Incoming chancellor lays out plan to reduce budget deficit
BERKELEY >> The incoming chancellor of UC Berkeley has unveiled her plan to reduce the school’s budget deficit from $110 million to $57 million this year — and it involves some deep cuts.
In a message sent Tuesday to the university community, Carol Christ wrote that “the process to develop not only a balanced budget but also a sustainable financial model for the campus is a challenging one that requires hard choices.”
Christ takes the helm at Cal from Nicholas Dirks, who has faced widespread criticism for his handling of the university’s finances, while the UC system as a whole is under fire from lawmakers upset over a recent audit that showed the central office failed to disclose $175 million in reserves.
Tuition is also set to rise for the first time in six years.
While reducing a budget deficit at a major university is a challenge in any year, the audit prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to withhold $50 million in UC funding until the system shows it has made improvements. It’s unclear how that decision will impact Berkeley.
The school will meet a little more than half of its target goal to reduce the deficit with increased revenues, including private gifts, but there are cuts ahead that the school acknowledges could increase how long students have to wait to access services on campus.
“Non-academic units are meeting their targets primarily through staff and service level reductions,” Christ wrote.
Some of that may happen through attrition, but if departments don’t meet certain targets, layoffs may follow.
The school’s staff workforce has already shrunk by approximately 450 full-time equivalent in the last fiscal year and salary growth has slowed. In her note, Christ said campus leaders would forego salary increases in the coming year.
“As I have said often, this is our problem to solve, and we are solving it,” Christ wrote. “In the process, we will become an even stronger university that will serve as a model for other public universities facing similar challenges.”
Contact Emily DeRuy at 510-208-6424.