidates appear before the full Board of Regents before
a single person has been selected. The motion failed. Commenting
on the decision to retain the current process, one regent said,
"It's hard to be too enthusiastic about the existing approach
[for selection of a president], given the results it produced
the last time around."
A second way that faculty exercise influence outside the senate
structure is illustrated by the affirmative action issue. The
initiative to ban race and ethnicity as criteria for admission
or employment at the university came from a regent. The response
of the Academic Senate was to refer the matter to the universitywide
Committee on Affirmative Action, an action now considered by some
senate leaders as a mistake. Such committees do not make their
reports through the Academic Council and are not subject to the
discipline of the committees that do. A faculty leader told us,
"Such committees should not really be thought of as part of a
hierarchy." Once the Affirmative Action Committee took up the
issue of the Regents' initiative, they developed their own report
and forwarded it to the Board of Regents without checking with
the Academic Council, thus by-passing regular senate procedures.
Depending upon whose perspective is valued, the Academic Senate
is either the reason why UC became as great as it did or the principal
barrier to fundamental change. In reality, it may be both. A former
regent told us, "The strengths of the senate are the strengths
of the university, but it makes analysis and change more difficult."
A chancellor described the Academic Senate as "the principal barrier
to change because it insists that UC is one university, that all
faculty must be treated the same at all campuses, and that all
campuses must be comprehensive." A former system executive said,
"Chancellors complain more about the senate than is justified."
The Office of the President has historically used an annual approach,
but the compact with the Governor negotiated during the past year
has essentially changed that. The compact represents a four-year
plan that provides guaranteed funding increases on an average
of approximately four percent in addition to funds provided for
state debt service, in return for a guarantee from the university
for enrollment growth, increased portability of courses, continued
increases in productivity and efficiency, and high priority on
improved graduation rates.
Once the Legislature has made its lump sum appropriation to the
university, the university divides the funds among campuses. A
faculty member told us that this task used to be accomplished
by yelling and screaming. Under a previous president, a formula
was devised that weighted graduate students more than undergraduates.
A new president is now reconsidering that formula. A proposal
under consideration during our study would provide equal compensation
for undergraduate and graduate students for new resources above
the current base. Neither the president nor anyone else can take
away from one campus to give to another. The most that can be
done is to redistribute the increment.
Campuses have substantial latitude over the funds they receive
through whatever formula the system agrees upon. However, funds
that flow to the campuses are watched very carefully by internal
constituencies, thus limiting what chancellors can do in the absence
of consensus about the way in which money should be spent. Funds
appropriated for salaries are held sacred. Funds related to workload
have much greater flexibility. Most student fees go back to the
campuses where they are generated, but some of the funds are redistributed
among campuses to take into account different economic profiles
and differing kinds of students.
While there are no uniform campus budgeting processes, UC Berkeley
illustrates how one campus currently manages this activity. The
chancellor issues guidelines in January listing the content of
the Governor's proposed budget and the university's expectations
with respect to appropriations. The guidelines ask vice chancellors
to help develop campus priorities by answering questions raised
by the chancellor. Responses are analyzed and hearings occur under
the direction of both academic and fiscal administrators. These
activities lead into an annual budget retreat of seven senior
administrators. During this meeting, campus priorities are ranked
using issue papers prepared by the campus planning and budget
office. This meeting produces recommendations to the chancellor
and a letter to unit heads indicating what will be funded. Because
this budget process grew out of hard times, it is more elaborate
than one used previously. It may, according to some campus administrators,
"be more elaborate than the system requires at the present time."
UC Berkeley had unique advantages as well as unique challenges in dealing with the budget reductions of the last several years. Because of positive fund balances and the reliance on retirement funds to offer early retirement to faculty, the campus was able to phase in the consequences of reductions in state funding rather than require severe departmental cuts in the year the state actually reduced funding. While reductions in state funding were apportioned in a reasonably uniform manner across the system, the impact of early retirement was greater on Berkeley; faculty numbers are down about ten percent in 1996-97 from the year before cuts began. Because it is an old campus, Berkeley has more deferred maintenance (currently $130 million worth) than the typical campus. In addition, the problems of maintaining the library, which serves in some respects as a state library, have been more severe than in other libraries of the system, with the cost of funding inflation for acquisitions alone amounting to approximately $3 million per year.
The economics of reducing programs is more complicated than a simple statement that programs are duplicative. Some graduate programs are too big because they need graduate assistants to teach large numbers of undergraduates. Overall, graduate education is extremely important to the research university, where the need for a common sense of citizenship among faculty can be defeated if some are second-class citizens because they do not have doctoral programs.
The provost also pointed to the importance of graduate education
as a driver for the state's economy.
Provosts no longer believe all campuses must replicate Berkeley.
They have been meeting for the past two years to study ways to
get faculty to engage in cooperative planning. Like many activities
within the university, this one has been largely invisible, in
part because of concerns that if administrators are perceived
to be too visibly involved, they run the risk of offending the
Academic Senate and alienating people whose collaboration is essential.
Provosts are also concerned about appearing to promise more than
they can deliver, perhaps wisely so since their efforts to date
seem to have achieved very mixed results.
Cooperation is easiest to obtain in research, where state and
national laboratory money create the possibility for funding at
the system level. It is much more difficult to obtain in areas
such as history and foreign languages, although both have been
involved in discussions. Absent exceptional fiscal stress, collaboration
is very problematic, particularly if it has connotations for ending
a program at a particular campus. The budget provides the primary
incentives. The system is trying to hold some central discretionary
money to encourage collaboration of the sort currently being undertaken
by history faculty. Most of the examples of differentiation and
collaboration we were able to uncover, however, underscore the
extreme difficulty of working through system processes and safeguards
in matters involving university faculty.
While some UC officials hope for greater cross-campus collaboration
through use of technology, campuses have been inconsistent in
implementing collaborative models-running the spectrum from beaming
information between campuses to actually sharing courses and programs.
A senior system administrator told us that the tenth campus, when
developed, will have to draw heavily from existing campuses and
that technology will be a strong part of this equation. The university
is also studying the use of technology within its libraries.
Although Regents get, according to one regent, "far more information
than we can handle," they are not sure it's the right information.
Regents were particularly critical of the information they received
in relation to "the affirmative action disaster." In a board meeting
we observed, system staff were closely questioned about an article
that had appeared in a San Francisco newspaper dealing with internal
security of the computer system and the treasurer's office. A
staff member said the report the newspaper had quoted was never
intended to be subjected to public scrutiny. Clearly no one on
the board had been informed about the issue. Following expressions
of concern, a regent said, "I assume you will be certain that
a letter goes to the chair of the Audit Committee explaining this
situation." In the same meeting, after selecting an audit firm
different from the one recommended by the treasurer, the Audit
Committee closely questioned representatives of the firm to be
certain their work would reflect the interests of Regents and
not simply support the perspectives of staff members.
Despite these warning signals, UC administrators expressed high
levels of satisfaction with the information system. A senior executive
told us, "Information is abundant and fine. If there is not enough
information out there, it is certainly not the fault of the system.
There is simply too much information for any one person to understand
but certainly the university does all that it needs to do to provide
information." A chancellor said that in order to effectively communicate
with policy leaders, campus heads must convince them to visit.
He said that his campus had some success in doing this, adding,
"People like the campuses to which they relate and what they know
about them. It's the other campuses that bother them." A senior
administrator on a different campus described a community advisory
committee that the campus has used and said that it had been a
good tool for communication.
UC faculty members disagreed with administrators. An Academic
Senate leader reported:
The information system doesn't work well because it is imbedded in so much junk. A large part of the problem has to do with the way the university manages information to support positions and please constituencies. We try to provide information that conceals differences between campuses. Data gets organized particular ways to deal with particular problems and constituencies.
The affirmative action controversy blurs any effort to assess
university performance on access and equity. The issue is not
so much about outcomes as it is about objectives. High selectivity
and high pressures for full-time attendance produce graduation
rates for under-represented populations that are the envy of the
rest of the nation, even if they are below the rates for Asian-Americans
and whites. The university is now designing a new set of strategies
for diversity. One regent described outreach as where the university
needs to focus its efforts. Recently, the university convened
an Outreach Task Force that includes representatives from UC,
CSU, the community colleges, K-12 schools, and the independent
sector. The university will spend at least $100,000 a year on
this program, which, a second regent said, "would exist forever
because of the amount of work that has to be done with the high
schools and graded schools." This same regent told us that UC
had done a "lousy job of increasing diversity at the undergraduate
level and that the graduate level had gone to the opposite extreme."
A final issue in the access equation has to do with university
relationships with community colleges. According to a senior UC
spokesman, "Transfer now works quite well." The same official
put most of the blame for transfer problems on the failure of
community colleges to provide students with the necessary encouragement
and courses. Most individuals outside the UC system, however,
agreed with a legislative aide who noted that the university really
doesn't pay much attention to community colleges, focusing its
outreach programs instead on high schools.
The picture on efficiency is also unclear. It is possible to argue,
as did one campus fiscal officer, that the university has improved
its efficiency over the past three years because it is now receiving
about ten percent less from the state and is providing the same
quality of service to the same number of participants. Or one
can argue, as did a senior UC executive, that UC is actually lower-cost
than either the community colleges or CSU because large classes
and the use of graduate assistants make it unnecessary for the
university to spend as much on undergraduates. Whatever the merits
of these "efficiency arguments," they are somewhat undermined
by the comments of a chancellor who, after noting the efficiencies
produced by fiscal stress, added that the changes were not lasting:
"Unfortunately, as soon as the crisis was over the university
tended to return to business as usual."
Apart from anecdotal information of the sort reported above, it
is not clear that UC has really looked at itself in terms of efficiency.
A regent told us he has not seen a lot of information across campuses
on efficiency. A former regent and strong UC supporter said, "The
university has to assess itself and to be convincing that it has
looked at itself in terms of how it allocates the resources it
already has. It cannot make its case for public support if it
has not accomplished this task." A senior chancellor provided
some evidence about the degree to which such assessment has occurred
in the questions he posed and the answers he provided:
Does California need nine AAU-type universities? California could probably get along with less but it's better off for having nine. Should there be less duplication? Yes. The nine multipurpose universities could be more specialized. They could have a greater sum at less cost if they were less duplicative. Can California afford nine research universities? Yes, if changes are made that encourage more entrepreneurship and permit privatization.
Most questions about efficiency, however, are quickly brushed
aside by information about UC contributions to the state economy.
Said one regent in a typical response:
Sure the university is expensive, but it's worth it. In San Diego, the UC payroll is $40 million a month, second only to the Navy as a producer of jobs and payer of salaries. Gifts to the university are at an all-time high. The economic impacts of the institution are critical to the areas where they are located and to the state. The University of California is a great producer of jobs and every Californian has a real stake in their success.
Assessments of quality were subject to none of the ambiguity we
heard when discussing access or efficiency. Virtually everyone
expressed pride in the "greatest university in the world." The
principal evidence advanced was the recent National Research Council
ratings in which UC campuses did extraordinarily well. A chancellor
told us, "This is really a measure of the quality of the faculty,
and systemwide the University of California cannot be beat." A
legislative aide described research in graduate education as a
critical component of university performance and said that the
university does a good job in these areas.
If one moves beyond research and graduate program rankings, however, concerns about quality begin to appear. A former regent said the key question is whether the university could provide quality education to as many students as are projected to be qualified to enroll. He continued, "The quality of UC includes attracting good chancellors, attracting and retaining good faculty and ultimately being able to offer students the ability to complete degrees in a timely way so they don't have to go out of state to graduate in four years." A legislative aide noted the need for closer relationships between higher education and the K-12 system. A former policy official expressed concern about the failure of UC to use its considerable power in helping schools improve.
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