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Greetings from Jeff Elman, Dean

A number of people have asked me how UC San Diego is coping with the budgetary crisis. This is clearly an enormously difficult time for people everywhere. The university is by no means an ivory tower. We are, like people all over the world, experiencing tremendous stress as we try to do more with less. So I would like to provide a brief update on how we are dealing with the situation. To anticipate the bottom line: The current reality is tough, but the underlying health of the university remains strong.

Although only 12 percent of UCSD's budget comes from the state of California (the rest comes from research grants, contracts and private gifts), that 12 percent is absolutely critical to us. The monies pay for the core services without which we could not operate: faculty and staff salaries, utilities, student services, lecturers, classrooms and more. UC funding from the state has actually dropped steadily over the past decade on a real dollar basis. Because of this, we have become more efficient and leaner. But for the same reason, the current financial crisis and significant drop in state funding (which will result in an incredible 25 percent cut to our budget by the end of next year) mean that we are now cutting into muscle and bone.

How have we survived? UC San Diego is one of the campuses targeted for growth in order to help accommodate the increase in California's student population, and we were given modest growth funds for this purpose. Unfortunately, we have had to give back a significant portion of these monies to cover the larger cuts in state funding. Although this has helped cushion the cuts, these monies were truly needed to hire additional faculty and staff, as well as keep student costs down. This represents a significant challenge for us. The University of California is the state's premier academic research and teaching institution. Our objective is to fulfill the mandate we have been given by the state legislature as described in the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which is to provide first class education at an affordable level, and to carry out innovative research. Doing this in the face of a 25 percent budget cut is, as you can imagine, extraordinarily difficult.

To put things in perspective, virtually every other major university is confronting the same issues. Our wealthier private cousins—the Ivies, for example—are dealing with drops in their own funding sources. Those schools typically rely on income from their endowments to pay for operating costs (in some cases, up to 45 percent of annual operating expenses come from the endowment). The value of those endowments has decreased as much as 30-40 percent in value. Thus, many of those schools are facing huge challenges of their own.

These are terribly difficult times for everyone: not just the university, but our students, alumni, friends, and, indeed, people around the world. We will have to pull together and help each other in whatever ways we can. But having been frank about what the challenges are, let me also emphasize that I have enormous confidence in UC San Diego's resilience. We continue to attract superb students. Our faculty and staff are enormously dedicated, talented and passionate about what we do. We remain at the cutting edge of teaching and conduct research that is essential to the health of our society. The quality of our students, faculty and staff are ultimately the most important resources of all. These are what will see us through to the brighter times that I know lie ahead.


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