In response to Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to slash $500 million from the University of California budget, UC President Mark G. Yudof said this week that he might be forced to flout the state’s 50-year-old Master Plan for Higher Education by reducing enrollment by thousands of students who otherwise would qualify for entrance. It’s unclear whether Yudof meant that as a strategic threat or as a plan, but we’re afraid it may have to be the latter. As dear as Californians hold the master plan, and as painful as it would be to deny California students admission at a moment when the U.S. government is stressing the importance of producing more college graduates, it’s more important to preserve the educational excellence and worldwide reputation of UC.

…Further big increases in tuition would turn California’s elite students toward other colleges, including private institutions where merit scholarships would bring the cost of a college education close to that of UC. Although some cuts will certainly be necessary, major program reductions could harm the university’s reputation. Accepting more out-of-state students who pay full tuition is a good interim solution, but the university is already doing that, and it’s a strategy with limited growth potential. Only a few campuses have the cachet to draw outside students.

…UC should be asking its employees to prevent layoffs by sharing some sacrifice. This also is the wrong time for the university to be moving toward a more expensive and subjective “holistic” admissions system, when too many high-achieving students already face the prospect of being rejected.

Reduced admissions to UC would create a domino effect… Students rejected at UC would knock at the doors of the California State University system, which faces equally daunting cuts. That in turn would push more students into the community colleges, where Brown has recommended a $10-per-unit fee increase, or about $300 a year for a full-time student. The community colleges are the one system in which fee increases are overdue; even at the higher price, they would be the least expensive in the nation.

Full article at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-0121-yudof-20110121,0,5809615.story

Note: The reference to employee sacrifice probably comes from this other LA Times item:

UC regents approve controversial pay hikes, urge campuses to adopt admissions change (excerpt)

…As they wrapped up their meeting in San Diego, the regents also awarded controversial, 10% pay raises to three financial managers in the UC president’s office whose salaries after the increases will range from $216,370 to $247,500. Officials defended the one-time raises as a way to save money in the long run; chief risk officer Grace Crickette; Dan Sampson, assistant vice president for financial services and controls; and Sandra Kim, executive director of capital markets finance, had contracts that called for annual bonuses even while UC was eliminating such bonus plans. Their contracts were renegoiated for the one-time raise with no bonuses or future raises planned, according to Peter J. Taylor, UC’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Unions criticized the decisions, calling such raises for executives unseemly at a time when low-wage UC employees face increased costs for pension and retirement health plans and a state budget crisis threatens large scale layoffs across the university.

Full article at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/01/uc-urges-admissions-change-and-approves-controversial-pay-hikes.html