BERKELEY, Calif. ― The University of California, Berkeley, is running a $150 million deficit this year and must undertake a top-to-bottom review of expenses if it hopes to sustain its national standing as a premier public institution, the school’s chancellor warned Wednesday.
The university faces difficult decisions as it works to preserve its long-term financial footing, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said. Consolidating academic departments, evaluating spending on athletics, shedding staff and admitting fewer doctoral students are some of the changes that will be considered, he said.
“We are fighting to maintain our excellence against those who might equate ‘public’ with mediocrity,” Dirks wrote in a letter to the campus. “What we are engaged in here is a fundamental defense of the concept of the public university, a concept that we must reinvent in order to preserve.”
Inadequate state funding and other factors had created “a substantial and growing structural deficit” at UC Berkeley, Dirks said. To address it, the chancellor said he was initiating a restructuring process aimed at cutting costs, increasing revenue and preserving the strongest programs.
A budget review prepared by Berkeley administrators blames the deficit on reduced state funding for instruction and construction, increased pension costs and five years without in-state tuition increases.
After a series of increases during the recession, tuition and fees for undergraduate students from California has remained $12,291 since the 2011-12 academic year. It is not expected to rise until 2017-18 under a deal UC President Janet Napolitano struck with Gov. Jerry Brown.
In response to a public outcry, Napolitano, who is a former U.S. secretary of Homeland Security and Arizona governor, also capped the percentage of higher-paying students from outside the state that Berkeley and UCLA could enroll.
