As the state begins to examine the UC
budget, two different hearings have been held to determine how the university
is using state funds. It is clear that the legislature wants to
increase funding for the university, but it is also clear that the governor and
the legislature want to know how the UC is currently spending its money. There
is also a growing concern that the increase in nonresident students is
enhancing the funding inequality among the campuses and that eligible students
from California are being shut out of the UC system. In fact,
in a hearing reviewing
the UC response to a state audit on campus funding imbalances, several
legislators made it clear that they are bothered by the fact that the campuses
with the highest number of under-represented minority students are the campuses
receiving the lowest amount of funding. (For a detailed analysis of the campus
funding imbalance, see here)
At the audit hearing, the UC argued that
the funding imbalance among the campuses will be resolved by the new rebecnhing
funding model, but as I have shown, rebenching is only redistributing $37 million
per year, and the revenue generated from nonresident tuition far exceeds the
money from rebenching. After
calling this enhanced imbalance to the attention of the UC administration, I
was told that the smaller campuses should be happy that Berkeley and UCLA
receive more funding because these star campuses make the other less stellar
campuses look good. This seems to be a novel trickle-down theory of
prestige, or is it just spin?
At the same time that I have been
meeting with legislators and staff from the governor’s office to help increase
UC funding, while making campus funding more equitable, I have been besieged by
questions concerning why the UC budget is so hard to
understand. Many of these political officials have been waiting for
UC’s response to AB94, a bill that requires the UC to report on the differences
among the costs of educating undergraduates, graduates, and professional school
education. This report was due by October 1, 2014, and the final
report was only released the day before the state hearing on UC finances.
In looking at the final product,
one can only be shocked and amused. Much of the report is a simple
narrative discussion of all that UC does and how it is hard to determine the
cost of its many activities. When the UC finally gets to the
discussion of the cost differences, the entire new methodology is explained in
a single paragraph: “First, graduate students are considered
full-time when taking 12 units a term whereas undergraduates are full-time at
15 units per term. This is a standard practice in other institutions and is the
basis for the ratio of 1.25 (15/12) used in the NACUBO report. Second, the
University collects data on the proportion of student credit hours (SCH)
offered by level and that data includes the type of instructor delivering the
student credit hours. There is a substantial differential between undergraduate
and graduate students in the proportion of SCH taught by ladder faculty. For
graduate students, 79% of SCH are taught by ladder faculty compared to 49% for
undergraduates. Since expenditures for ladder faculty are higher than for other
types of faculty, expenditures by level of faculty can be used to estimate an
overall differential between undergraduate and graduate expenditures. The
estimate of the differential for 2012-13 is 1.33. Combining these two factors –
1.25 for the FTE calculation times 1.33 for faculty type – results in an
estimate that graduate expenditures per FTE for instruction are on average at
least 1.7 times greater than undergraduates." Really?!! How in
the world did they come up with such a reductive methodology and why did it
take them over a year to produce it?
Although it is important to stress that
graduate students are taught mostly by higher paid senate faculty, the report
does not even try to say how much the different faculty groups are paid and how
many courses they teach on average and what are the average size of the
undergraduate and graduate and professional classes. The
university’s own rebenching formula estimates that doctoral students cost at
least two and a half more than undergraduates and medical students cost five
times more than undergraduates, but this report says that graduates only cost a
third more and medical students cost ten times more.
Actually, UC gives two different types
of calculation for the cost of instruction: one which they call the narrow
calculation and the other one is the broader calculation. According
to the narrow calculation, undergraduates cost $21,800 to educate each year,
graduates cost $37,100, and health science students cost $216,000, and
according to the broader definition, undergraduates cost $29,200, graduates cost
$55,800, and health science students cost $342,500. Yes, they claim
it costs them a third of a million dollars to educate each medical student for
a year.
Before we try to understand how the UC
generated these numbers, we should look at a few of UC’s
disclaimers. The first important claim is that they are unable to
calculate the cost of educating professional school students: “The
University is unable to break out expenditures for graduate professional
programs as requested in AB 94. These are programs that are authorized to
charge Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition in addition to mandatory
systemwide tuition and fees. Most of these programs are housed within larger
departments where expenditures are not differentiated by program. There is no reliable
method for delineating these expenditures on a systemwide basis, nor is there a
suitable proxy to use to estimate them. Therefore, the University is unable to
respond to this portion of the request.” First of all, AB 94 does
not focus on how much money the UC is bringing in per student, but how much UC
is spending per student. In fact, UC and the state Legislative
Analyst keep on confusing the two issues. For example, in the LAO’s report for
the budget hearing, they have a chart called “UC Education Expenditures Per
Student,” but as I have told them on several occasions, this should be called
revenue per student and not spending per student, since this is just a
calculation of how much tuition, state funds, and UC general funds are brought
in per student: it does not actually look at how much the UC is spending on
each student, and that is why AB 94 was needed. However, UC once
again repeats on page 4 of its response to AB 94 a chart entitled “Per-Student
Average Core Funds Expenditures for Education (2012-13 dollars),” and they make
the following standard claim, “In 2012-13, the average expenditure figures for
students based on the actual expenditures for the general campus instructional
program and its support activities totaled $16,890, composed of $8,360, or 49%,
student fees; $2,340, or 14%, UC General Funds; and $6,190, or 37%, State
General Funds.” So how can the UC be spending $16,890 on each
student, if they claim the average narrow rate is $24,157 and the average
broader rate is $33,299? Is this going to help the state understand the UC
budget and spending?
Confusing matters even more is the next
disclaimer, which is the standard argument that all activities in the system
are mixed, and so it is impossible to say how much anything really
costs: “the University’s accounting and information systems do not readily
allow for the disaggregation of educational expenditures requested in the AB 94
language and funding is neither appropriated to the University of California by
level of student nor by discipline, nor spent that way on the campuses. Faculty
are paid to teach both undergraduate and graduate students as well as perform
other functions related to the research and public service missions of the
University and their salaries are not apportioned across these activities.
Similarly, staff perform support functions affecting students of all levels and
disciplines. These expenses are not categorized on the basis of what level of
student may benefit or their field of study.” The argument here
appears to be that the university has never been asked to make this type of
calculation, and they really do not know how to do it, so the whole response is
just an impossible fiction. When I have asked people at UCOP how
they can make any decisions if they do not know how much anything costs, they
tell me that they use historical estimates and incremental increases.
In the response to AB 94, the basic
methodology for this impossible report is defined in the following
manner: “The University’s method for calculating instructional
expenditures by all the categories requested is based on reasonable assumptions
and proxies for actual data, which are delineated below.” In other
words, this report is based on “proxies” and “assumptions” and not on any real
research, but isn’t this a research university? After all, I and
others have suggested to UCOP several different methodologies that the UC could
have used to make these calculations, but they refused to listen to my advice
and the advice of others.
Driving much of this problem is the fact
that the UC does not believe that the state or students want to pay for the
cost of departmental research, and so they have to hide this cost by
including it in the cost of instruction. This hiding is
evident by comparing three statements from the same document. The first
statement clearly says that research is not part of the cost of
instruction: “These calculations leverage functional expense
categories reported in published financial statements and identify expenditures
that can be considered direct expenditures on education (e.g., instruction,
academic support) as well as indirect expenses (e.g., institutional
support, maintenance, depreciation).” Nowhere is research mentioned in
this part of the report, and in fact, research is later explicitly excluded
“the figure represents the estimated total funding from core funds on a
per-student basis that is available to support instruction (faculty salaries
and benefits, instructional support, instructional equipment and technology)
and other activities such as libraries, student services, administration, and
operation and maintenance of facilities. It excludes financial aid, which is
treated in the standard CPEC methodology as an expenditure to support access,
not as an expenditure to provide the instructional program. Health sciences
instruction, research, and public service expenditures, as well as related
expenses for support activities, are excluded." But later on they
say you cannot separate the cost of instruction from the cost of research:
"Historically, the instruction category in the budget includes most of the
direct instructional resources associated with the schools and colleges located
on the general campuses, encompassing classroom and laboratory instruction,
instructional technology, and joint scholarly research activities of students
and faculty." In other words, according to the same document, you
have to separate research from instruction, and it is impossible to separate
research from instruction.
All of this confusion came to a head at
the recent hearing on UC finances that you can watch here. A
good summary of the hearing was presented by a KQED report that looked at the
following questions: 1. Why Has UC Spending Gone Up So Much?; 2. Are
out-of-state students crowding out California kids? 3. What should be
considered a “competitive salary” for a UC employee? 4. Are students paying for
teaching … or research? 5. Why shouldn’t state lawmakers impose more rules on
UC’s use of taxpayer dollars? Of course, this story was buried underneath
several reports that UC has decided to freeze summer tuition. Was it just a
coincidence that UC made this announcement on the same day as the hearing on UC
finances was held? And was it a coincidence that UC waited until the day before
the hearing to release its response to AB 94?
