PERSPECTIVE ON HIGHER EDUCATION : Beware Fatal Remedies for UC : Saving money by downsizing could lead to unintended outcomes--loss of students, faculty, esteem.

As the University of California was inaugurating its new president, Jack Peltason, earlier this month, the talk on every campus was of drastic budget reductions. Downsizing of UC through enrollment reductions and dropping plans for a 10th campus are among the more Draconian ideas under consideration.

Having watched the cycles to which the university has been subjected--there was similar talk in the late 1960s and in the “psychic dollar” years of Gov. Jerry Brown--I understand this reaction. People hope that by holding the line on growth, limited resources would be used to maintain excellence by preserving the crucial student-faculty ratio and concentrating on quality in existing campuses and programs. At first look, the reaction is also defensible. But a first look may be deceiving. In policy intervention, too often unintended outcomes wipe out the positive impacts sought by a change--what one analyst calls “fatal remedies.”

Whatever is done should be based on an analysis of the systemic effects of alternatives: on the campuses, the region and the state. The analysis should be “over time”; it may not be so easy to “rightsize” later. We need to consider revenues going to higher education and non-economic impacts: on morale, organization and the education of the citizens of California.

Downsizing seriously hurts tens of thousands of students who have been working conscientiously to earn a UC education. If denied access, they may go elsewhere. This will eventually have an impact on the “brain resources” and the values of California. Given the state’s demographics, downsizing may disproportionately affect minorities. Of course, deserving “majority” students will also lose. Downsizing also threatens revenues from a variety of sources--student housing for one. A slowdown could further hurt morale on campuses. It could communicate to faculty that the future is sufficiently bleak (in the capital context: less office space, deteriorating classrooms, insufficient labs) that they should look elsewhere.

Closing some UC doors could be one more message that “California is not the place to build one’s career.” Statewide, already hard-hit local economies would suffer another blow. And the message would go out nationally that UC and California are not places to make major R&D; investments. The commitment to education would be over.

It’s facile to say what shouldn’t be done. Harder is finding policies that are fair to students and don’t alienate the faculty. Several proposals deserve further discussion:

* Greater public / private partnerships to help fund UC growth and operations. We need to strongly make the case that a robust business climate depends on a quality system of education.

* Higher fees and tuition (including sliding-scale tuition and greater reliance on loans). For many students, UC is a bargain subsidized without social rationale.

* Movement to semesters at all campuses and greater use of the summer session in order to capture the benefits of more efficient use of existing resources.

* Charging non-subsidized fees for courses that students take above the requirements for a degree. We don’t wish to force our young people to rush through college, but neither can we casually fund second majors and leisurely approaches to avoiding career decisions.

* Additional cuts in existing programs including those that would move some campuses back to their planned size.

* Temporary additional faculty workload. Faculty members are sincerely concerned about the impacts of growth without resources on quality of education. However, there may be some sentiment for temporary additional workload commitment if the case were properly made. Faculty react not only as workers but also as citizens whose children are competing for UC places. One might consider additional compensation for supplemental courses, such as is done in executive graduate programs, and a further shift in promotion decisions toward greater recognition of teaching load.

When all the analyses are done, if downsizing and limiting supply still look good on paper, another consideration needs to be made. Cutbacks implemented by the bureaucracy may not ensure excellence; rather they may give the Legislature another reason to squeeze the state-funded quarter of our budget.