Op-Ed: UC and CSU funding essential to California’s economic future
On April 16, 2025, Capitol Weekly published this Op-Ed from Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine, co-chairs of the California Coalition for Public Higher Education:
For decades, California’s public university system has been the envy of much of the world – a powerhouse of research, innovation and economic opportunity.
Today, however, the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) face deep budget cuts that could severely compromise their abilities to expand student access to higher education and enhance California’s prosperity.
Gov. Newsom has proposed a decrease of nearly 8% in 2025-2026 general fund appropriations for the CSU and UC systems – which adds up to bigger spending cuts than other state agencies. His proposal to reduce the UC and CSU spending by $772 million would account for 55% of the proposed $1.4 billion in 2025-26 general fund cuts the governor proposed. In comparison, he proposed only a 1.88% reduction in the Department of Corrections.
The state Legislature must say no to these disproportionate reductions. They are already having a detrimental effect on students, faculty, staff and residents.
The UC recently announced a systemwide hiring freeze. At CSU, Sonoma State is laying off tenured faculty and eliminating 20 degree programs, six departments and all NCAA Division II intercollegiate sports. These cutbacks are a “harbinger” of what’s to come for the rest of the CSU system if the governor’s budget and the elimination of some federal grants to the UC and CSU campuses are approved.
While lawmakers face tough decisions in the upcoming budget, public higher education is much too important to students, our state’s economy and California’s future for the UC and CSU to bear such a disproportionate share of spending reductions.
Just three years ago, the governor entered into a multi-year compact with the UC and CSU to provide a 5% budget increase annually through 2026-27 in exchange for commitments to improve student success, equity, affordability and workforce preparedness.
The governor has proposed deferring the compact’s spending increases to next year, but there is no guarantee the money would be available then or that the Legislature would approve the spending.
Meanwhile, the CSU and UC are holding up their end of the bargain: UC expanded its capacity and affordability by enrolling an additional 12,700 California residents in the past four years and providing 70% of new California undergrads in the 2024-25 academic year with debt-free pathways to graduation.
Likewise, the CSU enrolled more first-year students than ever before in the fall of 2024 – 68,375 – and implemented new programs to meet the compact’s requirements to increase equity, affordability and workforce preparedness.
The proposed budget cuts could derail this progress. For the CSU alone, the $375 million decrease is equal to the entire operating budget of the Fresno State, a campus that serves 25,000 students.
These reductions also come at the same time that the universities face the possibility of losing at least part of their National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and the threat of other federal grants being curtailed because of federal investigations at some of the UC and CSU campuses.
If the threatened grant reductions do occur, the impact could be staggering. NIH is the largest source of research funding at the UC, providing $2.6 billion in the 2023-24 academic year. The CSU estimates that federal grants added up to more than $511 million in research expenditures during the 2022-23, accounting for 63% of its research expenditures that year.
Threats to state and federal funding for the UC and CSU also threaten California’s economy. Both are vital economic engines: UC generates more than $80 billion annually in economic output and has more than 200,000 employees, making it California’s third-largest employer in the fifth-largest economy in the world. CSU annually generates $26.9 billion in industry activity and $10.3 billion in labor income throughout the state.
Lawmakers can strengthen our state’s economy and its future by rejecting the governor’s disproportionate reductions in the UC and CSU budgets. Doing so would allow the UC and CSU to further expand access to higher education and opportunities for our young people and help ensure we have the skilled workforce we need to make California a more prosperous place.
D
Dick Ackerman, Fullerton
Mel Levine, Pacific Palisades
Ackerman is a former Republican leader of the California Senate; Levine is a former Democratic member of Congress. They co-chair the California Coalition for Public Higher Education.