CNAS

A smaller, more sustainable college: Dean Baldwin on the budget crisis

"We're entering a new day in publicly funded higher education," said Dean Tom Baldwin, speaking about the State of California's increasingly dismal financial picture and its effect on the University of California campuses. "It's going to be pretty rough for a couple of years." The cuts to UC Riverside, as recently as a May 21 estimated at $15 million, are now projected to be nearly $40 million. [Read Chancellor Tim White's June 5 letter to the campus detailing the situation.]

"We'll be a different university" when the crisis is over, said Baldwin, "and we need to start planning now" for what UCR-and the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences-will look like. The UC budget, he noted, has had one of the highest percentages of state support in the nation, at 45%. By contrast, such schools as the University of Michigan receives state support in the single digits.

"We have to figure out how to become less reliant on state funds," Baldwin said, "and we can't balance the books on the backs of the students." The key, he believes, is increasing grant support, which brings in Indirect Cost Recovery (ICR) funds to the departments. But for now, the college-along with the rest of the campus-will be implementing some severe cuts. In addition to unpaid furlough days for the faculty and staff, an average 15% reduction in faculty and staff is projected for the campus, although it's not yet known what CNAS's percentage will be. Much of the reduction will be accomplished through attrition, Baldwin said, but there will be some staff layoffs. Most employees will participate in a furlough program, the basic structure of which was approved by the Board of Regents on July 15. [Read President Mark Yudof's letter of July 16.]

The dean is concerned, however, that reductions and cuts be made strategically. "We have to avoid wasting time simply rearranging things," he said. "We will be smaller, but some conscious decisions need to be made. Do we want to have lots of undergraduates and large classes? Do we want to maintain a strong research profile-doing fewer things and letting some programs disappear? Do we want to be high tuition, high financial aid," like many small liberal arts schools? Baldwin identified the campus's immediate problem as the shortfall between the drop in state funding and the amount of time it will take to enact cost-saving measures. "It will take many months-perhaps as long as three years-to put the necessary changes into place," he noted. (See figure below.) The furloughs and other short-term measures are meant to bridge that gap until longer-term solutions begin to show a permanent reduction in state funding.

"It's going to be a different world," Baldwin said, "and we need to realize it now." What that difference will be is being studied in detail by college committees, each of which is analyzing one facet of CNAAS's operation to see how it can be better structured. For example, one committee is looking into the operations of the various greenhouses; others are investigating other aspects of the research infrastructure.
"We need to do a good job with our strategic plan," Baldwin said. For example, he said, "it's clear our faculty have too much of a workload." CNAS's current student:faculty ratio is 26:1. "In a college of science it should be 15-18:1," said Baldwin. "We are suboptimal to deliver a high-quality science education. So, we can reduce the number of students or increase the number of faculty." This and other issues are being examined by the strategic planning committees.

However, Baldwin added, "these issues should not be discussed just by faculty and administrators, but by all stakeholders in the college. Let me know what you think" about how the college might evolve, into a smaller but more efficient entity. He asks that you send your ideas to science.dean@ucr.edu.