Abstract:
1. The University of California has experienced a long-term decline in state funding
over the last forty years and persistent enrollment growth in the same period. Per-student spending has been allowed to substantially decline as a result.
2. State funding of higher education is historically subject to high levels of volatility.
This volatility has been exacerbated by recurrent political and economic crises and
competition for increasingly scarce state resources.
3. Successive policy decisions at the state and university level have created a situation
in which an increasing proportion of the UC’s core revenues come from student
tuition, fees, and private philanthropy, which are themselves subject to political
pressures.
4. Though the Master Plan for Higher Education was premised on the assumption that
both the teaching and research missions of the university were essential for it to
function as a public good, the two have become decoupled. An increasing proportion
of the teaching conducted by the university is performed by contingent and nontenured faculty (“lecturers”) with limited job security and little or no role in faculty
governance.
5. The growth of lecturers has outpaced the growth of tenure-track faculty at the UC in
9 of the last 10 years, and the growth of part-time positions among these lecturers
has likewise outpaced the growth of full-time positions in the same period.
6. Compared to tenure-line faculty, this workforce is cheap and flexible and has come
to occupy a position of structural importance to the university’s core functions – but
evidence suggests this flexibility hurts student retention and performance.
