The UC Commission on the Future has adopted a draft of its final report, offering 18 recommendations to help the university preserve access and quality while addressing the fiscal challenges of reduced state funding.

The commission received recommendations formed over the past year by five working groups of the commission, which assessed the size and shape of the University of California, its education and curriculum, access and affordability, and funding and research strategies.

Among the recommendations are suggestions for:

• Expediting systemwide administrative reforms already underway that could save $500 million annually.
• Adopting strategies to enable some students to earn a bachelor's degree in less than four years.
• Developing ways to streamline the pathway for transfer students.
• Continuing to explore expanded use of online instruction.
• Increasing the enrollment and capping the number of nonresident undergraduate students.

The commission discussed wording of the draft and voted unanimously to adopt it as amended during its meeting today (Oct. 11) at UC San Francisco. The commission's final report is expected by the end of the year.

"I think we made some real progress and identified areas where we can move forward," said UC Board of Regents Chairman Russell Gould.

The UC Commission on the Future formed last year and its goal was to develop a new vision for the university that affirms its core values of excellence and access while addressing state funding cutbacks. Gould and UC President Mark Yudof are the co-chairs.

The commission's recommendations offer responses to the university's near- to midterm challenges while preserving critical components of quality and access, according to the draft report.

"These ideas are not the ultimate solutions, but move us forward and provide the framework for the ongoing focus of UC leadership," the draft said.

State funding has not kept pace with inflation and enrollment growth, the draft noted, though UC continues to meet its Master Plan for Higher Education obligations to provide a place for California residents in the top one-eighth of each graduating high school class and spots for eligible state community college transfer students.

In the late 1980s, more than 5 percent of the state general fund was dedicated to UC, but by 2009-10, the share had declined to 3.1 percent, the draft said. In 2009-10, UC enrolled about 214,000 full-time equivalent resident students, but state funding of approximately $10,000 per student was provided for only about 198,500 of those students.

Encouraging a shorter time to a degree is the goal of several recommendations designed to enable UC to educate students more efficiently. The commission recommends exploring curriculum changes and practices that can enable students to graduate in four years. In addition, the recommendation calls for implementing a formal program for a three-year degree.

Increasing the number of students who graduate with a bachelor's degree in four years or less would free up resources for more students. If 5 to 10 percent of students graduated one quarter or semester sooner, it would create an additional 2,000 to 4,000 undergraduate slots per year, according to UC estimates.

Streamlining the pathway for transfer students has the potential for minimizing the number of excess classes students take, which could improve time to degree and free up resources for more students. Efforts to develop more common systemwide lower-division requirements and reduce other barriers to transferring have been under way. The commission's recommendation calls for expanding these efforts. It also calls on the Academic Senate to submit a plan and timeline for developing more consistent systemwide lower-division requirements in high-demand majors to the UC president by Jan. 31, 2011.

Online education also holds the potential to reduce costs, and the commission endorses a pilot project being coordinated by the UC Office of the President to assess the development of expanded online instruction.

Increasing nonresident enrollment would broaden the geographic diversity of campuses and enhance the student experience while generating additional money that could sustain educational offerings for all students, according to the commission's recommendation.

The recommendation caps the proportion of nonresident undergraduates systemwide at 10 percent and directs the UC president to report annually to the Board of Regents on the number of nonresident students.

Other recommendations in the draft report include:

• Enhancing the ASSIST website, which provides course articulation information to transfer students. A redesign of the system already is underway.
• Calling on the UC president to develop a resolution by January 2011 that reaffirms UC's commitment to its admission responsibilities under the Master Plan for Higher Education.
• Calling on the UC president to develop a resolution by March 2011 that reaffirms UC's commitment to the 1994 University of California Financial Aid Policy, which states that financial considerations must not be an insurmountable obstacle to a student's decision to seek and complete a UC degree.
• Working, in conjunction with other major research institutions, to increase efforts to recover more of the operational, or indirect, costs that many research grants do not fully cover with the goal of capturing an additional $300 million annually.
• Facilitating multi-campus research and doctoral/post-doctoral training, and improving policies, processes, technology and facilities in this area.
• Increasing the proportion of graduate students from 22 percent of total enrollments to 26 percent by 2020-21 as a way to adequately support UC's research and instructional missions.
• Improving transparency by renaming the student education fee and professional degree fees as tuition to be consistent with the understanding of those terms by the public and federal government.
• Exploring the expansion of self-supporting degree programs to expand access and generate up to $250 million a year in additional revenue.
• Developing ways to expand private donations and increase the amount of gifts that can be used for unrestricted uses, such as to support academic and research operations. Currently, 95 percent of the $1.3 billion raised in endowments in 2008-09 is restricted for specific programs or objectives; only $25 million is unrestricted, according to the recommendation.
• Developing a multiyear advocacy campaign to foster public and political support for UC.
• Lobbying the federal government for an augmentation to Pell Grants that would fund core operations, recognizing the special role public universities such as UC play in providing access to students from low-income families.

The draft also included a set of "contingency recommendations" for increasing revenue and cutting costs that could be enacted should fiscal conditions worsen. These measures include increasing tuition, increasing nonresident enrollment and charging differential tuition by campus while cutting costs through initiatives such as limiting student enrollment, downsizing the faculty and staff, and halting new capital and building projects.

The full text of the draft is available online.

Harry Mok is principal editor in the UC Office of the President's Integrated Communications group. For more information, visit the UC Newsroom or follow us on Twitter.