UCSD Budget Crisis

UCSD Budget Crisis

The University of California San Diego has been experiencing financial problems and has been in a budget crisis for quite some time now. The proposals for budget reduction and cutting down of costs including staff salaries has demoralized members of the staff and students alike, and the government should intervene to make sure this esteemed learning institution does not fall. Several critical areas in the budget of the institution have been seriously affected and thus many important activities are not going on as normally as they should be if the budget was okay (California. Dept. of Finance, 2007).

The student population in the university generally is large. A problem that students who drive to school experience is the scarcity of parking spaces. The parking spaces are categorized into three; A, B and S. the A parking area is for the professors, lecturers and teachers, the B parking area is for the graduate students and the S parking spots are for the undergraduate students. For instance, ironically, in a parking spot with a hundred spaces, fifty are allocated to A; thirty-five are allocated to B; and fifteen to S. Though there are very little parking spaces for undergraduate students, the university parking officers keep selling parking permits. This is very wrong since the students are forced to wait for long hours for the parking spots to clear. In addition to this, the students are forced to have long walks to class since the parking spots near the classes are all full. This is a problem brought about by not only the poor structuring but also lack of funds in the school and money is necessary to be able to deal with this problem.

Due to the budget cuts, the hiring of new teaching staff has since been stopped and those currently in the school are likely to face a pay cut and some may face the termination of their jobs. This means less teachers and those lucky enough to retain their jobs shall live in fear that they too might lose their jobs. Those who remain in the institution shall therefore have poor working morale and their output shall be poor and low. The students shall eventually be the ones suffering. Infrastructure is another major problem brought about by the budget cut. The classes are growing smaller due to the new recruitments of students and lack of expansion of the classes to fit these students.

The school facilities have also become limited due to the limiting of the budget. Sports equipment, books in the library, laboratory facilities and equipment, stationery and printing materials, all these items that are very necessary in the lives of the university students are not sufficient to meet the needs of each student (University of California, 2010). This has led to the decrease in performance in sports and general co-curricular activities. The students of science subjects that require laboratory equipment are suffering due to the scarcity of these equipments (Housner, 2008). Library books are not increasing in proportion to the students, and the hours have been limited too due to the shortage of staff to attend to the students. These are both disadvantages since the books are less and the time to read them is limited. Qualified professors are being laid off to save up on the salaries due to the cut down budget. This has the effect of delaying students’ graduation since; the number of classes per student shall reduce, the course time growing longer and thus the timings shall be generally distorted.

Time in class is very important to a university student but not just time, planned and timely time. This means that the coursework should have specific start and end times and should not be affected by the budgeting of the school. Curricular and co-curricular equipment and facilities are also quite important to the students since a balance should exist between the academic and the co-curricular activities. All students should have all the necessary facilities to be comfortable enough in the school. Staff payments should be timely and if anything, raised but not cut down. Moreover, the staff’s job security should be assured and they should be certain of their futures. Not all these factors can be practical in the University of California San Diego due to the current budget problem. The government should seriously look into the matter or risk losing the institution to degradation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

California, California. Dept. of Finance. Final budget summary. Los Angeles, CA: Dept. of Finance, 2007. Print.

Housner, George W. Competing Against Time: The Governor’s Board of Inquiry on the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. Los Angeles, CA: DIANE Publishing, 2008. Print.

University of California (System). University bulletin: a weekly bulletin for the staff of the University of California. Los Angeles, CA: Office of Official Publications, University of California, 2010. Print.