From: "Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor"
Date: January 20, 2011 10:02:24 AM PST
To: "Staff, All Academic Titles
Subject: Appointment of the Vice-Chancellor Administration and Finance
It gives me very great pleasure to announce the appointment of John Wilton as Vice Chancellor - Administration and Finance. John was identified to fill this critical position for the Berkeley campus from a field of outstanding candidates in a nation-wide search following the move of Nathan Brostrom to the Office of the President. John is expected to begin his new position on February 1st.
John Wilton has extensive experience in both the public and private sector. For almost 25 years, he worked at the World Bank - a complex, global organization with an annual budget of $2Billion that provides low-interest loans, interest-free credits, grants and policy advice to developing countries for a wide array of purposes to assist their advancement, including in education. While there, he worked in most parts of the Bank, including operations in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe as well as in the Economic Research and Treasury departments. He also undertook two overseas assignments working on specific economic policy issues in Indonesia and the broader set of issues related to the process of transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe. In 2002, he became Vice President for Strategy, Finance and Risk, and two years later was named Chief Financial Officer. During this time he was responsible for defining the Bank's overall business strategy, overseeing its financial policies and risk management functions, and ensuring that the administrative budget was consistent with the Bank's financial outlook and aligned with its strategic priorities. He oversaw a team of over 400 staff at the World Bank.
Since leaving the Bank in 2006, John has worked as a Managing Director and the Director of International Research for Farallon Capital Management LLC, a global multi-strategy US-based investment manager. He was also a consultant to Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm. John provided these firms with global macroeconomic advice and research on specific issues.
John grew up and was educated in the United Kingdom, where he attended the University of Sussex, receiving his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in economics and statistics. He then spent two years working as an economist for the Government of Tanzania before returning to the UK to study at the University of Cambridge for his PhD in economics. He was working on his doctoral degree when he left to join the World Bank.
John will play an instrumental leadership role at UC Berkeley at a time of continuing and challenging resource constraints, partnering with the Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost to set long-range administrative and financial goals, and in management of the campus, the development of campus policies, and the distribution and utilization of financial, capital and human resources.
This Vice Chancellor position has broadened to include leadership of increasingly urgent campus priorities: the continuing design and implementation of Operational Excellence, the campus's initiative to reduce costs and improve campus operations; stabilization of the budget; and the establishment of a sustainable financial model for the future. The focus on these goals as the immediate agenda led to a change in title from Vice Chancellor-Administration to Vice Chancellor-Administration and Finance. Associate Vice Chancellor Erin Gore will continue to serve as chief financial officer, reporting directly to John.
I am most grateful to Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary and Associate Vice Chancellor, Business and Administrative Services, Ron Coley, who have set aside some of their other priorities to help us manage this critical portfolio, while we searched to fill this position.
I also want to express my thanks to the search committee, which was aided by the consulting firm of Spencer Stuart, for their outstanding work in advising me on this appointment.
Please join me in warmly welcoming John Wilton to UC Berkeley.
A press release announcing the appointment will be posted later today on the campus NewsCenter
Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Operation Excellence Memo
A message to members of the Berkeley campus community from the Operational Excellence Executive Committee
While we continue to absorb this week’s budget announcement from Governor Jerry Brown of a proposed $500 million reduction to the University of California state appropriation and study its implications for the Berkeley campus, we are more than ever convinced of the importance of the success of Operational Excellence (OE). We want to take this opportunity to update the campus about the progress of Operational Excellence and specifically, the results of one part of the organizational simplification initiative begun last fall that addresses our management structures.
We have for some time now been pursuing a number of different approaches to meet our budget challenges and reduce our reliance on state funding. Our plans have focused on both revenue increases and cost reductions and include both short- and long-term strategies. We have realized revenues through growing philanthropy, increasing research funding, higher student fees, and a rise in the number of students paying non-resident tuition.
Operational Excellence is a major strategy for reducing our administrative costs while simultaneously improving the quality of our operations. OE is designed to create efficiency, improve organizational performance, and reduce our costs over the next three years, on a recurring and ongoing basis, by at least $75 million dollars per year.
The Operational Excellence diagnostic report, completed and accepted in Spring 2010, identified that contrary to best practice in well-run organizations, we have too many supervisors who supervise only a few people and that elimination of management layers could save up to $20 million annually. In September, we set out to design new organizational structures across campus by asking our Deans and Vice-Chancellors, including the Chancellor’s office, to have unit restructuring plans ready to implement in early 2011 which would meet savings targets by creating higher spans of control, that is, having fewer supervisors manage more people.
While unit restructuring is never an easy or simple exercise, I am pleased to report that
our Deans and Vice Chancellors put forward extremely high quality submissions that collectively exceeded our expectations. In total, the plans prepared by the unit leaders will deliver savings of as much as $20 million. As importantly, we will create a flatter and healthier organizational structure which will have about one third fewer managers and will focus our best managers on developing talent and actively managing the organization.
The campus expects to eliminate approximately 280 full time positions, half involuntarily and half through removal of vacant positions, retirements and voluntary separations, mostly before June 2011. Although this is positive news for our cost savings effort, we are saddened to announce that nearly 150 staff on our campus will be laid off. The reductions in our staff workforce have already begun and will continue through this fiscal year and beyond. Those leaving will be notified by their managers, with appropriate severance arrangements for those who qualify, including training and counseling services. We want to express our thanks and recognition to the staff who are leaving for their service to the university.
The reductions in workforce span all levels of our organization, including mid-management levels; about one-quarter of the positions eliminated have salaries plus benefits of $100,000 and above. We have significantly reduced the number of managers who supervised fewer than three people. Prior to the restructuring about 45 percent of our supervisors had fewer than three direct reports. Now, this has been reduced to 20 percent, and the campus has achieved an over-all average span of seven direct reports per supervisor. This significant elimination of layers of reporting will make us more nimble and productive.
We are encouraged by these initial results that we will meet our overall goals for Operational Excellence. Wide engagement with the campus has taken place for the second phase of Organizational Simplification, the designing of shared service centers for the delivery of common administrative functions in Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology. A draft report for campus comment will be published in the next month. The remaining six initiatives, Information Technology, Energy, High Performance Culture, Procurement, Finance, and Human Resources continue to evolve their business cases and plans.
As was stated last September in a Chancellor’s memo, these are particularly stressful times for our staff and for managers who are working to realize these changes. We repeat how important it is that we all acknowledge the critical role that Berkeley managers and staff play in the success of our teaching and research mission. We are committed to treating all of our employees with dignity, respect and fairness while recognizing that in the end, we will have fewer administrative positions on campus. In addition to crafting a somewhat smaller workforce, our goal is to rationalize policies and procedures such that many staff will find their jobs more rewarding and less frustrating. As the OE initiatives are implemented, staff will continue to have opportunities for career growth.
We want to thank all of the many initiative sponsors, managers and volunteers who are engaged in helping us develop our plans, and our campus community for its engagement with this important effort. Your unit heads will be able to answer questions you may have about your individual unit restructuring. The OE Program Office will continue to provide information and updates on progress on their website athttp://oe.berkeley.edu
Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor
George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost
Frank Yeary, Vice-Chancellor
Andrew Szeri, Operational Excellence Program Head and Dean of the Graduate Division
While we continue to absorb this week’s budget announcement from Governor Jerry Brown of a proposed $500 million reduction to the University of California state appropriation and study its implications for the Berkeley campus, we are more than ever convinced of the importance of the success of Operational Excellence (OE). We want to take this opportunity to update the campus about the progress of Operational Excellence and specifically, the results of one part of the organizational simplification initiative begun last fall that addresses our management structures.
We have for some time now been pursuing a number of different approaches to meet our budget challenges and reduce our reliance on state funding. Our plans have focused on both revenue increases and cost reductions and include both short- and long-term strategies. We have realized revenues through growing philanthropy, increasing research funding, higher student fees, and a rise in the number of students paying non-resident tuition.
Operational Excellence is a major strategy for reducing our administrative costs while simultaneously improving the quality of our operations. OE is designed to create efficiency, improve organizational performance, and reduce our costs over the next three years, on a recurring and ongoing basis, by at least $75 million dollars per year.
The Operational Excellence diagnostic report, completed and accepted in Spring 2010, identified that contrary to best practice in well-run organizations, we have too many supervisors who supervise only a few people and that elimination of management layers could save up to $20 million annually. In September, we set out to design new organizational structures across campus by asking our Deans and Vice-Chancellors, including the Chancellor’s office, to have unit restructuring plans ready to implement in early 2011 which would meet savings targets by creating higher spans of control, that is, having fewer supervisors manage more people.
While unit restructuring is never an easy or simple exercise, I am pleased to report that
our Deans and Vice Chancellors put forward extremely high quality submissions that collectively exceeded our expectations. In total, the plans prepared by the unit leaders will deliver savings of as much as $20 million. As importantly, we will create a flatter and healthier organizational structure which will have about one third fewer managers and will focus our best managers on developing talent and actively managing the organization.
The campus expects to eliminate approximately 280 full time positions, half involuntarily and half through removal of vacant positions, retirements and voluntary separations, mostly before June 2011. Although this is positive news for our cost savings effort, we are saddened to announce that nearly 150 staff on our campus will be laid off. The reductions in our staff workforce have already begun and will continue through this fiscal year and beyond. Those leaving will be notified by their managers, with appropriate severance arrangements for those who qualify, including training and counseling services. We want to express our thanks and recognition to the staff who are leaving for their service to the university.
The reductions in workforce span all levels of our organization, including mid-management levels; about one-quarter of the positions eliminated have salaries plus benefits of $100,000 and above. We have significantly reduced the number of managers who supervised fewer than three people. Prior to the restructuring about 45 percent of our supervisors had fewer than three direct reports. Now, this has been reduced to 20 percent, and the campus has achieved an over-all average span of seven direct reports per supervisor. This significant elimination of layers of reporting will make us more nimble and productive.
We are encouraged by these initial results that we will meet our overall goals for Operational Excellence. Wide engagement with the campus has taken place for the second phase of Organizational Simplification, the designing of shared service centers for the delivery of common administrative functions in Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology. A draft report for campus comment will be published in the next month. The remaining six initiatives, Information Technology, Energy, High Performance Culture, Procurement, Finance, and Human Resources continue to evolve their business cases and plans.
As was stated last September in a Chancellor’s memo, these are particularly stressful times for our staff and for managers who are working to realize these changes. We repeat how important it is that we all acknowledge the critical role that Berkeley managers and staff play in the success of our teaching and research mission. We are committed to treating all of our employees with dignity, respect and fairness while recognizing that in the end, we will have fewer administrative positions on campus. In addition to crafting a somewhat smaller workforce, our goal is to rationalize policies and procedures such that many staff will find their jobs more rewarding and less frustrating. As the OE initiatives are implemented, staff will continue to have opportunities for career growth.
We want to thank all of the many initiative sponsors, managers and volunteers who are engaged in helping us develop our plans, and our campus community for its engagement with this important effort. Your unit heads will be able to answer questions you may have about your individual unit restructuring. The OE Program Office will continue to provide information and updates on progress on their website at
Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor
George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost
Frank Yeary, Vice-Chancellor
Andrew Szeri, Operational Excellence Program Head and Dean of the Graduate Division
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Berkeley's Operational Excellence: Layoffs and Retirements for Staff But not for Upper Administration (1/13/11)
A message to members of the Berkeley campus community from the Operational Excellence Executive Committee
While we continue to absorb this week’s budget announcement from Governor Jerry Brown of a proposed $500 million reduction to the University of California state appropriation and study its implications for the Berkeley campus, we are more than ever convinced of the importance of the success of Operational Excellence (OE). We want to take this opportunity to update the campus about the progress of Operational Excellence and specifically, the results of one part of the organizational simplification initiative begun last fall that addresses our management structures.
We have for some time now been pursuing a number of different approaches to meet our budget challenges and reduce our reliance on state funding. Our plans have focused on both revenue increases and cost reductions and include both short- and long-term strategies. We have realized revenues through growing philanthropy, increasing research funding, higher student fees, and a rise in the number of students paying non-resident tuition.
Operational Excellence is a major strategy for reducing our administrative costs while simultaneously improving the quality of our operations. OE is designed to create efficiency, improve organizational performance, and reduce our costs over the next three years, on a recurring and ongoing basis, by at least $75 million dollars per year.
The Operational Excellence diagnostic report, completed and accepted in Spring 2010, identified that contrary to best practice in well-run organizations, we have too many supervisors who supervise only a few people and that elimination of management layers could save up to $20 million annually. In September, we set out to design new organizational structures across campus by asking our Deans and Vice-Chancellors, including the Chancellor’s office, to have unit restructuring plans ready to implement in early 2011 which would meet savings targets by creating higher spans of control, that is, having fewer supervisors manage more people.
While unit restructuring is never an easy or simple exercise, I am pleased to report that our Deans and Vice Chancellors put forward extremely high quality submissions that collectively exceeded our expectations. In total, the plans prepared by the unit leaders will deliver savings of as much as $20 million. As importantly, we will create a flatter and healthier organizational structure which will have about one third fewer managers and will focus our best managers on developing talent and actively managing the organization.
The campus expects to eliminate approximately 280 full time positions, half involuntarily and half through removal of vacant positions, retirements and voluntary separations, mostly before June 2011. Although this is positive news for our cost savings effort, we are saddened to announce that nearly 150 staff on our campus will be laid off. The reductions in our staff workforce have already begun and will continue through this fiscal year and beyond. Those leaving will be notified by their managers, with appropriate severance arrangements for those who qualify, including training and counseling services. We want to express our thanks and recognition to the staff who are leaving for their service to the university.
The reductions in workforce span all levels of our organization, including mid-management levels; about one-quarter of the positions eliminated have salaries plus benefits of $100,000 and above. We have significantly reduced the number of managers who supervised fewer than three people. Prior to the restructuring about 45 percent of our supervisors had fewer than three direct reports. Now, this has been reduced to 20 percent, and the campus has achieved an over-all average span of seven direct reports per supervisor. This significant elimination of layers of reporting will make us more nimble and productive.
We are encouraged by these initial results that we will meet our overall goals for Operational Excellence. Wide engagement with the campus has taken place for the second phase of Organizational Simplification, the designing of shared service centers for the delivery of common administrative functions in Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology. A draft report for campus comment will be published in the next month. The remaining six initiatives, Information Technology, Energy, High Performance Culture, Procurement, Finance, and Human Resources continue to evolve their business cases and plans.
As was stated last September in a Chancellor’s memo, these are particularly stressful times for our staff and for managers who are working to realize these changes. We repeat how important it is that we all acknowledge the critical role that Berkeley managers and staff play in the success of our teaching and research mission. We are committed to treating all of our employees with dignity, respect and fairness while recognizing that in the end, we will have fewer administrative positions on campus. In addition to crafting a somewhat smaller workforce, our goal is to rationalize policies and procedures such that many staff will find their jobs more rewarding and less frustrating. As the OE initiatives are implemented, staff will continue to have opportunities for career growth.
We want to thank all of the many initiative sponsors, managers and volunteers who are engaged in helping us develop our plans, and our campus community for its engagement with this important effort. Your unit heads will be able to answer questions you may have about your individual unit restructuring. The OE Program Office will continue to provide information and updates on progress on their website at http://oe.berkeley.edu
Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor
George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost
Frank Yeary, Vice-Chancellor
Andrew Szeri, Operational Excellence Program Head and Dean of the Graduate Division
While we continue to absorb this week’s budget announcement from Governor Jerry Brown of a proposed $500 million reduction to the University of California state appropriation and study its implications for the Berkeley campus, we are more than ever convinced of the importance of the success of Operational Excellence (OE). We want to take this opportunity to update the campus about the progress of Operational Excellence and specifically, the results of one part of the organizational simplification initiative begun last fall that addresses our management structures.
We have for some time now been pursuing a number of different approaches to meet our budget challenges and reduce our reliance on state funding. Our plans have focused on both revenue increases and cost reductions and include both short- and long-term strategies. We have realized revenues through growing philanthropy, increasing research funding, higher student fees, and a rise in the number of students paying non-resident tuition.
Operational Excellence is a major strategy for reducing our administrative costs while simultaneously improving the quality of our operations. OE is designed to create efficiency, improve organizational performance, and reduce our costs over the next three years, on a recurring and ongoing basis, by at least $75 million dollars per year.
The Operational Excellence diagnostic report, completed and accepted in Spring 2010, identified that contrary to best practice in well-run organizations, we have too many supervisors who supervise only a few people and that elimination of management layers could save up to $20 million annually. In September, we set out to design new organizational structures across campus by asking our Deans and Vice-Chancellors, including the Chancellor’s office, to have unit restructuring plans ready to implement in early 2011 which would meet savings targets by creating higher spans of control, that is, having fewer supervisors manage more people.
While unit restructuring is never an easy or simple exercise, I am pleased to report that our Deans and Vice Chancellors put forward extremely high quality submissions that collectively exceeded our expectations. In total, the plans prepared by the unit leaders will deliver savings of as much as $20 million. As importantly, we will create a flatter and healthier organizational structure which will have about one third fewer managers and will focus our best managers on developing talent and actively managing the organization.
The campus expects to eliminate approximately 280 full time positions, half involuntarily and half through removal of vacant positions, retirements and voluntary separations, mostly before June 2011. Although this is positive news for our cost savings effort, we are saddened to announce that nearly 150 staff on our campus will be laid off. The reductions in our staff workforce have already begun and will continue through this fiscal year and beyond. Those leaving will be notified by their managers, with appropriate severance arrangements for those who qualify, including training and counseling services. We want to express our thanks and recognition to the staff who are leaving for their service to the university.
The reductions in workforce span all levels of our organization, including mid-management levels; about one-quarter of the positions eliminated have salaries plus benefits of $100,000 and above. We have significantly reduced the number of managers who supervised fewer than three people. Prior to the restructuring about 45 percent of our supervisors had fewer than three direct reports. Now, this has been reduced to 20 percent, and the campus has achieved an over-all average span of seven direct reports per supervisor. This significant elimination of layers of reporting will make us more nimble and productive.
We are encouraged by these initial results that we will meet our overall goals for Operational Excellence. Wide engagement with the campus has taken place for the second phase of Organizational Simplification, the designing of shared service centers for the delivery of common administrative functions in Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology. A draft report for campus comment will be published in the next month. The remaining six initiatives, Information Technology, Energy, High Performance Culture, Procurement, Finance, and Human Resources continue to evolve their business cases and plans.
As was stated last September in a Chancellor’s memo, these are particularly stressful times for our staff and for managers who are working to realize these changes. We repeat how important it is that we all acknowledge the critical role that Berkeley managers and staff play in the success of our teaching and research mission. We are committed to treating all of our employees with dignity, respect and fairness while recognizing that in the end, we will have fewer administrative positions on campus. In addition to crafting a somewhat smaller workforce, our goal is to rationalize policies and procedures such that many staff will find their jobs more rewarding and less frustrating. As the OE initiatives are implemented, staff will continue to have opportunities for career growth.
We want to thank all of the many initiative sponsors, managers and volunteers who are engaged in helping us develop our plans, and our campus community for its engagement with this important effort. Your unit heads will be able to answer questions you may have about your individual unit restructuring. The OE Program Office will continue to provide information and updates on progress on their website at http://oe.berkeley.edu
Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor
George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost
Frank Yeary, Vice-Chancellor
Andrew Szeri, Operational Excellence Program Head and Dean of the Graduate Division
Monday, January 10, 2011
California Community Colleges Respond to Brown's Budget Proposals (1/10/11)
January 10, 2011
California Community Colleges Impact of Gov. Brown’s2 011-12 Proposed State Budget (January 2011)
Impact to the California Community Colleges:
6.8% budget reduction ($400 million). This cut translates into approximately 400,000 students losing access to classes (200,000 students already in the system for which the colleges are receiving no state remuneration and roughly 200,000 additional students).
The proposed $10 per unit fee increase would generate $110 million for the colleges to support an additional 50,000 students.
With the fee increase as many as 350,000 students could lose access to a community college education.
$10 fee increase would raise student fees from $26 per credit unit to $36 (38.5% increase).
Impact of proposed budget cuts to community college students
When implementing budget cuts in prior years, community college CEOs were directed by state chancellor Jack Scott to retain courses that lead to job retraining, degrees, certificates, transfer, and that help increase basic English and math skills.
Total proposed cuts to three segments of higher education
University of California $500 million
California State University $500 million
California Community Colleges $400 million
$1.4 billion
Priorities and efficiencies
The California Community Colleges is the most cost-effective system of education in California. While the state revenue needed to support one community college full-time student is slightly more than $5,000 per year, that same student costs approximately $7,500 in the K-12 system and $20,000 and $11,000, respectively, at UC and CSU.
The community colleges have looked at every corner of the system to come up with efficiencies. Tactics implemented include course reductions, debt restructuring, administrative consolidations, energy savings programs, IT efficiencies, increased class sizes, reduced student services programs, furloughs, additional online instruction, increased industry partnerships and transfer coordination with the UCs and CSUs. The system is exhausting all options to free up additional funds and many college reserves are low.
California has been divesting in higher education in the past 15 years
Enrollment at the California Community Colleges has grown 44% in the last 15 years, yet per student funding in 2009-10 (adjusted for inflation) was lower than it was in 1995-96.
The demand for a community college education is continuing to outstrip resources. The California Community Colleges would have naturally grown by at least 5.5% in 2009-10. But instead, decreased funding caused the system to shrink by 4.8%.
In the 2009-10 academic year, the system sustained $520 million in budget cuts which equated to 8% of its overall budget. It is estimated that approximately 140,000 students were turned away from community college campuses in 2009-10 due to course reductions.
The California Community Colleges are serving 200,000 students for which the system is receiving no state remuneration.
For fall 2009, course sections were cut by 6.3% and enrollment dropped by 0.2% over fall 2008. While total headcount declined by only 0.2%, the system’s first-time community college student enrollments decreased by 12% indicating that the hardest hit by budget reductions are recent high school graduates and displaced workers because they do not have priority registration.
Economic benefits of higher education
If just 2% more of Californians earned associate degrees and 1% more earned a bachelor’s degree, our state’s economy would grow by $20 billion, state and local tax revenue would increase by $1.2 billion a year and 174,000 new jobs would be created.
The economic return on investment in California's higher education infrastructure is a win-win for the state and its taxpayers. For every $1 California spends on higher education, it receives $3 in return.
The California Community Colleges is the largest provider of workforce training in the state and nation.
Workforce skills gap
Undergraduate demand for the three public systems of higher education in California is expected to
grow by 387,000 students by 2019. To accommodate the increase it will take $1.5 billion more in revenue.
If current funding trends persist, the Public Policy Institute of California estimates by 2025 California will face a shortage of 1 million college degree and certificate holders needed to fuel its workforce.
Approximately 55% of CSU and 30% of UC bachelor’s degree recipients started at the California Community Colleges.
With baby boomers retiring as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, labor experts are concerned that California will lack workers with the critical aptitude needed to replace them.
Estimated financial impact of fee increase to students
Under the current $26 per credit unit fee, full-time students enrolled in 15 units pay approximately $780 per academic year.
** With the proposed fee increase to $36 per credit unit, full-time students would pay 38.5% more or roughly $1,080 per academic year.
Fee history
Fiscal Year Fee (per unit)
1984-85 $5*
1991-92 $6
1993-94 $10
1994-95 $13
1998-99 $12
1999-00 $11
2003-04 $18
2004-05 $26
2006-07 $20
2009-10 $26
2011-12 $36 (proposed amount in Gov. Brown’s Jan. 2011 budget)
*Prior to 1984, community colleges charged no fee
© 2010 California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. 1102 Q Street, Sacramento, California 95811, Fourth Floor | 916.445.8752
California Community Colleges Impact of Gov. Brown’s2 011-12 Proposed State Budget (January 2011)
Impact to the California Community Colleges:
6.8% budget reduction ($400 million). This cut translates into approximately 400,000 students losing access to classes (200,000 students already in the system for which the colleges are receiving no state remuneration and roughly 200,000 additional students).
The proposed $10 per unit fee increase would generate $110 million for the colleges to support an additional 50,000 students.
With the fee increase as many as 350,000 students could lose access to a community college education.
$10 fee increase would raise student fees from $26 per credit unit to $36 (38.5% increase).
Impact of proposed budget cuts to community college students
When implementing budget cuts in prior years, community college CEOs were directed by state chancellor Jack Scott to retain courses that lead to job retraining, degrees, certificates, transfer, and that help increase basic English and math skills.
Total proposed cuts to three segments of higher education
University of California $500 million
California State University $500 million
California Community Colleges $400 million
$1.4 billion
Priorities and efficiencies
The California Community Colleges is the most cost-effective system of education in California. While the state revenue needed to support one community college full-time student is slightly more than $5,000 per year, that same student costs approximately $7,500 in the K-12 system and $20,000 and $11,000, respectively, at UC and CSU.
The community colleges have looked at every corner of the system to come up with efficiencies. Tactics implemented include course reductions, debt restructuring, administrative consolidations, energy savings programs, IT efficiencies, increased class sizes, reduced student services programs, furloughs, additional online instruction, increased industry partnerships and transfer coordination with the UCs and CSUs. The system is exhausting all options to free up additional funds and many college reserves are low.
California has been divesting in higher education in the past 15 years
Enrollment at the California Community Colleges has grown 44% in the last 15 years, yet per student funding in 2009-10 (adjusted for inflation) was lower than it was in 1995-96.
The demand for a community college education is continuing to outstrip resources. The California Community Colleges would have naturally grown by at least 5.5% in 2009-10. But instead, decreased funding caused the system to shrink by 4.8%.
In the 2009-10 academic year, the system sustained $520 million in budget cuts which equated to 8% of its overall budget. It is estimated that approximately 140,000 students were turned away from community college campuses in 2009-10 due to course reductions.
The California Community Colleges are serving 200,000 students for which the system is receiving no state remuneration.
For fall 2009, course sections were cut by 6.3% and enrollment dropped by 0.2% over fall 2008. While total headcount declined by only 0.2%, the system’s first-time community college student enrollments decreased by 12% indicating that the hardest hit by budget reductions are recent high school graduates and displaced workers because they do not have priority registration.
Economic benefits of higher education
If just 2% more of Californians earned associate degrees and 1% more earned a bachelor’s degree, our state’s economy would grow by $20 billion, state and local tax revenue would increase by $1.2 billion a year and 174,000 new jobs would be created.
The economic return on investment in California's higher education infrastructure is a win-win for the state and its taxpayers. For every $1 California spends on higher education, it receives $3 in return.
The California Community Colleges is the largest provider of workforce training in the state and nation.
Workforce skills gap
Undergraduate demand for the three public systems of higher education in California is expected to
grow by 387,000 students by 2019. To accommodate the increase it will take $1.5 billion more in revenue.
If current funding trends persist, the Public Policy Institute of California estimates by 2025 California will face a shortage of 1 million college degree and certificate holders needed to fuel its workforce.
Approximately 55% of CSU and 30% of UC bachelor’s degree recipients started at the California Community Colleges.
With baby boomers retiring as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, labor experts are concerned that California will lack workers with the critical aptitude needed to replace them.
Estimated financial impact of fee increase to students
Under the current $26 per credit unit fee, full-time students enrolled in 15 units pay approximately $780 per academic year.
** With the proposed fee increase to $36 per credit unit, full-time students would pay 38.5% more or roughly $1,080 per academic year.
Fee history
Fiscal Year Fee (per unit)
1984-85 $5*
1991-92 $6
1993-94 $10
1994-95 $13
1998-99 $12
1999-00 $11
2003-04 $18
2004-05 $26
2006-07 $20
2009-10 $26
2011-12 $36 (proposed amount in Gov. Brown’s Jan. 2011 budget)
*Prior to 1984, community colleges charged no fee
© 2010 California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. 1102 Q Street, Sacramento, California 95811, Fourth Floor | 916.445.8752
Friday, January 7, 2011
The View from 2020: How Universities Came Back
Chris Newfield
By 2011, the higher ed community knew some things that it hadn’t known in the year 2000. A summary of the decade’s findings, some well known, some not, read as follows.
1. State funding for public universities – serving 80% of the country’s college students – didn’t go up and down with the business cycle but (corrected for inflation and enrollment growth) went down, in a long decline over 30 years. SLIDE 2, SLIDE 3
2. Thirty years of growth in private funds helped speical projects but not general educational operations. In most humanities fields, fundraising didn’t net enough money to cover expenses. After 2011, in any case, endowment growth beat inflation, but not by much.
3. A larger number of independent analysts began to do the math on sponsored research projects. They found that this research produced large gross income and, at the same time, net losses, once overall expenses were calculated. Research, though intrinsically valuable, lost money, and was not an asset but a cost. SLIDE 4
4. After the crisis became acute in 2008, most higher education officials reacted as follows: they displayed resignation towards the steady fall in public funding (1), continued to invest academic resources in fundraising (2), staked their reputations on growth in sponsored projects (3), thus continuing to dig budgetary holes that could be filled from only one source, massive tuition increases. SLIDE 5. Right through the Great Recession they continued annual tuition hikes at 2-4x inflation. These increases led to deep tuition discounting to maintain enrollments, or to growing student debt, or to widespread public backlash, and most often to all three. SLIDE 6. The one thing tuition increases did not do was fix the budgetary problem. (For example, faculty reports coming out of the University of California calculated that to return UC to its 2001 level of resources in 2010-11, tuition would have needed to be nearly $25,000 per year, or double what it actually was.) Tuition more than doubled during the decade. By 2009, bloggers and protestors popularized the phrase “paying more to get less.” Taxpayer willingness to contribute more to public universities was further suppressed.
5. The US had had an educational advantage over every other country in the world from about 1840 on – first in high school graduation rates, then in college graduation. This was an edge in the attainment of the whole population, not just for the top 1% that went to Ivy League Plus. Between 1980 and 2010, the US completely squandered this historic advantage. It fell behind many high-income countries, and behind some medium-income countries as well. SLIDE 7
6. While playing catch-up, the U.S. had to advance the most “non-traditional” student population in its history. This population and its children were especially vulnerable to the renewed wave of offshoring that started in 2009, and to declines in manufacturing and construction, and to attacks on public sector and unionized employment. It had high proportions of first-generation students, returning students, students working full-time or unemployed, poor students, and students of color whose K-12 schools had received declining investment for 30 years. By 2010, in California, a 70% white voting public coexisted with a K-12 population that was 70% students of color. 50% of California’s K-12 students were eligible for the free lunch program. Private family resources for higher ed were overall lower than at any time since the 1970s.
7. The decade of the 2000s confirmed what the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf called in 2011 the Great Convergence of income between the high and middle-income countries. China was slated to have 70% of the US level of output by 2030, but it hit that level this year, in 2020, 10 years ahead of schedule. This meant that standards of living in the US and Europe could not be maintained through vastly higher levels of consumption of resources. The same was true for worthy social goals like restored educational attainment: economic superiority was no longer the answer.
8. In 2010, Western governments, in harmony with the financial sector, imposed fiscal austerity from one side of Europe and North America to the other. One obvious effect was the reduction of resources for K-12 education, and for public colleges and universities. Financial cuts took precedence over investment in new forms of creativity, of social development, of ways of sustainably and equitably sharing scarce resources. These cuts, it can now be clearly seen in 2020, had a devolutionary impact on high-income countries.
9. In colleges and universities, austerity disproportionately focused on the arts and humanities – on the human sciences that were not thought to grow the economy. Fields like classics, linguistics, and literature in foreign languages, were the most likely to be proposed for closure, particularly on campuses where smaller enrollments meant those departments could not be raided for funds to subsidize expensive science and engineering research. These attacks destabilized the profession as a whole. SLIDE 8
In short, Devolutionary Spiral was in full force by the end of 2010. SLIDE 9. Older harmonies in the higher ed funding model had been destroyed. For example, public funding (1) had filled in the hidden shortfalls caused by extramural research (3), but cuts prevented this from continuting. Similarly, high income growth (7) had supported the world’s highest tuition levels (4), which for a time were used to replace drops in public funding (1), but wage stagnation and higher rates of poverty (7) deepened by austerity (8) popped the tuition bubble. Each step in the negative cycle strengthened several others.
In 2011, the US faced a systemic failure of its higher education funding model. But in that year, a surprising change began to be felt, and in parat from an unexpected place, the humanities.
FUTURE 2011-2020. Just three samples. SLIDE 10 START
2011: After a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, a major state university system revealed that savings of about a million dollars from closing humanities departments overshadowed by losses of nearly $50,000,000 annually in its sponsored research programs (Exhibit F). The website Propublica decided to investigate apparent public subsidies of private business interests in university-sponsored research centers more generally, particularly those designed to serve as incubators for local industry. The results of this work came to the attention of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), still smarting from his battle for higher university endowment payouts. He started a new round of Senate hearings about the possible misuse of public money. In addition, faculty, staff, students, and parents, distraught by ever-rising tuition and stagnant wages, began to demand more transparency about the extent to which student tuition was subsidizing not only scientific research, which was held to be justified to a limited (and openly negotiated) extent, but commercial research that should be conducted in industrial laboratories at company expense. Although most industry sponsors successfully documented their support of basic research without exclusive intellectual property agreements, attention was directed towards the high cost of research in the increasingly unpopular health sciences arena. Students at one medical campus obtained documents showing that the medical school had received a loan from its campus equal to nearly 10% of the campus’s total revenues, and that annual cash flows went from the campus to the med school in untraceable amounts. The faculty Senate passed a resolution calling on the university to spin off the medical school as a self-supporting enterprise, charging $1 a year for using the university’s name. The move prompted wider investigation of the medical enterprises at public universities in various states across the country. Parents formed a group called Families of Future Leaders (FFL), which began to pressure state legislatures to account correctly and openly for the use of student tuition. In 2015, Sen. Grassley celebrated his 35th year in the U.S. Senate with the Federal Fair Funding Act, which required federal research agencies for the first time to pay the full cost of sponsored research at state-funded universities, as they had always done for private industry.
2014: Two simultaneous events produced an unexpected result. First, the heads of the handful of major humanities granting agencies cosponsored a report with the Department of Education, called “The University for a Sustainable Society.” The report took direct aim at the massification of higher education, at passive learning in both large lectures and low-cost on-line arrangements, and defined the purpose of higher education as the development of human capability for the sake of social development. Endorsed and then promoted by a galaxy of higher education analysts, including former conservatives like Diane Ravitch, the report detailed learning practices essential to the reconstitution of a democratic and economically dynamic society. These required the replacement of an overemphasis on fiscal, legal, bureaucratic, and communicative control, which the report noted had infected educational practices, with the development of capacities for the transmission of informal know-how through group-based active learning, project-centered coursework, and a renewed focus on the strong individual agency and craft-skills that innovation required. CNN-NBC News ran a series called “Is Humane the New Smart,” and, for the first time since Brown v. Board of Education the tide began to turn against measurement and control as dominant educational strategies, and towards craft mastery and intellectual independence.
Also in 2014, continuing closures of humanities departments, coupled with spreading awareness of the role of large-enrollment humanities departments in subsidizing other disciplines, provoked stronger measures. Literature professors at major public research universities – UC San Diego, Wisconsin-Madison, Minnesota-Twin Cities, and North Carolina-Chapel Hill, wrote a manifesto called “The Case for Succession.” The thirty cosigners each pledged to offer one course per year off campus in their area of literary, cultural, or theoretical expertise. In other cases, they did this as an overload, nothing that most humanities doctoral advising was already done as an overload. In others, sympathetic administrators offered to house the off campus courses in the electronic university whose infrastructure was already in place. Since the 30 signers among them taught more than 10,000 students per year, the experiment attracted the interest of for-profit universities with experience in nontraditional education environments. Needing to improve its public image, Kaplan University funded two years of these experimental universities, and offered complete academic freedom and hosting services in exchange for observation rights. Student enrollments were strong, since student experience on public university campuses has been degraded through years of growing class size and reduced access to professors, graders, advisors, and basic classroom space. Under the rubric of Bootleg universities, television gives the experiments publicity. Speaking on an episode of Charlie Rose, one of the movement leaders said, “we realized our disciplines weren’t getting much of the infrastructure our students and citizens were paying for, and the administrative workload was killing us. By cutting out the university intermediary, we charge students half the price for twice the educational service.” Because of strong student support, the bootleg universities are able to stay independent. As it turned out, the “unbundling” of university activities predicted by Anya Kamerentz and others allowed the humanities to return to its roots as an immersive educational experiences at the intersection of personal and social development. Propelled by popular demand for textual and cultural skills, bootleg universities grew for the rest of the decade.
2016: Bloomberg-ABC-CBS News reported that for-profit colleges, which tripled their enrollments from 1998-2008, and whose students received 25% of all Pell Grant federal funding in 2008-09, received 50% of Pell Grant funding in 2014-15. Meanwhile, as a result of steadily rising tuition, and the closure of many low-cost community college campuses, average student debt burdens doubled between 2005 and 2015. Similar growth occurred in private-sector PLUS loans to parents for their children’s education. In Washington state, some baby-boomer senior citizens started a group called Grandparents Against Debt (GAD), and told graphic tales of the destruction of the economic security of their grandchildren, for whom affordable higher education had all but disappeared. Cross-generational discussions of family finances became public, and polls showed that support for restored public funding of education for the sake of debt reduction had gone from a solid majority position in 2010 to an 80% approval rating in 2016. Nothing much happened until the fall of that year, when several hundred college students at the Seattle campus of the University of Washington, which was charging in-state students $21,500, gathered to “burn their debt cards” in front of the campus’s financial aid office. The debt card burners promise to default on their student debt. Campus administrators, who had generally supported the expansion of loan programs, realized that the debt situation was no longer manageable. They switched sides, and the American Association of Universities along with other groups issued pledges to work for the elimination of private intermediaries in student loan programs and for strict caps on allowable student debt. Higher education began to be articulated as a public good that benefits the entire society – propelled by what in 2020 we have come to call the Great Student Debt Default that began that year.
SLIDE 11. In 2011, the wheel of misfortune began to turn in the other direction. And it would come to be known that the people who reversed the spinning wheel were among others the humanities students and teachers sitting right here in this room.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
The Future of the University: a Post-MLA Conference, Sat Jan 8th
Saturday, January 8th, 2011 from
1:00-5:00 pm at
Loyola Law School (Merrifield Hall, 919 Albany St, 3 blocks NW of the Marriott).
While thousands of people will be meeting at the MLA convention, we will be discussing strategies for making higher education more just. Speakers will be presenting short papers on topics such as the death of tenure, the corporatization of the university, the possibilities of unionization, direct social action, the use and abuse of graduate students, organizing contingent faculty, and taking back shared governance.
Schedule
1:00-1:45: Remaking the University of California
Chris Newfield, Joshua Clover
1:45-2:30: Defending the Humanities and Shared Governance
Cary Nelson, Jeffrey Williams, Michelle Masse
2:30-3:15: Organizing Labor and the Academic Class War
Maria Maisto, Joe Berry
3:15-4:00: Graduate Students and Precarious Labor
Annie McClanahan, Jasper Bernes, Stephanie Seawell, Kerry Pimblott
4:00-4:30: Quality, Access, and Affordability
Murray Sperber and Bob Samuels
4:30-4:55: Open Discussion on Strategies for Changing Higher Education
A $10 donation will be suggested but not required. You do not have to be a member of the MLA to attend.
1:00-5:00 pm at
Loyola Law School (Merrifield Hall, 919 Albany St, 3 blocks NW of the Marriott).
While thousands of people will be meeting at the MLA convention, we will be discussing strategies for making higher education more just. Speakers will be presenting short papers on topics such as the death of tenure, the corporatization of the university, the possibilities of unionization, direct social action, the use and abuse of graduate students, organizing contingent faculty, and taking back shared governance.
Schedule
1:00-1:45: Remaking the University of California
Chris Newfield, Joshua Clover
1:45-2:30: Defending the Humanities and Shared Governance
Cary Nelson, Jeffrey Williams, Michelle Masse
2:30-3:15: Organizing Labor and the Academic Class War
Maria Maisto, Joe Berry
3:15-4:00: Graduate Students and Precarious Labor
Annie McClanahan, Jasper Bernes, Stephanie Seawell, Kerry Pimblott
4:00-4:30: Quality, Access, and Affordability
Murray Sperber and Bob Samuels
4:30-4:55: Open Discussion on Strategies for Changing Higher Education
A $10 donation will be suggested but not required. You do not have to be a member of the MLA to attend.
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