Some California Legislators Propose Stripping the University of California of Its Constitutional Autonomy. (June 10, 2009)

Rex Dalton, in Nature reports that the ten-campus University of California expects to see a cut of US$800 million from the US$3.2 billion in state funds it was due to receive over the next year.

In what surely must be the equivalent of throttling the goose that has laid golden eggs for the state and the nation — see for example http://www.atse.org.au/uploads/Newton.pdf — some of the state's legislators see as an expedient cost cutting measure, removing the University's constitutional autonomy, and giving the elected legislators immediate direct control.

Of course that autonomy has also been a bone of contention for decades.

University administrators have vowed the equivalent of over their dead bodies.

Cost cutting measures that some of the campuses have already begun or are contemplating:

• the system as a whole has raised tuition fees for its 225,000 students by 9.3%,

• the still-unfinished University of California Merced campus is facing a total cut in infrastructure funding,

• completion of a second science and engineering building at UC Merced has been delayed from 2012 to 2015,

• at UC Riverside, hopes are evaporating for a new medical school that intended to receive its first class in 2012,

• it has already halted projects totalling $185 million — including a genomics facility that has been built but cannot be furnished,

• UC Irvine has already instituted a hiring freeze,

• UC San Diego has eliminated 5% of the staff, or about 800 positions, in the past few months,

• UC San Francisco says they are still assessing where to make cuts but the impact is going to be very severe.

According to Mr Dalton: "The true scale of that impact should become apparent on 14 July at the next meeting of the UC Board of Regents. The meeting will be held at UCSF's new Mission Bay campus — where a $135-million cancer research building opened on 1 June.