``The King with half the East at heel is marched from land of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.''
Full text of letter with signatures and footnotes (PDF)
July 6, 2009
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:
The three hundred signers of this letter write to you as members of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and as professors at the University of California to express our deep concern about the latest round of proposed cuts to the UC budget. Current proposals being weighed by your office and the Legislature call for a 19% reduction from 2007-8 levels in state support for UC, producing an $800 million shortfall in the UC budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year. This will lead to increases in student fees, reductions in pay or furloughs for faculty and staff, and cuts in virtually all University services. These cuts will be devastating to every part of the University's mission, but as scientists and engineers we are particularly concerned about their effects on the future of science and technology in California. While we recognize that our state faces an unprecedented financial crisis, the proposed cuts come on top of a decades-long trend of declining state support for the University of California. The situation has reached a breaking point.
Further cuts of the magnitude being contemplated in the latest round of budget proposals are likely to destroy UC's status as the leading public university in the United States. This would undermine prospects for economic recovery and damage California's competitiveness for decades.
Before making a decision in the heat of a crisis that will have negative consequences for decades to come, we ask that you consider the following:
- It is estimated that 85% of per capita economic growth in the United States is due to technological change, and the University of California has been a leading driver of that change. Productivity growth produced by UC technological innovation is estimated at $5.2 billion from 2002-11, leading to more than 100,000 new jobs in California. For every dollar that California invested in research and development at UC in 2000-1, UC researchers brought in another $3.89 of private and federal research money.
- UC trains the highly skilled workforce that drives California's economy: 85% of biotech firms4 and 57% of research and development-intensive communications firms in California employ holders of advanced degrees from UC. The co-founders of Intel, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, and MySpace all hold undergraduate or graduate degrees from UC.
- In 1970, the fraction of the state of California's general fund devoted to UC was 7%. By 2008-9 it had declined to 3.2%. Thus further cuts to UC would come from a portion of the state budget that has already declined by more than a factor of two in relative terms in past decades.
- Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted state support per UC student fell by 40%. As a result, the total inflation-adjusted education expenditure per UC student (including student fees and contributions from UC General Funds) decreased by 19%, while student costs rose by 138%. Further cuts will hit disadvantaged and lower-middle-class students the hardest, since they rely on financial aid, outreach, gateway, and tutoring programs, all of which will be under extraordinary pressure. This will inexorably reduce services to the component of California's population most in need of access to a distinguished public university.
- UC's status as a leading research institution depends on its ability to attract and retain the best scholars, but faculty salaries were already 12% below market as of 2006-7. The salary reductions resulting from the proposed budget cut would widen the gap to 19%. UC will find it impossible to attract and retain leading faculty with a salary gap of this magnitude.
- The impact of salary cuts on young faculty, many of whom have mortgages that they are only barely able to pay now, is likely to be particularly devastating. If their salaries are cut and they are faced with the prospect of losing their homes, these future scientific leaders can and will move elsewhere. This will produce a huge brain drain from California.
- If this damage is done, it will not be easy to undo. Even if UC salaries and research support were to recover after the crisis passes, it would take years to replace the professors who leave, and many of the investments that have been made in research and teaching programs would be irrevocably lost. Even worse, worries about the stability of funding and the safety of jobs at UC would hinder efforts to recruit talented scholars and teachers for years or even decades to come.
For the past 40 years, California has been struggling to run a world-class university on ever-declining state support. In the face of the current crisis, the past strategy of incremental cuts at the margin will no longer be viable, and major changes will be set in motion. The actions of the Governor and the Legislature in coming weeks will be seen, both by the scientists currently employed by UC and by the young researchers who will consider moving here in the next decade, as a clear statement of whether the state of California intends to maintain a leading research university or not. If it does not, California must be prepared to accept the long-term loss of educational, economic, and technological benefits that UC produces. The forefront of innovation will move elsewhere. This is the prospect with which we are now faced.
In a time of crisis, our attention rightly focuses on using limited resources to meet the needs of the moment. However we must remember that the University of California represents our state's investment in the future. When the crisis passes and we begin to repair the damage, our prospects for success will be determined by how well we protect that investment today.
Sincerely,
(Signatories are identified by their National Academy affiliation: National Academy of Engineering [NAE], National Academy of Sciences [NAS], or Institute of Medicine [IOM].)
[300 signatures follow]
----
phew.
Nice summary.
I am so very sorry folk, hope something can be rescued from the mess.
We're in a similar boat, but not as deep, yet.
- Log in to post comments
It's telling that none of these illustrious professors chooses to work at UC Merced, a campus that recently shelled out $1M to host Michelle Obama for graduation. The red-headed stepchild in this mess, the CSU system, as well as the abandoned children the community colleges, are in worse shape. Keep in mind, Arnold promised all those students that go to CC for two years they would be guaranteed a slot in UC or CSU system.
Funny. I didn't see any proposals in that letter as to where the money should come from.
I believe it is the job of the recipients of the letter to identify funding, not the senders.
The letter is an advocacy document, a pushback - it is part of the political process, an effort to shift the burden of cuts and to expound on potential consequences. The other groups being cut are also pushing back, on a much larger scale, and UC is at the point where they have to stand up for themselves.
UCM is still small, NAS/NAE members are a small fraction of faculty, and too young to have built up to where they have such. And they didn't get the wherewithal to recruit much faculty at that level.
CSU and CC have been treated very badly and promises made that can't be kept. They need to speak out also and make their case, hard and fast. UC is not going to undercut them and I expect would hope they do not undercut UC.
So what you're saying is that the letter basically says "Cut them, not us."
no, it says: "please cut us as little as possible, we really are important"
the letter "weighs in" on the issue
the recipients of the letter may choose to ignore it, cut them less, or more; and whether to move cuts from, or to, this group or consider finding additional revenue
it is the job of the recipients to make such choices, not the senders
What kind of education did you have that you know that Housman? It's fine. I thought you woud have gone to highschool in Iceland. And know Egilssaga instead.
The Oracles.
'Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain
When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled,
And mute's the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain,
And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.
I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking,
The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain;
And from the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking
That she and I should surely die and never live again.
Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it;
But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more.
'Tis true there's better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;
And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.
The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.
Good luck then, in your fight. Whether or not the odds are like at Thermopylae. :-D
My suspicion is that this will fall on deaf ears because the budget is such a disaster.
UC will have to do what so many other major state research universities do and learn to go it alone.
The real problem is that UC is cutting salaries this year, and the budget next year will involve another cut. UC has been cut every year I have been here. They are already eliminating departments locally, and I guess that will increase. Just the right thing to do in an economic downturn, fire people.
This letter is correct. I'm going to be looking for a postdoc for next year, and I had thought a UC school seemed like the best option, but between the cuts and having to find my wife a job, it is starting to creep much farther down on the list.
Yeah, the letter is correct, people interested in UC get concerned - their best bet is that everyone else will be hammered also, re-leveling the playing field.
Brad: if the crisis is temporary, one or two years, then furloughs are a reasonable bet - protects long term stability.
If it is a multi-year problem, then cutting departments is the appropriate response, overall, when cuts go above the threshold where things can be trimmed.
Marcus: my O-level in english literature will haunt me for a long time... I finished school in an Oxford comprehensive.
Interesting, an NAS member and the department chair of the UC, Santa Cruz Astronomy Department will be interviewed by KCBS (an LA station) today because of this letter.