LOOKING INTO THE UC BUDGET -- Report #10 (e-mail version)
by Charles Schwartz, Department of Physics, University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720. 510-642-4427 April 24, 1994
[Dear Regents: One of you recently told me that he hasn't read these
Reports. I understand that you are busy important people, and it is
easiest just to follow the leader. However, if you will make the
effort to study this one, I believe you will find it both
intellectually and politically rewarding.]
SUMMARY
In the second act of the Regents' discussion of LONG-TERM
PLANNING, things take a divisive turn. (The first act was the topic
of Report #9.) Two camps now emerge - one championing "quality"
above all else, the other holding fast to the earlier consensus
slogan of "quality and access" - in what appears to be fundamentally
a political contest between competing values.
The first task of this Report is to examine the language being
used (What does "quality" mean?) and then to decode the regents'
rhetoric and see what the actual conflicts amount to. It comes down
to that famous old issue: Should faculty spend less time at research
and more time in the classroom?
I present some startling new data, derived from UC sources,
concerning the UC faculty's teaching and research workloads compared
with those at other top universities. It appears that we have
within UC a stored surplus of faculty resources; and this might be
re-deployed in such a way that both access and quality may be
maintained in the future, although not in the same luxurious mode to
which we have been accustomed in the past.
To achieve the goal of maintaining both quality and access,
this re-design of faculty work must be implemented with great care;
and it will have to be accompanied by other reforms - including a
reduction of the UC administration and a re-distribution of other UC
finances - which I have documented and discussed in previous
Reports.
*******************************************************************
Recently, some mainstream press has paid attention to this work:
Sacramento Bee, March 16, editorial commentary by Peter Schrag
Los Angeles Times, April 18, article by Ralph Frammolino
Lingua Franca bimonthly magazine, April, extensive article by Irvin
Muchnick
********************************************************************
QUALITY vs. ACCESS
At the Regents March 18 meeting one could see the battle lines
being drawn in the struggle over the University of California's
future. Here I report how members of the Board responded to a list
of ten options in a "discussion document" prepared by the UC Office
of the President (UCOP) on how to deal with the expected sharp
increase in UC-eligible students in California and the expected
inadequacy of State funds.
Regent Dean Watkins led off the discussion:
It seems to me that our primary responsibility is to maintain
quality. That's got to be number one. I think that most, if not
all of us, agree with that. With the situation that we're in,
with the financial constraints that are imposed on us, and are
likely to continue ... we do not have a lot of choices. And just
to indicate where I stand on this, it seems to me that the best
options, and they're terrible, are actually a combination of six
and seven. Six is to reduce the eligibility pool [Historically,
the top 12.5% of the state's high school graduates are eligible
to enter UC.] to a lesser percentage ...; and seven, which is to
gain economies by reducing the University's commitment to
professional education on [a] selective basis. ... The only other
choice is to lower the quality of the institution and as long as
I am a regent I am not going to vote for that.
Regent Roy Shults echoed this view, acknowledging the consequences:
It is with great reluctance that I think that the University may
be forced exactly into what Regent Watkins has suggested for the
future. If we do reduce the percentage of eligible students who
enter the University in the future we will ... have angry people
in the State of California, who look to those of us who
benefitted from the University and say to us, You are telling us
our children cannot. ... It is very difficult to slam the door of
opportunity to those who come along in the future and expect that
when we do that we will have their support.
Student Regent Darby Morrisroe took issue with her elders:
I [understand] how important the issue of quality is to this
Board and the University ... but I think it is also important
that the University in its deliberations begin to address with
the same vigor the issue of access to the University of
California. ...
I have a question that I think is pretty important for the
evaluation of option six, whether to reduce the eligibility pool
to a lesser percentage of high school graduates, say, from the
current twelve and a half percent to, say, ten or six. ... [W]hat
effect that will have on the eligibility pool demographically?
... I have a fear that ... reducing the percentage that we are
taking in [will have a] disproportionate impact on certain
demographics of the students.
At this point Regent Roy Brophy (chairing this meeting) interrupted
Morrisroe:
Do I understand you to say that we should not be as concerned as
we have been about maintaining quality but should put additional
emphasis on admissions and diversity and so forth. In other
words we should bring more students in and not be so concerned
about what type of education or continuation of the type of
education we are providing now ? If that is not the answer, then
what are you talking about?
And Morrisroe responded:
No. That is actually not at all what I am saying.
Regent Ward Connerly also took the other side:
I hope that we don't poise the issue solely as one of quality
versus access. ... Those of us who argue more for access don't
want an inferior University of California, not at all. But we
are saying, I think, certainly I am, that when we talk about
quality that we not start off with that as the premise that
that's the only thing that we want to provide. Because when we
do that it almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. ... When we
start off with both of those objectives in mind, then I think
that we can more appropriately reconcile the conflicts.
Regent Meredith Khachigian tried to minimize the conflict:
I strongly feel that access and quality go hand in hand. I have
a real bias that access means nothing unless it's to a quality
institution. I feel that, in purely business terms, that that UC
degree is a marketable commodity ... wherever we have taken it,
and it means something. And we want to maintain that to mean
something when our students continue this. I think that our
commitment to high quality is what keeps this University what it
is, ... and I don't want to see that changed.
As did Regent John Davies:
We have this flood of students beginning three or four years from
now, we just aren't going to have enough money to do what we want
to do. ... To the extent the other options don't work, we have to
go with six and seven. I don't think we need to treat this as
choosing between quality and access, of course we all believe in
both; but the starting point for me is preserving the existing
quality. That's the starting point, not that we are
disinterested in access.
Warren Fox, Executive Director of the California Postsecondary
Education Commission (CPEC), gave an answer to Morrisroe's critical
question:
I am asked by my colleagues in the state and outside the state,
What is the number one issue in California higher ed? And my
answer is: growth and diversity. That's obviously two issues but
here in California it's one. The tidal wave, as Clark Kerr calls
it, Tidal Wave II, is coming just at the turn of the century and
we will have no racial-ethnic group in this state a majority at
the turn of the century, and we will have large numbers of
students. Our [CPEC's] eligibility study shows not only will we
have larger numbers of students but students are increasing their
eligibility to enter UC and CSU at ever increasing rates for all
racial-ethnic groups. Now there are still underrepresented
groups and we have more work to do. So just at the time when all
groups are preparing for eligibility at UC and CSU in larger
numbers, at the same time the State doesn't have the financial
resources to support their admission. ... [I]t is our feeling
that you ought not to reduce the twelve and a half percent. Our
preliminary indications are that there are disproportionate
effects on Californians if you reduce from twelve and a half
percent. ... [W]e would urge you to maintain the eligibility pool
so that your students resemble the citizens of the State of
California.
Lieutenant Governor and Regent Leo McCarthy offered his sympathy:
This task of long term planning, when so much of costs that may
be heaped upon the University are beyond the control of the
University and the Board of Regents, it's a pretty tough task.
We've just got to do the best we can as human beings, but we can't
begin to do our job [without] the specifics. ... [S]omebody's
nose has got to get bloodied in the University. ... This is
going to be a tough process, very tough.
And , finally, here is what UC President Jack Peltason had to say:
I am very pleased, excited, that we are now getting this
discussion going. This is a discussion that the Board will have
to have, the people of California will have to have, the faculty
and staff will have to have, and a sustained one. There are no
easy answers and there are indeed some very tough choices and we
can't have it all. But the point that I would like to emphasize
in that discussion is that we need to cut programs but that the
major cost is the total number of students that you educate. And
even if one campus specializes and another campus specializes, to
keep up this same total number of students, that's your big cost.
And you can change the eligibility range up and down and still
the question is, How many students are there in class? - that's
the cost. And the real question we are facing is, If we don't
get enough money to educate all of the students, [what do we do?]
A BIT OF BACKGROUND
When the current budget crisis began, some 4 years ago, the UC
President (David Gardner at that time) pronounced that the
preservation of "quality" in this institution would be the
University's number one priority. As student fees began to escalate
and the consequent socio-economic implications became a prominent
issue, the word "access" was added to the official UC language.
Throughout the regental discussions and debates leading up to their
adoption in January of long term policies on student fees (tuition)
and financial aid (progressive taxation), these two icons were
treated as co-equal priorities: "Preserving Affordable Quality and
Access" was the titular phrase.
In this latest debate that harmony had been shattered. What
one sees now is an open political struggle, with what appears to be
the dominant party grouped under the flag of Quality First. One
reason why I call this a political struggle is that the word
"quality" is tossed about without ever being defined or examined;
it is used for rhetorical purposes to represent some particular
values and interests which are not apparent to the innocent
spectator.
My first task here is explication; and the approach I shall use
follows that given in my Report #9, discussing the new paradigm for
financing the University.
SEVERAL MEANINGS OF "QUALITY" IN THE UNIVERSITY
We can speak of the quality of research, which means the same
thing as the reputational standing of the faculty who initiate and
conduct the research work within the university. Most of the time,
when UC faculty and administrators use the word "quality", this is
what they are talking about.
We can also speak of the quality of graduate education,
referring here to the academic (mostly PhD) program as distinct from
the professional schools. This is so closely tied to the quality of
research that it is seldom necessary to separate the two.
The quality of undergraduate education is quite a different
matter. There are many ways for teachers to teach and many ways for
students to learn. There are very different kinds of schools -
liberal arts colleges, general four year colleges, research
universities - each of which can provide a high quality
undergraduate education. The University's leaders often claim that
high quality research faculty provide a high quality undergraduate
education, but this is largely an exaggeration. The true relation
between these two might best be described by the phrase, "trickle
down."
One can also speak of the quality of the professional schools
(medicine, law, business, etc.) but I shall put this subject aside
for now.
Also, we often hear talk of the quality of administration,
arising in justification for the high salaries paid to UC's top
executives. This is mostly nonsense that ought not to occupy our
time but apparently the regents do need to be educated about this.
I shall defer this discussion to a later Report.
HOW IS QUALITY MEASURED ?
Quality, in any of its forms, is not an absolute thing; it is
usually measured by some kind of comparison between one university
and another. There are a number of sources of such rankings, and
they involve subjective judgments along with a variety of numerical
measures. If your school comes out at the top of somebody's list,
you crow; if you find yourself ranked low down, you find reasons to
criticize their methodology. I don't want to get into philosophical
wranglings here, so I shall stick with the same values, measurements
and standards that the UC administration uses.
For quality of research and graduate education, UC looks at a
set of eight comparison institutions: 4 private research
universities (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale) and 4 public research
universities (Illinois, Michigan, SUNY-Buffalo, Virginia.)
Principally, these institutions are chosen for a comparison of
faculty salaries. Thus, maintaining quality here means being in a
position not unfavorable in the competition for hiring and retaining
research faculty, or for providing financial support for graduate
students. Salaries are not the only criterion in this competition:
the teaching load of faculty members is another very important
element.
For measuring the quality of instruction, UC chooses to look at
Student/Faculty ratios, combining undergraduate and graduate
students in this count. However, as pointed out in my Report #8a,
it will be important to look at this ratio separately for
undergraduate students and for graduate students.
There is a further important distinction to be made in
discussions about quality of instruction and quality of research
faculty. This has to do with the self-evident fact that not all the
professors on any given campus, or in any given department, are the
same. Even at the very best university, at any given moment some
faculty members will shine considerably more than others - shine as
research stars or shine as teachers. From the perspective of an
undergraduate student, it is the AVERAGE of the faculty that counts.
From the perspective of a top notch faculty candidate deciding
whether to take a position at this university or at that one, it is
the BEST of the faculty present (looking primarily at the
individual's own field) that counts.
These ideas form the necessary basis from which we can
interpret the regents' discussion and proceed to examine
intelligently the University of California's present condition and
its future options.
DECODING THE REGENTS' DEBATE
When the word "quality" is used without further specification,
it is usually safe to assume that University officials are talking
about the quality of research; and that usually means keeping the
faculty (relatively) happy. Thus, in the Regent's budget document
for 1994-95 one reads of the urgent need for a salary increase for
faculty: "To ensure future quality, it is critically important that
the University return to a competitive position in the marketplace."
[page 16]
When the word "access" is used, it generally means: keeping UC
open to undergraduate students according to the California Master
Plan for Higher Education - the top 12.5% of the state's high
school graduates are eligible; and "access" also means that economic
status should not be a factor in a student's ability to enroll at
UC. The word "demographics" is used to mean two things: the
increase in UC-eligible undergraduate students - an additional
80,000 on top of the present 120,000 - expected to arrive by the
year 2010; and the representation of various ethnic-racial groups
within any selected population.
The conflict, as presented by the UC President's Office, arises
from the expected increase in number of students and the continuing
shortfall in State funding.
Alternative proposals for dealing with this looming crisis have
been presented by the UC Student Association and advocated by
Student Regent Darby Morrisroe. A key element of their plan is to
have faculty members spend less time on research and graduate
education and more time on undergraduate education. While I do not
know about the numerical details of their plan, something of this
sort generally appears to make economic sense; and, of course, calls
for such shifts in university priorities have been heard many times
before from state legislatures and other critics of the university.
The counter-argument is that increasing faculty teaching loads
will make UC less attractive to top notch research faculty and we
will lose our competitive standing among the nation's best research
universities. Ergo, QUALITY VERSUS ACCESS.
I SHALL SHOW THAT THIS IS A FALSE DICHOTOMY. But first, let's
examine some more of what the regents said.
CRITIQUE OF OPTION SIX
"Option 6: To reduce the eligibility pool to a lesser percentage of
the top high school graduates (for example, to the top 10% or the
top 7-1/2%). This strategy reduces the absolute numbers of
students, avoids cost increases, and, in those ways, continues to
provide those students who attend a quality undergraduate education.
... it would move the University in an elitist direction."
Putting aside for the moment the question of whether UC ought
to limit undergraduate enrollment, let me ask the question: What
would be the fairest way to do this if it should become necessary?
Using market forces (raising the price) is clearly unacceptable
to everybody. Thus, UC has a "commitment" to provide financial aid
to needy students - although some of us question whether that
program is now adequate or will be maintained.
Raising the eligibility criterion, as proposed in Option Six,
would probably have a significant discriminatory effect - as Warren
Fox of CPEC testified to the Regents - and that should make it
morally and politically unacceptable.
An alternative would be to keep the 12.5% criterion but add a
lottery mechanism to choose among the eligible student applicants.
If all students started out with equal opportunities of preparatory
education, then a simple random lottery would be the fairest way.
Given, however, that the historical underrepresentation of some
racial-ethnic groups has not yet been remedied, the lottery should
be weighted appropriately to right this imbalance.
CRITIQUE OF OPTION SEVEN
"Option 7: To maintain the 12-1/2% principle for undergraduates,
but to gain economies by reducing the University's commitment to
professional education on a selective basis. The University could
... cut some of those professional schools, many of whose functions-
-except for granting the doctorate--are fully shared with the
California State University system (for example, education, social
welfare, and others)."
How much money would this save UC? The University has five
graduate schools of Education and two of Social Welfare. Their
combined total expenditure of General Funds in 1992-93 amounted to
about $28 million; and only a portion of this total pertains to the
masters degree and credential programs (the PhD programs would stay
with UC). Thus, this is not very much money compared to UC's roughly
2 billion annual expenditure of general funds; but even that amount
of savings is unlikely to be realized by UC. These selected
graduate programs, which are important to California, would
probably be shifted over to the CSU system and the Legislature would
then most likely shift the allocated funds from UC to CSU. There
might be a net saving to the State, since CSU's per capita cost is
generally less than UC's; but it could easily result in a net
financial loss for UC since tenured faculty members are not easily
got rid of.
"QUALITY FIRST"
UC alumni (and that includes most regents) as well as students
who are already enrolled in this University would naturally not want
to see a degradation of the quality of this institution, however one
might define quality, since that might affect the value of their
degree, or that of their children, etc. This view should be
identified, however, as an expression of bias - by which I imply no
evil intent but merely a reflection of the particular interest of
those who have been privileged to attend UC in the past. Those
other citizens whose opportunity to attend, or to have their
children attend UC in the future may be foreclosed by the Regents'
choice of policy would naturally have a different bias: access is
their first concern.
THE PRESIDENT'S FORMULA
President Peltason has a simple view of the problem: "How many
students are there in class? - that's the cost."
In the past, the State has agreed to fund UC on the basis of a
formula that budgets one FTE (full-time equivalent) faculty
position, and associated instructional support funds, for each 17.61
FTE students of General Campus enrollment. (General Campus means:
excluding health sciences.) In the current budget crisis this ratio
has actually gone up to 18.6, but as a matter of policy it is
supposed to come back down. In this context, the Student-to-
Faculty Ratio is not a measure of pedagogical value but just a
budgeting formula, whose origin lies shrouded in the mysteries of
history and politics.
Can this be looked at differently? Yes, that is what I plan
to show. President Peltason is saying that he can only visualize
the University continuing into the future exactly as it has been in
the past. He allows no re-examination of fundamentals, and that is
a capital fault.
NEW INVESTIGATIONS & STARTLING DISCOVERIES
A. Formal Courseload Policies for Faculty
The UCOP report,"Undergraduate Instruction and Faculty Teaching
Activities," March 1994, gives authoritative data. For UC, we find
on page 28 the average number of regularly scheduled courses that a
full-time faculty member is expected to teach, in the various major
disciplines, expressed as a number of "quarter courses per year."
For the 8 comparison institutions, we find on page 30 the data given
as the average number of "semester courses taught per year."
Superficially, the numbers seem very similar; and the UCOP report
concludes: "practices related to teaching assignments in the
University of California closely parallel those of its comparison
institutions."
We need to look closer at these numbers. Let's calculate the
number of courses taught by a faculty member in any one term, be it
a quarter or a semester, averaged throughout the academic year:
that is, divide the number of Quarter Courses per Year by 3 and
divide the number of Semester Courses per Year by 2. This will
allow a direct comparison of the data for UC with that for the other
universities. This is also the most meaningful number from the
perspective of a faculty member - and that is what really counts
when you worry about faculty recruitment and retention. The UCOP
report notes that a semester at UC is 15 weeks long while at the
comparison universities a semester averages about 13 weeks; this is
at most a 15% correction. Also, It would be nice to have the
disciplines more separated in the case of the comparison
institutions but I shall have to be content for now with this data
as it is provided in the more aggregated form. Here is the final
result.
Table 1. Average Number of Courses per Faculty in Any One Term
Disciplines UC Comparison 8
Humanities & Social Sciences 1.33 to 1.67 2.0 (2.0 to 2.5)
Engineering 1.33 1.5 to 2.0
All Sciences 1.00 to 1.67 1.0 to 1.5
This "apples-to-apples" comparison shows that faculty
courseloads in the Sciences are indeed very close; but in the other
disciplines the comparison universities have significantly higher
faculty courseloads than UC - UP TO FIFTY PERCENT HIGHER.
This is a startling discovery.
B. Student-to-Faculty Ratios
In my Report #8a I gave some of this new data, using numbers
provided by UCOP and CPEC, but choosing to look just at
undergraduate students, rather than the usual practice of lumping
both undergraduates and graduates together. Here is the complete
separated data for UC and the comparison 8 schools.
Table 2. Student-Faculty Ratios - Disaggregated and Compared
All Undergrad Graduate
Students Student Students
University of California 18.6 15.1 3.5
Avg. of 4 Public Comparison Univ's 17.8 12.9 4.9
Avg. of 4 Private Comparison Univ's 10.4 5.0 5.4
[Sources: Letter from L. Hershman, UCOP, 2/10/94; and CPEC Report
93-2, April 1993, p. 48.]
Here, again, we make a startling discovery when we look
separately at the graduate and undergraduate students.
Undergraduate students at UC have a far higher ratio than those at
the Private 4 - three times as much - which is usually interpreted
to mean that they get a far poorer education, measured by their
individual contact with the faculty. For graduate students, on the
other hand, the situation is reversed: the graduate student-to-
faculty ratio is 50% higher at the Private 4 than at UC!
I interpret these numbers, tentatively, as follows: Compared
to the nation's best private research universities, UC has far too
few faculty for its undergraduate students and UC also has
significantly too many faculty for its graduate students. (An
observer from another planet might suggest the alternative
interpretation: that UC has too many undergraduate students and too
few graduate students.)
GOLD DISCOVERED IN CALIFORNIA
These two numerical displays, examining two separate measures
of quality - quality of research and quality of instruction, using
the definitions used by UCOP and using UCOP's own numbers - both
point to the same powerful conclusion: that the University of
California has a large excess of its faculty engaged in the missions
of research and graduate education. The golden opportunity posed by
this discovery is that a judicious redeployment of existing faculty
resources may go a long way toward accommodating the expected
increase in undergraduate students (i.e., maintaining access)
without significantly damaging the quality of research and graduate
education.
IS IT REAL GOLD ?
Several things need to be checked in more detail than the
available data allow.
The numbers in A, showing lower teaching loads at UC, need to
be further detailed by academic disciplines, and perhaps also
separated according to public and private comparison universities.
UCOP can and should do this.
The numbers in B, especially the graduate student-to-faculty
ratios, should also be broken down for various academic disciplines
and then compared from one institution to another. I have estimated
this ratio for the individual campuses of UC and find a rather large
variation from one to another; but this also calls for authoritative
data that UCOP can provide.
My interpretation of these numbers was called "tentative"
because in the comparison between UC and other institutions one must
also ask the question: How do faculty divide their time, on the
average, between undergraduate students and graduate students? I
have made the plausible assumption that this division of time is
approximately the same at the comparison institutions and at UC - my
reasoning is that this is an important factor in the competitive
hiring of top notch research faculty - but this is an assumption
that should be checked by further data from UCOP.
Looking further, I have found some additional data that helps
firm up this analysis.
C. Faculty Time-Use Statistics
In my Report #8 I used data from UC's latest (1983-84) survey
of how faculty spend their work time. Out of a total 61.3 hour work
week, the average full time faculty member reported 23.2 hours spent
on research, 26.0 hours on instructional activities and 12.1 hours
on professional, public and university service. The study also
allowed one to separate part of the instructional time between
undergraduate students and graduate students: it showed a 50-50
split in terms of hours of direct student contact in classes.
There are, however, two reasons for believing that this
substantially underestimates the overall portion of time faculty
spend on graduate students. First, the time devoted by a professor
to preparation for class is undoubtedly greater, on the average, for
graduate courses than for undergraduate courses. This is because of
the more complex nature of graduate course material and also because
of the greater sophistication of graduate students. Second, faculty
spend a great deal of time with their graduate students engaged in
research - this apprentice relation is at the very heart of the PhD
program. Graduate students so engaged enroll in a departmental
"research" course for up to the full 12 unit course load. In UC's
Faculty Time-Use survey, however, the respondents were told to
report their time spent in contact with student research assistants
as faculty research time and not as instructional time.
The indication is that UC faculty, on the average, spend
considerably more of their time devoted to graduate students than to
undergraduate students. Again, I do not have data to make this
division precise or to compare it from one campus or one university
to another; but UCOP could do this.
D. The Weighted Student-to-Faculty Ratio
I previously spoke of the formula, 17.61 students equals one
faculty member, used as the basis for UC's budget request to
Sacramento. There is another formula, called the "weighted student-
to-faculty ratio," that counts:
lower division undergraduate students as 1.0
upper division undergraduate students as 1.5
graduate students, before candidacy as 2.5
graduate students, after candidacy as 3.5
This weighted formula was the basis of UC's budget requests to
Sacramento until the early 1970s, when it was replaced by the
simpler one using only the total number of students enrolled.
However, according to a recent paper by a knowledgable UC
administrator, the weighted formula has continued to be used,
internally, by the UC President's Office in deciding how to allocate
faculty FTEs to the several campuses. This would have a further
impact on the balance between undergraduate and graduate/research
priorities within the University.
This leads to yet another important insight when we consider
the growth of the University over long periods of time. Over the
past few decades, UC's undergraduate student population has grown
very much faster than its graduate student population. The result
of applying the above formulas is thus a pattern of distortion:
growth in undergraduates drives the increase in total faculty, but
those faculty are preferentially directed to graduate/research
programs. It is well known that the faculty reward system - hiring,
promotions, merit increases - favors research and graduate
accomplishments over undergraduate teaching. This analysis of
faculty budgeting shows a separate phenomenon that works in the same
direction.
E. Student Mix Over Decades.
Table 3 shows data on the ratio of total undergraduate student
FTEs to graduate student FTEs, including health sciences, for UC and
for its comparison institutions.
Table 3. Student Mix Over 25 Years at UC and Comparison Institutions
Ratio of Undergraduate Students to Graduate Students
(FTE, including health sciences)
1964-65 1989-90
Private Universities 0.89 0.85
Public Universities 2.13 2.24
UC 2.31 3.18
[Earlier data is from UC "Budget for Current Operations 1967-68,"
p. 236; privates are Harvard, Stanford, Yale; publics are Illinois
and Michigan; UC is B, LA, D, SB, R. Later data is from CPEC Report
93-2, April 1993, p. 48; all 4 privates and all 4 publics and 8 UC
campuses.]
The data in Table 3 shows two interesting features. First, the
public research universities have a much larger undergraduate-to-
graduate ratio than do the private ones; this is due to their
historic mission of providing higher education to the masses, not
reserving it for an elite. Second, this table shows that there has
been little change in this ratio over many years for the private
universities, but a very substantial increase at UC.
This history of unbalanced growth can be seen in a slightly
different way in Table 4, which shows UC undergraduate and graduate
student enrollments (excluding health sciences) over the past 30
years. [Sources: "UC Budget for Current Operations"]
Table 4. 30-Year Growth in UC Student Enrollments - Year Avg. FTEs
1963-64 1993-94 % Increase
Undergraduate Students 42,333 114,017 169%
Graduate Students 17,873 26,024 46%
There are very different socio-economic dynamics that feed
these two student populations - that is just a fact of our history.
But the consequences of that history are very significant for
understanding our present condition and our future possibilities.
Even with the simple FTE budgeting formula (one more faculty for
every 17.61 additional students) it is clear that an excess would
build up in the ratio of faculty-to-graduate students. Use of the
weighted student-to-faculty ratio would appear to further exacerbate
that imbalance. Again, this study would be helped by having data
for individual campuses and, perhaps, even for different
disciplines.
[NOTE. One must be careful in taking numbers from various
sources, because different definitions are often used by different
authors and for different purposes. For example, UCOP gives the
total number of UC General Campus faculty in 1992-93 as 7620 FTE for
computing student-to-faculty ratios, but as 5262 FTE for computing
teaching loads. In my work I have been careful to follow UCOP and
CPEC, assuming that they have been consistent in making cross-
institutional comparisons.]
CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATIONS
The numbers and analysis presented above strongly indicate that
UC has the potential for a redistribution of faculty workloads that
can achieve very significant increases in the productivity of
undergraduate education without doing serious damage to the
productivity of faculty research and graduate education. That is,
we appear to have the opportunity to maintain both "quality" and
"access" even without the levels of State funding that UC was
accustomed to in the past.
I must clarify and ammend this conclusion in several ways -
especially because this conclusion seems similar to what one is used
to hearing from a variety of not-so-well-informed critics from
outside the university.
First, I am not suggesting that faculty should work more hours.
I believe that UC faculty members work very hard and long hours in
dedicated service to the University.
Second, I am not suggesting that faculty have in the past been
negligent or selfish in spending too many hours on research and not
enough on undergraduate teaching. Faculty have done the various
jobs they are called upon to do, and in that proportion as asked of
them by the University, by the State and by the Nation. What I am
proposing is a change in policy - social policy and UC policy -
concerning the balance of faculty efforts between these different
duties.
Third, the manner in which this re-distribution of faculty work
is implemented is crucial. Above all, the new policy must have a
lot of flexibility built into it. One immediately thinks of
variations in teaching loads between academic disciplines and
between campuses; but I would also strongly recommend a variation
based upon the different phases in a typical professor's career.
Research productivity, and the consuming intensity of research that
can push one to block out all other activity, are things that are
rarely constant over any person's lifetime. And yet, the policies
at UC (and at other but not all other universities) treat faculty as
if this were so. Thus, as faculty age, their research creativity
will usually slacken but their devotion to the pursuit will not -
because the culture of peer opinion and the institutional reward
system both create strong incentives to keep at it. One could say
that the established system creates waste - many professors spending
a lot of time on research that is not of much value. But
alternatively one could say that the policies of the past decades
have provided the University with a component of luxury, which our
society can not presently afford to keep up. It is the recognition
of this "luxury factor" that presents us with the golden opportunity
to maintain both access and quality.
Fourth, one should not expect the faculty to shoulder the
entire burden of adjusting to a changed future. There are other
beds of luxury within UC that must also be brought to contribute to
the new restructuring: in my previous Reports I have identified
large amounts of financial resources wasted on an overgrown
administrative bureaucracy, and also a huge amount of cash flowing
into the hospitals and medical schools that ought to be shared with
the rest of the University.
Fifth, the structure and operation of the University's
executive apparatus must be changed, in order to restore academic
values where corporate habits have corrupted this institution. This
is necessary not only to provide the new leadership for a changing
time, but also to rebuild public confidence in, and public support
for, the University.