Chancellor Steven Kang's testimony before UC Regents

From the beginning, UC Merced has been adversely affected from a budget based almost solely on incremental enrollment growth, and it has been grossly inadequate for a new public research university. The $14 million supplement that was established to enable us to reach a critical mass of students began to phase out last year and will be completely eliminated by 2010-11, far short of achieving a critical mass.

Not only have we not reached a critical mass in students to provide adequate funding, we have also not reached a critical mass in faculty in many disciplines and have not reached a critical mass in space. We currently have essentially three academic buildings on campus in which we teach and do research.

Thus, UC Merced's operation has been bare-bones with no room to juggle. Academic planning for this new campus has been very challenging due to the budget uncertainty - it has been like trying to build a house in a hurricane.
Our students come evenly from Southern, Central, Northern California, roughly 1/3 each. The campus is ethnically diverse with 33 percent Asian, 30 percent Hispanic, 24 percent white and nearly 7 percent African-American. In addition, 50.4 percent of our students are first-generation college students, which requires academic and staff support well above the UC average.

But with budget cuts, UC Merced is fully at risk. Under the Compact Agreement schedule, the supplemental funding of $14 million for UC Merced has been reduced by $9million over the last two years, and $5 million more will be cut in 2010, ending the supplemental funding which was supposed to last until UC Merced gained self-sufficiency.

A $14 million reduction in three years is huge for a fledgling new campus with an all-funds budget of less than $100 million last year. Although OP and sister campuses have been very helpful to help mitigate these cuts,
We started losing promising junior faculty members - this month two assistant professors took offers elsewhere.
It has become much more difficult to recruit new faculty members, due to lack of research space and insufficient startup support.

Yesterday parents of two prospective students indicated that the students would not be attending UC Merced this fall, owing to budget concerns stemming from recent publicity.

To cope with budget reductions, the following measures have been taken:

• Hired only 10 new faculty members, although 36 were needed to add depth and expand the breadth of programs, to achieve $1.7 million savings in salary and to reduce startup costs. This could cause a lost opportunity of approximately $4 million in new research contracts. The teaching gap is minimally covered by hiring more lecturers.
• One-third reduction in the planned growth of graduate students.
• More than 60 courses cannot be offered, a lot for a small campus.
• Implemented a hiring freeze for staff, which is extremely problematic because most functions are already very thinly staffed.
• Reduced the supply and expenses budget by 25 percent (=$350,000 in the last six months).
• Added no new funds for OMP for two years and a decline in service is already occurring.

We have formed ad hoc committees to determine cost-saving opportunities, as well as one to propose ideas for addressing morale in these difficult times.

Without backfilling of the final $5million loss in supplemental funding in 2010-11, the fallouts will be:

• Significant decrease in access and retention for the neediest students.
• Anticipated longer time to graduation.
• Freezing of all faculty hiring.
• Already stretched staff will be reduced.
• TA support will be reduced and will further hurt our graduate programs.
• Great difficulty in preparing for the upcoming WASC accreditation visit to start in September 2009. Building depth in new majors, required for accreditation, is in danger.
• Finally, the upcoming furloughs will hurt the already bare-bones UC Merced operation. Many offices staffed by only one person will cease to operate on several days, and students, faculty and staff will suffer greatly. Our auxiliary operations, in particular dining services, security and housing operations, will be seriously hampered.