Budget Cuts Hit California Higher Education Hard - NYTimes.com

The medical school's research building at UC-Riverside is almost finished, but it will not be seeing any students this year.
By JENNIFER MEDINA

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The doors to the state’s newest medical school are already open, technically. A gleaming building with new labs is ready to house researchers and students. But when the state budget was approved last week, the plans to open the medical school at the University of California’s campus here were shelved for at least another year.
Timothy P. White, the chancellor of UC-Riverside, is determined to buttonhole legislators to get the medical school going.

The compromise to close the state’s huge budget gap included cuts to state agencies of all kinds, but none were as deep as those to the state’s public colleges and universities. The state’s two systems were each cut by $650 million, and they each could lose $100 million more if the state’s optimistic revenue expectations do not materialize. For both systems, the $650 million is roughly a 20 percent cut of operating money from the state.

This fall, for the first time, the University of California will take in more money from student tuition than from state finances.

The state’s two-tier system has long been seen as a model of public higher education, with the University of California’s 10 campuses as major research hubs and the California State University’s network of 23 campuses graduating tens of thousands each year. But the cuts, which are the biggest in the state’s history, threaten to erode the system’s stellar reputation.

“There’s no question that California has had the most emulated public universities in the nation, and for the rest of the world,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. “What we are seeing is the abandonment of the state’s commitment to make California’s education available to all its citizens.”

Tuition is expected to rise roughly 20 percent next year, just the latest in series of steep increases. Yearly in-state tuition at California State University will average about $5,500, while at the University of California, it is expected to be $13,200 if the increases are approved this month. Programs all over the state are being shuttered, star professors are leaving for colleges in other states, faculty positions are being left unfilled and class sizes are continuing to grow. While the state’s spending on the system is down to a level not seen since the late-1990s, the campuses enroll tens of thousands more students.

Schools, meanwhile, are stepping up their efforts to recruit students from other states, using their higher tuition payments to help fill the coffers at the expense of California applicants. (doing this to our education system has no benefit , In fact, the long term effects are a worse economy and less innovation . Institutions sometimes run at a loss because of the value of the services they provide ,when will we learn? Not in Cali i suppose , not anymore at least...)-figg more story at link