Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance

Good morning everybody. Good morning and welcome. It is 9:30am on February 18th. Welcome to the Subcommitee on Education Finance in the Assembly. I am Chair of the Committee, Assemblymember Alvarez and and appreciate my colleague and welcome our colleague, Assemblymember Patel to the Committee. I'm sure the others will also be joining us in a second.

Thank you again for all of you for being here. This is our first Subcommitee hearing of the year, the first of several to come. We will welcome, I'm sure when they get here, Mr. Muratsuchi Mr. Fong, Mr. Wallace and Ms. Hadwick as well to the Committee.

It is the first of currently scheduled 13 hearings, roughly divided half between higher education and half being in the K12 space. We will be having public comment as usual at the end of today, at the end of the hearing and we welcome you to participate in that.

This is our first higher education hearing of the cycle and we will be welcoming President Drake from the University of California, Chancellor Garcia from the California State University, and Chancellor Christian from the California Community College System. We look forward to hearing the perspectives from all three as we kick off the discussions for higher education.

Obviously you all probably have seen, if not the actual budget itself, certainly the headlines, the Governor's Budget is balanced. But it is unclear what we will see in the may revise. At the moment, both the Department of Finance and the Legislative Analyst Office identify multi-billion deficits in the out years beyond the budget year.

We are also seeing from my perspective and I think from several colleagues, a problematic budget for the UC and CSU with very large operational cuts to both segments that seem much more harsh than many other agencies and departments in the state budget.

We know that these cuts could have negative impacts on campuses and primarily on students and access. In addition, the deferrals proposed seem very difficult. We'll get into that today for sure. The budget proposal sets up to owe UC and CSU about 1.6 billion dollars in the next couple of years.

Something that I want to be discussing here certainly today that seems like a pretty substantial debt as the way it's laid out in the budget to the UC and CSU, given that we will have a $20 billion deficit in the next couple of years. So we'll talk about that.

We'll also talk this spring about how to address the cuts and the deferrals. I think our colleagues will try to spare from those who have reached out to me, try to spare as much as possible the cuts from UC and CSU and from the serious cuts in the next few years that are anticipated.

We will also though talk very realistically about what is happening at our universities to cut costs and weather the bad state budgets while maintaining our priorities to access and affordability. But like I said, we'll be realistic about our conversation about enrollment. We have talked about this last year. We will continue to talk about that this year.

I am particularly worried about CSU's enrollment where we know several campuses are suffering from major enrollment declines and now they face budget situation. So how can we creatively address these campus deficits? How can we attract more students? At the end of the day, that is the hope. That is what we should be trying to accomplish.

And how do we ensure that in demand campuses in the state have the sufficient funding and capital to serve that demand of students? This is a time to think much bigger about what higher education should be in the next few years. We know California needs more college graduates.

The demand is there and that higher education can transform families, as I think several of us here can attest to. But I think we must think about the best way to serve students now and also into the future. That may mean differences from the current status quo for community colleges.

I'm glad to see that Prop 98 is strong and that there is new additional funding. We should discuss enrollment patterns throughout the state and how we can ensure that colleges that are enrolling and growing are supported for that growth.

This spring we should also be looking to support students on campuses through various programs as we do every year, ranging from basic needs from centers to student housing programs like the DREAMER Resource Centers and Immigration Legal Services.

So with that, I'd like to see if any of my colleagues would like to make any comments as we begin this year. Mr. Fong, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And good morning. Thank you so much for the robust opening comments. And we know that our fiscal environment remains challenging, but we need to continue to remain focused on student outcomes and bringing empowering promise of higher education and expanding access to more students and families here in California.

In particular, I'd like to see what we can do around Cal Grant reform as well, while protecting the UC and CSU from proposed cuts that will affect student services and enrollment. I look forward to today's conversation working together with my colleagues during these very difficult, challenging budget times and appreciate the opening remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I look forward to another year of robust budget conversations, especially in the education space. I just want to state from the get go that as we're focused on higher education Today I am very concerned and very disappointed with the Governor's proposal for the cuts, the significant cuts to the University of California and the California State University.

You know, we have made a compact and the University of California, you know, for one has, has been maintaining that compact. And we should not renege on that compact to continue to focus on the priority of admitting more California residents to our institutions of public higher education. So I understand, Mr.

Chair, that we are facing a challenging budget year. But I will do everything in my power to fight the budget cuts, especially for the University of California and the California State University. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi. So with that, we will move on on our agenda with the Governor's Budget overview. We will begin with the Department of Finance presentation on the Governor's proposal and then the Legislative Analyst Office will give us a review of that proposal. So welcome and allow the Department of Finance to begin to go first.

Good morning Chair Alvarez and Members Gabriela Chavez with Department of Finance. Today I'll be speaking about both the University of California and the California State University. And then I will hand the presentation to my colleague Justin Hurst who will be speaking with you about the California Community Colleges.

The Governor's Budget maintains the multi-year compact with both the University of California and the California State University in exchange for clear commitments to expand student access, equity, and affordability and to create pathways to high-demand career opportunities.

In accordance with the Compact goals, both the UC and the CSU will receive a 5% base increase in the four year of the compact, consistent with the language included in the 20th 2024 Budget Act Payment of the 2526 amount has been effectively deferred to 2728. For the UC Compact, the payment is 240.8 million in ongoing General Fund.

And for the CSU the Compact payment is 252.3 million in ongoing General Fund. Additionally, the statewide reduction efforts adopted as part of the 2024 Budget act remain in effect authorizing statewide reductions intended to address ongoing budget pressures. Both the UC and the CSU should continue planning for a 7.85% reduction in ongoing General Fund support.

For UC, this reduction equals approximately 396 points in ongoing General Fund. For CSU, these reductions equals about 375.2 million in ongoing General Fund. And with that, I'm concluding my presentation on the UC and CSU and I will hand it to my colleague Justin Hurst.

Thank you, Gabby. Good morning, Chair and Members. My name is Justin Hurst with the Department of Finance and I'll be going through the Governor's Budget proposal for the California Community Colleges. The Governor's Budget for the California Community Colleges system proposes to continue funding core investments in alignment with the multi-year roadmap.

These ongoing core Investments include over 260 million in Proposition 98 General Fund Dollars for a 2.43% cost of living adjustment that is in support of the student centered funding formula as well as categorical programs. There's also funding for a 0.5% enrollment growth in the amount of 30 million Proposition 98 General Fund Dollars.

In addition to these, there are also several new proposed investments that are intended to continue to support student success in the system. These include a $30 million Proposition 98 General Fund augmentation of the Rising Scholars Network.

There's also a 162.5 million investment of also Proposition 98 General Fund Dollars of which 29 million is ongoing for further development of a common cloud data platform. Then there is a 168 million one time Proposition 98 General Fund investment for the Collaborative Enterprise Resource Planning Project.

The Governor's Budget also includes investments that are consistent with the Governor's Master plan for Career education in the context of the community college budget.

The Governor's Budget proposes 100 million of Proposition 98 General Fund Dollars, seven of which is associated with ongoing funding to support the embedding of credit for prior learning policies into the system as well as for the development of a career passport resource.

And finally, in accordance with the statewide budget savings as agreed to in the 2024 Budget act, this budget includes efficiency reductions of 2.2 million non Proposition and 98 General Fund Dollars, of which over 1.2 million is ongoing for the community college system. And with that, my colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Legislative Analyst Office Good morning.

Jennifer Pacella Legislative Analyst Office so, a couple of weeks ago, we released the first of our education briefs of the year. It was on the overall higher education budget plan. Last week we released our analysis of Proposition 98 issues. We have several more education briefs underway. I'll speak this morning primarily from that first brief.

The conversations you're likely to have this year. Oh yes. Okay. The budget conversations you're likely to have this year are likely to be a bit different on the community college side than on the non 98 side. As you know, part of the state budget is driven by constitutional formulas.

Under those constitutional formulas, Proposition 98 funding is growing more than baseline costs, whereas that's not the case on the non 98 side of the budget. So what this means for higher education is there's more funding available for the community colleges and you're seeing reductions in others higher education that are funded within the non 98 side of the budget. So beginning with the 98 side of the budget, nearly all the new higher education spending this year is for the community colleges.

So you heard about some of those proposals. So our office has just three high level comments about the community college budget. One, under the governor's structure, he has a certain mix of ongoing spending versus one time spending in reserves. And we recommend that your budget plan have a similar mix.

Two, the implication of this is that there's only so much new ongoing funding for the colleges, so there's likely to be some competition for new ongoing spending. And we recommend you keep your ongoing spending focused on core programs and on enrollment growth, just so that it's not spread too thinly.

Third, we do have notable concerns with most of the governor's proposals on the one time community college initiative. So. So you'll hear much more about those in future hearings. But he has large proposals and in many cases they lack clear state objectives, key details, realistic timelines.

In some cases they're being proposed even as pilots or program evaluations are underway and the results of those studies are not yet available. So if the Legislature were to decide that some of the administration's proposals have some drawbacks, you could replace it with special spending of your own priorities.

Alternatively, you can make a discretionary deposit into the Proposition 98 Reserve. As you might recall, last year the state depleted that Reserve. It withdrew all 8.4 billion under the current projections.

The state will continue building, I'm sorry, will begin once again building those reserves back up and would end 25-26 with one and a half billion in the Prop 98 Reserve. But that still equates to 1.3% of annual Proposition 98 spending. So it's still a pretty Low Reserve.

Turning to the non 98 side of the budget, the state has already put certain non 90 elements into the state budget plan for 2526. So I thought it might be helpful just to step back for a moment to see where non 98 higher ed spending has been just the last couple of years.

So starting with 22-23, fiscal year and fiscal year 2324, state support grew substantially for the universities and for student financial aid. The state growth rates were in the range of 6.9% to 9.6%. So these are historically high state growth rates. In addition, in 22-23, UC began implementing a tuition plan that increased some tuition charges each year.

And in 24-25, CSU began implementing a tuition plan that increased tuition charges for all students each year. Both universities are seeing tuition increases as a way to expand their budget capacity and fund additional spending priorities.

So coming off, and I'm sorry for the middle class scholarship program as well, if you were to go back to 2122, the funded level was 105 million. And in 2324 it was up to 803 million. So it's coming off these two years of high growth that the state faced a large projected deficit last year.

And as a response to that, it took total across the state 14 billion in spending reductions. Of those about 10, 10 billion were one time spending reductions and four were ongoing spending reductions. By far the largest component of that 4 billion in ongoing reductions was the 2 billion in reductions associated with state operations.

That applied broadly across state governments. And the universities were included in that 2 billion state operations reduction. Whereas most other agencies had to take their small piece of that 24-25 reduction in 24-25, the state gave the universities one year to place plan for it.

So while other state agencies were taking relatively small reductions to their state operations in 24-25, the state moved the other direction and provided UC and CSU with augmentations last year. So state General Fund support for UC grew by 3% and for CSU by 2.5%. Now all that is explained on page 5 of your agenda. Figure 2.

There's a table that just shows that the bottom, bottom of that table. What's going on with UC and CSU, if you want to see all the numbers, but looking ahead into 25-26 now you get to the reductions that you've already been referencing.

So moving into 25-26, there's a $300 million reduction proposed for CSU, a $272 million reduction proposed for UC. CSU's reduction is being offset by 178 million in General Fund augmentations, primarily for certain pension costs and for retiree healthcare costs. So net CSU is taking a reduction of 122 million.

The budget plan also includes a notable reduction for middle class scholarship program funding in the current year was at 926 million and that would fall to 527 million in 25-26. So the universities have faced budget budget downturns before and what they're considering now are the same basic set of actions they've used in the past.

So campuses are considering things like trying to reduce non essential spending on travel, trying to consolidate administrative functions where they can, trying to renegotiate certain large purchases to save some money where they can deferring maintenance projects, things like that. Beyond that, their primary strategy is hiring freezes.

So as positions become vacated through attrition, they leave those positions open. They start accumulating substantially more savings through the hiring freezes. Some campuses also start to draw down their reserves. Campuses generally have discretion to do this to make their own Reserve decisions. UC and CSU though are reporting that they have relatively Low uncommitted reserves.

So system wide, CSU is reporting that it has 34 days of reserves on hand. UC system wide is reporting about 6 days of reserves on hand. So both of those are below generally recommended levels of reserves.

Beyond all this, you're going to be hearing about something that's complicating the issue for CSU and that's because over the last few years, even though it has had funding growth, its spending growth has been outpacing it. So I think you're probably going to hear some more about that later this morning.

So the element of the plan that I saved toward the end is on these deferred augmentations. So these are also Described on page 7 of your agenda if you want to see all the numbers.

But what's happening under this deferral plan is that the state is indicating to the universities that they could increase spending in 25-26, but the state would defer payment until 27-28. So in the meantime, when the state got to next year, it would try to make a one-time back payment for any costs occurred in 25-26.

And then when it got out to 27-28, it would make another one time back payment for costs incurred in 26-27, as well as provide an ongoing base increase.

But all these years are years where the state has a projected deficit and the state has no plan to make that it's penciled out where it could concretely make those payments. So at this time, we think the deferral arrangement is unrealistic. It's not viable. We recommend you reject it.

This would avoid the state making a fiscal obligation that it can't currently afford. It also would send some realistic signals to the segments about what state support they could receive over the next few years when the state's fiscal condition improves. The state can often obviously provide base increases to the universities at that time. On enrollment.

We have been tracking enrollment across all three segments. You're going to be hearing that when it comes to the year we're in 24-25 all segments are reporting that they're beating their targets. So you'll hear more about that. I'll leave that because I know you're going to talk about it as future hearings as well.

So then lastly, I just, I think many of you know this, but there's been a lot of comparisons to the from the universities to other state agencies and there are four important differences.

Just to keep in mind as you weigh all your budget options, the four differences with the universities are one, most of their budget appropriation comes out of their state operations, not local assistance. Most state agencies have the bulk of their funding appropriated as local assistance. The universities have none of that.

That makes a big difference when you apply the reduction to state operations. Two, the universities have access to non state money, namely tuition revenue. Many other state agencies are not able to raise substantial amounts through non state resources. Three, the state doesn't authorize UCNC positions. The Board of Trustees and Board of Regents have that authority.

This is one reason the universities were not included in the vacant position suite that apply to most other state agencies in the current year. And lastly, the Legislature does not ratify collective bargaining agreements at UC or CSU. These are also the authority of the system wide boards. So just four important differences.

It does make comparing the universities to the other state agencies somewhat more complicated. So with that, thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you to all of you. I'll start with a few questions and then I'll ask others to jump in. Let me start with the Legislative Analyst Office on the community college one time new funding. What does that amount total in the governor's proposal?

It's 700 some million. I think it's in one table we have here.

Okay. And you made the comment that many of the proposals I don't want to incorrectly quote you but lack some clarity or definition I think would be a.

Yeah, so there are 700 some million in new community college proposals. There's more than 300 million actually almost 400 some million in one time community community college proposals. It's particularly those one time proposals where we have concerns for three out of four. We have the basic concern about the clear objective, the details, the timeline.

And at least in a few of these instances there are some studies underway where the Legislature could be learning more if we just wait a couple more years.

Does the Department of Finance have a response to that? Are we going to be seeing more definition to the proposed expenditures?

Justin Hurst, Department of Finance. I'll just point out with regard to one of those investments being related to the career education master plan, that the governor's office is anticipating releasing a more detailed overview of what that master plan looks like and some additional details will be flushed out when that is released.

When would that be?

I believe soon. I can't give you an exact date as I do not have that information.

Would it be before the enactment of the budget?

Yes, that's my understanding.

Okay. I want to ask about the local assistance versus government operations differentiation that occurs in the UC and CSU. When you say local assistance versus just General government operations, are you talking about centralized Sacramento operations and then local assistance, meaning the programs that are in different communities throughout the State of California?

Yeah. So in higher ed you actually have a really good comparison. So you can think about the community college chancellor's office. They're treated like a normal state agency. They have a small headquarters in Sacramento that is budgeted through state operations. It's a relatively small amount, tens of millions of dollars.

Most of the money for the college system is called local assistance and goes out to the field with the University of California State. California State University. They're treated as state entities. Everything they do is treated as a state level exercise. Even though in reality they have campuses out there in the field.

And you could think about that as local assistance. The state just doesn't budget it as such. So it's just a technical difference that's leading to a notable programmatic effect this year because of just the technical way the state budgets.

Would we be able to change that.

Because the Board of Regents and Board of Trustees. I think one of the key differences is that the college system, they have, even though they have a Board of Governors at the state level, they also have local, local governing boards, whereas these campuses do not have local, locally elected governing boards. So we could think about.

I don't think the state has ever budgeted the campuses as local assistance. You always have the option of just changing the amount of reduction you take to the universities. But we could look into if you want to mechanically do it differently.

But I think we might run into a hurdle because of the locally elected nature of the boards.

Okay. Be interested in hearing more. You also mentioned that while most other agencies or departments took the swept the vacancy savings, that that was not. Was that not done by UC and CSU or do we. Do you we not know it wasn't done?

So, for example, with the community college chancellor's office, whatever positions were vacant as a certain time were swept again. We're talking a few positions. It's a small office, the universities, because the state doesn't authorize their positions when they hire a new faculty member or new administrator. The state is not the one making the decision.

The Board of Regents and the Board of Trustees are. So when the Department of Finance swept those positions at the universities, it's almost like those positions aren't on the state books. So they were unaffected by that particular action. So sweeping the vacant positions and sorry.

Just to be clear. And you know for a fact that they were not swept by the UC and CSU.

Correct. Effectively, the state doesn't like, doesn't control those positions.

So I understand that. Yeah. Did you want to add something?

Just. Gabriella Chavez, Department of Finance both UC and CSU did not participate in the, in that control section. So we did not take any funds related to positions.

Thank you. Appreciate the clarification. I'm going to move on real quickly and then let others. But I am very, very focused in on what's on page seven of our agenda.

For my colleagues who are up here and for the public, which is this idea that we are somehow still maintaining a compact, which is I, I think we are beyond that at this point.

Is it the expectation from finance that the universities will continue to grow in their number of students based on the compact for the 25-26 year, given the reduction that is going to be taken?

Gabriella Chavez Department of Finance from the Administration perspective, we see Control Section 4.05 as a different policy and, and the compact as another policy. So from the Administration perspective, yes, we still continue to expect the campus to hold to the compact in expectation of the future payments, including the deferral payments.

So the reduction, if we're looking at the. There's a lot of pluses and minuses. So just to make that very, very clear, which makes it very challenging to force for the average person to follow this.

But essentially, for example, at UC, I'm again looking, referencing to page 7 on the agenda, UC has a reduction of 4.0 almost $61.0 million $1.0 billion. Excuse me. And 5.0. No, that's not a reduction. That's what is left.

A reduction of what is a reduction for UC and for CSU from your standpoint, it looks like 300 million from CSU and about 260 million roughly.

So I'm going to just state the reduction amounts and then the compact amount. Thank you. So for UC, the reduction at 25-26 is 396.6 million in 25-26 then for CSU the reduction is 375.2 million. The compact payment for UC at 25-26, which is defer. It will be 240.8.

I'm going to just pause you right there because I think for clarity's sake, you're talking about no payment this year. You're talking about a payment in two years from now.

Potentially, yes. There is a technicality on the explanation of the. When we talk about the two. So in 26-27 they will get one payment, but the payment from 25-26 will be provided into 27-28.

Okay, but we're not authorizing that with this budget.

The 2024 Budget act did. So the Governor's Budget is just presenting what was agreed upon in the 2024, 24.

But we enact a budget every year. So we are not authorizing that expenditure today or with this budget approval.

The Governor's Budget is the stirring out the conversation of the budget. And we're happy to take that.

So that sounds to me like. No, it is not an approval of future expenditures. Okay, so 386. You said 386 or 396?

396.6. Thank you. For UC, yes.

And 375 million to CSU.

For CSU. Correct.

Okay. And we're. And the compact calls for the growth of how many students at the UC?

1% enrollment growth.

What's the number of students apologists.

I will have to get back to you on that. I did not bring up my.

It's about 2,900 a year.

2,900. Thank you.

It's 1.4% annual growth at the UC.

And how much at the CSU.

Then it's 10,161 at CSU, which is equating to more like 2.0 something. 2.9% or something.

Got it. So. So I think that that's it for questions. I'm gonna turn over to my comment to my colleagues, but I think my comments would be. And I'm certainly interested in the leaders of the. Of the systems to provide their feedback. So, you know, team you up for that.

In what world can you educate this many thousand more students with. With all this less money? That is the basic question that I think needs to be answered and I think certainly to the, to the leaders of our, of our UC and CSU system.

Expect that to be the question because it sounds like to me like there's an expectation of you to provide service to a lot more students with a lot less money. And I Just I'm not sure that that is a realistic expectation.

And then again, just teeing it up, how do you build up over $1.0 billion of expenditures in the course of just two years? You go from this to that seems very unrealistic. So I asked the folks who are going to be talking about UC and CSU to please prepare to provide some comments and thoughts on that.

But now I'll turn it over to my colleagues. I'll start with Mr. Fong.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the presentations. A similar line of questioning. The LAO mentioned projected deficits going forward in the next several years. And so this question is to the Department of Finance, given the projected deficits going forward over the next few years, are the payback of the deferrals in future years realistic?

It's the Administration commitment to continue fulfilling those payments.

Okay. And then in terms of the proposed reductions, it does seem disproportional that the 7.95% reduction is applied to all of EC&CHU's budgets. And we've heard comments from the chair and from our colleagues about the concerns about Just seems very disproportionate. Seems very much.

Are there other methods or proposals that were explored in terms of supporting our higher education system here in California? We know that these resources are critical for the growth of the system, growth of the future workforce in California. And it seemed like the 7.95% reduction applied unanimously just across the board to UC and CSU's budget.

Were there any other methods or proposals explored during the budget process?

The Governor's Budget is just at this point presenting the implementation of the 2024 Budget Act. It is also the starting of the conversation for the 2025-26 Budget Act. And we're still committed to supporting education and open to any conversation with the Legislature to enact the budget that reflects the best intent.

Okay. Thank you for the comments that this is the starting point, that we'll continue to advocate and to really uplift the UC and CSU systems and the proposed cuts that are being put on the table. This is something that is to expand access to the students here in California.

This is something that going forward, we need to continue to uplift and support our students. So we'll continue to uplift these conversations. Look forward to future conversations. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Wallace. Ms. Patel.

Yes, thank you for being here today. Darshana Patel. I represent the San Diego region. So we've got CSU San Marcos in our district, but we also have many staff and students that hail from our region that attend UCSD. Just to give you some background, I have a couple questions for you.

One specifically I noticed that there's a specific cut to the California Institute for Immunology and immunotherapy at 300 million. Why a specific cut to that program.

That was on the 2024 Budget Act. Initially we were going to provide funding. Given the fiscal outlook in the years we had to reduce the funding for the UCLA. The immunology immunotherapy is located at the UCLA campus. Right.

I saw that specifically. But going back to more bigger picture, I understand that this is the beginning of the negotiation and the conversation and I echo a lot of the concerns of my colleagues here that cuts to our higher education system are really not in line with our goals of creating a resilient California economy because we know that our education system has to fill that pipeline of a very educated workforce.

So I would love to find a way to backfill some of those proposed cuts and I am going to look at scrutinizing some of the programs that don't have details in them as far as options of shifting dollars around. Specifically, do you have any thoughts on the 1.6?

I believe it's billion holdback in anticipation of lowering Prop 98. What variables or scenarios do you think that would that exist that would help you reduce that guarantee?

Justin Hurst, Department of Finance I'll start by mentioning I'm not the Proposition 98 expert at the Department of Finance, but is your question pulling back on the 1.6? Yeah. The Administration is open to conversations if the Legislature believes that there are other methods to be spending some of that funds.

However, the Department of Finance would also like to note that there were significant withdrawals from the Reserve and the previous Budget act and this would be a step towards that. And I'll defer to my colleague. Yes.

Hi there. Jessica Holmes, Department of Finance so because we are In a test one, projecting a test one currently for 25-26, the main component that is is likely to impact the amount available for Prop 98 and 25-26 is revenues, state revenues.

And so because there are a lot of uncertainties about state revenues as we're looking at things like the impact of recent federal actions and policies on our state's economy. That is why we are proposing to Fund the Prop 98 guarantee in 25. I'm sorry, 24-25. 24-25 is also an attest one at 1.6 billion lower than currently projected.

Okay, thank you. I additionally have concerns that, like my chair had mentioned before, that we have this compact in place that expects us to continue to increase enrollment, in theory or in the compact by 1%. We're exceeding those amounts.

And yet our overall cuts are going to put a challenge towards providing education and workforce towards that education at the University systems overall, how do you propose we balance that? What are you expecting our CSUs and our UCs to do other than cut workforce, increase class sizes? I don't understand what our University systems are expected to do in light of those net negatives.

Gabriella Chavez with Department of Finance. The budget doesn't include any prescription on how the campus can use their funding. So we allow for the campus to make those decision. And from the Administration perspective, control Section 4.05 is a different policy than the compact agreement.

Sure, I understand that it's a different part of the agreements, but at the end of the day, it's the overall budget that the UCS and the CSUs are gonna have to manage and I can't. I have a 19 year old, a 17 year old and a 14 year old. They're all headed to college. One's in college already.

I can imagine that that's gonna be really hard on our students that are in the classrooms facing cuts to their curriculum offerings as well as increased class sizes. So I'm very concerned about it.

Happy to take your comments, if I.

Might just make one comment. Just that you might want to keep in mind moving forward, particularly with UC, they are making admission decisions now for the students who will arrive in the fall. So when it comes to 2526 enrollment levels, particularly at UC, a lot of those decisions have been made.

The Legislature, though, does have notable authority to send signals as to what you expect of them in 26-27, and that can influence a whole year's worth of activity on their behalf. CSU has a little bit more flexibility to change its 2526 enrollment with the spring term admissions.

But this is just a comment that, that looking out to budget year plus one tends to be really important for the Legislature.

Yeah. And even those deferrals heading out to the one year out, that makes it very concerning, especially when we know two years out there's still going to be budget concerns. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome Ms. Hadwick as well to the Committee and Mr. Rogers. Welcome. Anybody. Other questions for this panel? Okay. And with that, we thank you. Stick around. I'm sure you'll be interested in the next conversation. I want to thank the President of the University of California for being here. Dr.

Drake, Chancellor Garcia from the California State University and Chancellor Christian from the California Community Colleges. We know how incredibly busy you are, and we want to thank you for the time to be here with us and talk about.

Clearly, you heard the earlier panel, so I think you have some expectations of what our questions will be to you. But I'll definitely give you all an opportunity to share some opening remarks, and then we'll get into that discussion back and forth. So it's okay with you. We will start with Chancellor Christian first. Welcome.

Well, good morning.

Can you please get that microphone closer to you? Thank you.

Good morning. Sorry, I'm backing you. Thank you. Chair Alvarez and Subcommittee Members, Sonya Christian, Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, and it is my privilege to be testifying before you once again. Now, 19 months into my tenure as the new chancellor, I'm honored to be here with Chancellor Garcia and President Drake.

I believe we have a remarkable system of public higher education in California. Ucs, csus, and the California Community Colleges that put equity and excellence in the center of all that we do. So let me start with a look back. Our enrollment growth has been off the charts. Our enrollment increased by 9.6% percent.

And some of our strongest enrollment increases have been from formerly incarcerated students, veterans, students 35 years and older, and African American students.

To put this growth in perspective, while California represents 21% of the national enrollment of community college students, our enrollment increase this past year accounted for 37% of the national gain in enrollment. Overall, California's community colleges now enrollment more than 2.1 million students, which has far exceeded our enrollment projections.

The Governor's January Budget will advance the Master Plan for career education, leveraging the strengths of the community colleges as workforce engines to unlock the income potential of California's adult students and working learners with the following investments: technology infrastructure: currently we have 72 technology platform with capabilities varying vastly from district to district.

Some are resourced at high levels and others are not. The Chancellor's Office gets data about six to eight months after the fact in order to advance the transfer agenda and to let the data flow--after all, it's 2025--to let the data flow from our system to the CSUs and the UCs to deploy interventions for our students at scale in a timely manner, and to develop this infrastructure, I believe we don't have a choice but to look at it from a systemwide perspective.

And with the rapid advancement of machine learning and AI, which is becoming more ubiquitous, as well as for security reasons as bots get more savvy in attempting to breach our systems, it is clear that implementing these technologies 72 times at our 72 districts is ineffective, inefficient, and not equitably experienced across our colleges.

The Credit for Prior Learning Investment, Vision 2030, prioritizes implementing Credit for Prior Learning as a mainstream opportunity available for our veterans, working adults, and apprentices. Currently, CPL, credit for prior learning, is applied at the margins of our operations. The idea here is not to treat on the job training and college as mutually exclusive enterprises.

Learning is learning and the learning ecosystem will be expanded with this investment to be able to recognize applicable learning with college credit, whether it occurs in the classroom or on the job. Imagine if we can light the educational pathway to economic mobility for our veterans by meeting them as they return from service with 12 college credits customized to their joint service transcripts, their JST. With the tech tools we have today, we can absolutely do this.

The third investment is Injustice Involves Californians, and this is for them to re-enter into our communities. These programs provide life-changing opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. We thank Governor Newsom for these investments and we ask you, Chair Alvarez and members of the subcommittee, to support these investments as well.

I do have some additional requests, precisely four additional requests. Number one, while our system has seen tremendous enrollment increases, the budget does not fully fund colleges at their true level of growth. There are districts carrying unfunded FTEs from prior years. For example, in the year 2023-24, 15 districts had unfunded FTEs totaling 6,271 FTEs for $36M.

With tight budgets, the presidents of our colleges are considering putting a cap to their enrollments, and we cannot and we must not turn away Californians who are seeking programs of study to advance their economic mobility. My message to our 116 presidents is that California is counting on us, the community colleges, to ensure that the workforce is ready for the future world of work as our industries change swiftly with fast moving waves of AI implementation and other emerging technologies.

California's workers are counting on us, the California community colleges, to ensure they are equipped with the skills and abilities and the confidence to be contributing members in their workplace and in their communities.

The current 0.5% growth is woefully inadequate, and we ask for this to be increased. The good news is that we in our office believe that there is a way to make this happen within Prop 98, and with your blessing, our Finance team will work closely with your staff to review specific proposals for your consideration.

Second, the California Apprenticeship Initiative incentivizes cooperation with cutting-edge industry sectors and the program is currently underfunded. Apprenticeships are a game-changer for our working learners, bridging the divide between education and industry and earning. Third, we must continue to strengthen our students' support by funding additional affordable student housing projects and Cal Grant Equity reform.

And last, we ask for consideration of the eight percent cut for all state agencies. Our office is small but mighty and the eight percent cut will be significant. And that concludes my remarks and I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you, Chancellor Christian. We'll go to--we'll just go in order--President Drake. Welcome.

Great and good morning. Good to see all of you. Very good to be here. Nice to be back in the old--I'm sorry--the traditional or classic building again. I appreciate that. And thank you, Chair Alvarez, for inviting us here to be here this morning.

I'm pleased to be here with my colleagues from the California State University and the California Community College System to talk to you about the opportunities and challenges for public higher education in our state and for the University of California in particular.

As I prepare to step away from my role as UC President later, I've been reflecting particularly over these last five years. It's been a busy and mostly wonderful time; we've had some interesting challenges, but mostly a wonderful time. The unprecedented challenges we had were the global pandemic, rising costs in California, balancing free speech with inclusivity.

So there have been some interesting challenges in our country and our university, but with the help of the UC community and our strong partnership with the Legislature and the Governor, we've accomplished a great deal together. In contrast to declining enrollment trends nationwide, we've been steadily growing enrollment across the UC system.

Over the past five years, the university has added more than 16,000 FTE-equivalent California undergraduate students. And 16,000--we've said that we're adding, we're going to add 20,000 over this decade which is the equivalent of another campus without adding a campus physically. Now we're at 16,000 moving forward, which, really pleased about.

We're serving more students from historically underserved populations as well. In fall 2024, the university admitted its largest and most diverse class of California undergraduates. Forty-five percent of first-years are from underrepresented groups.

We continue to enroll more community college transfer students than any university of our caliber in the nation, and this is reflective of our very strong partnership with the community college system, one we are very proud of, and our continued efforts to streamline the transfer process. We're creating debt-free pathways, helping more students attain a UC degree with no student debt.

About 70% of new California undergraduates in 2024-25 have a debt-free pathway available to them. In 2022, we launched the UC Native American Opportunity Plan, which covers tuition and most mandatory fees for undergraduate and academic graduate students from federally recognized Native American Tribes. Last year, the program served 326 students.

It's growing, we're very proud of this program, and we look forward to expanding it in the future. We've also made progress promoting health in California and improving health outcomes through population health. Initiatives like managing diabetes and hypertension have been very important to us.

The university's health system grew to be the second largest provider of Medi-Cal outpatient visits compared to other major California health systems. And finally, we've been building on the university's academic and research excellence. That includes leading on climate change. In 2023, we adopted new and stronger climate action goals to accelerate the university's progress.

These goals align with UC's climate goals--these align UC's climate goals with those of the State of California. And by 2024--sorry, let me say that right--by 2045, UC campuses and medical centers will cut carbon emissions by 90% based on 2019 levels.

The Governor proposes an eight percent cut to our base budget and deferral of the compact funding for the university, and I ask you to reconsider the magnitude and severity of these cuts. They will have a detrimental impact on our students and on the progress we've been able to make during the years that I've just discussed.

The funding you've provided for the university over these last four years has helped us make steady progress on meeting our commitments to the Multi-Year Compact. We exceeded our California--we exceeded our California undergraduate enrollment target with over 12,700 FTE added since the Compact was signed. The other students I mentioned were added before the Compact was signed.

We exceeded the non-resident student replacement targets at Berkeley, UCLA, and San Diego during each year of the Compact, we have significantly expanded debt-free pathways thanks to the state's Middle-Class Scholarship Program, and expanded UC financial aid. We've steadily added student housing.

Our campuses currently have more than 5,400 student beds under construction that will be ready for fall 2026. During the past five years, we've added about 25,000 new student housing beds and about 35,000 over the last decade. We've also deepened our collaboration with the CSU and community colleges with participation in the state's Cradle-to-Career Data System and work on simplifying the transfer process. We recognize, of course, that this is not a typical budget year.

In addition to a growing deficit and continued fiscal uncertainty facing the state, there are new concerns due to the devastating wildfires and tragic loss of life in Southern California earlier this year. And I fully recognize the difficult budget decisions that you and the Governor have to make.

This year, we also have the added complexity of executive orders and other federal actions that may impact higher education. We are carefully analyzing information coming from the federal government honestly every day and its potential impacts on the university and our communities. But let me close by reiterating how much we appreciate the strong partnership we have with the State Legislature.

We are grateful for your recognition of the importance of public higher education to the future of our state. A UC degree can be life-changing, and making that possibility more accessible for talented students across the state has a positive impact on all of us. University of California has been an integral part of my life and career, certainly. I started as a medical student more than 50 years ago at UC San Francisco and have served within the university for various--a variety of roles since that time.

I hope to find new ways to continue to support this institution long after my presidency days are over, returning to the faculty, but in the meantime I want to do all I can to set the university up for my successor to be as successful as possible.

It's been a great honor to work with all of you, meeting some of you, but work with all of you for all these years, and I look forward to continuing these last--these next several months and particularly look forward to partnering with the Legislature to preserve the funding that we have so that we can continue to expand access, improve our offerings, and serve the State of California well. Thank you again for inviting me to be here and I look forward to questions later.

Thank you, President Drake, and thank you for your service, for sure. We appreciate what you've done for the state and all of you, really, but given that this might be President Drake's last hearing before this committee, just want to thank you for the partnership and thank you for the commitment which is a student-focused, student-centered, and for Californians. Thank you. With that, we'll turn it over to Chancellor Garcia.

Good morning, Chair Alvarez and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I am Dr. Mildred Garcia, Chancellor of the California State University. In my 16 months in my tenure, my predecessors and I have been honored to address this subcommittee for many years through both favorable and challenging budget years.

Today, I speak to you with the utmost urgency. The Governor's proposed budget for 25-26, if approved, will place the CSU in dire financial circumstances. The proposed budget cut comes at a time when the CSU is making significant progress across a number of critical areas.

Enrollment continues to climb, with approximately 69,000 new students enrolled this fall, including a record number of first-time freshmen for the second consecutive year. As our Graduation Initiative 2025 comes to an end, I am pleased to report that our four-year graduation rate has doubled as a result of this work.

Compared to our peer institutions, CSU graduation rates rank in the top ten percent in the nation, and at the system level and across our 23 universities, we are doubling down on our commitment to eliminate remaining equity gaps that exist between historically underserved students and their peers.

The proposed cut of approximately eight percent or $375M places this progress in jeopardy. The cut is exasperated by the deferral of ongoing compact funding with the promise that we will be reimbursed in future fiscal years with one-time funds. Moreover, the Governor's proposal makes clear that the CSU's obligations under the Multi-Year State Compact continue, including making the necessary and significant investments to grow undergraduate enrollment by 3,500 full-time equivalent students.

But with the $375M cut and no increase in ongoing funding, we cannot maintain the staffing levels necessary to support this increase in enrollments as well as meet our obligations to currently enrolled students. For two years, the CSU has faced a significant budget shortfall due in large part to state funding and tuition revenue being insufficient to cover soaring mandatory costs. To manage the gap, we have made reductions totaling $460M to align our expenditures with revenues. Those reductions have been painful.

Since last year, 17 of our 23 universities have reduced their workforces with more than 1,200 positions eliminated in total. 1,430 course sections were eliminated, the equivalent of seats for more than 35,000 students, making it more difficult for students to enroll in the courses they need to graduate. Last year, 136 degree programs were suspended or discontinued across the system. Additional programs are slated to be eliminated this year. We've introduced a multitude of efficiency measures at the system level as well.

We've launched an enrollment and budget reallocation plan to better align distribution of the CSU's fiscal resources with the reality of our state's changing demographics and with shifting student demand. Our new Multi-University Collaboration Initiative is developing shared services across functional areas including procurement and accounting, information security, and facility operations, saving costs, streamlining processes, and enhancing service quality.

And last November, our Board of Trustees approved the integration of Cal Maritime with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to address the Maritime Academy's unsustainable fiscal circumstances and to preserve the Merchant Mariner license track degree program so vital to the state, to the nation's economy, and to nation's security interests.

I raise these examples to underscore the point that the CSU recognizes the state's financial challenges and we are doing our part. We are operating as lean as we possibly can while meeting our educational mission. We simply cannot continue to efficiency our way out of additional budget cuts.

With the magnitude of the cut in the current budget proposal, consequences will be stark. And when your work is to transform lives, families, and community as the CSU is, the consequences will take a human toll. Our students as well as their families will suffer the consequences, measured in additional time to graduation, earnings delayed, and dreams deferred.

Members of the Cal State family, from administrators and management to staff and faculty, will lose their livelihoods. The recently announced yet necessary and extremely painful cost reduction measures at Sonoma State are an ominous indication of future impacts across the system: degrees eliminated, course offering reduced, fewer academic and student support services for the students who are so vulnerable that we serve.

The consequences will reverberate throughout the state. The CSU is America's number one university system for social mobility. We fuel the diverse and highly educated workforce that powers the state's economy. One in ten California employees holds a CSU degree, and we add nearly 130,000 degree holders to the state's workforce each year. These are California's teachers, accountants, nurses, first responders, engineers, entrepreneurs, as well as many of our legislators and their staffs.

Our 23 universities are anchor institutions and stewards of place, developing solutions to pressing societal and economic challenges through research, service, and targeted workforce development in partnership with local community and business leaders. 80% of the CSU's place-committed students live and work within a 50-mile radius of their alma mater after graduation, enriching their communities in countless ways.

The scale of the CSU's positive impact to California is massive. One simply cannot negatively impact the CSU without negatively impacting the state and every single one of its citizens. So on behalf of the CSU's nearly half a million students and 63,000 employees, the CSU asks with urgency for relief from the proposed $375M cut.

Put more plainly, please do not cut the CSU. Not at this scale. The cut is equivalent to 2,400 full-time faculty, one fifth of all current full-time faculty. It equals 19,800 courses, affecting 455,000 seats. It is the same as the entire operating budget of Fresno State, which serves approximately 25,000 students, and not cut at this time.

As Chancellor Drake just said, a time that presents a critical opportunity for the state and the CSU to stand united in the face of federal disinvestment in higher education and threats against our core shared values. Again, the CSU understands the state fiscal challenges, challenges exasperated by January's wildfires, an unprecedented national disaster affecting thousands of members of the CSU family too. But through this difficult moment, we will continue to be prudent stewards of the resources you entrust to us.

We will continue to demonstrate that the resources entrusted to us are not an expenditure, but an investment with dividends measured in social mobility, more vital communities, and empowering California's future and educated workforce at a scale only the CSU can provide. An affordable, high-quality Cal State degree is a private good, but is also a public good, one worthy of your investment, perhaps now more than ever. Chair Alvarez, thank you for the opportunity to address you, and I willing to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Chancellor Garcia. Appreciate all three of you. I'll make some brief remarks, although I did so already. It was--not everybody caught it, but the embrace between the three of you I think is emblematic of where we need to be at this point given the state, certainly of the budget and the impacts to those who you serve, but also what's happening nationally with you all, you know, alluded to in your comments as well, the uncertainty that exists there is very real.

However, I also think it's--as I said in the opening comments--with the challenges, there's opportunities and it might be the time for us to start to think differently about how our systems work together to serve our students, which I know some of you are already engaging in some of that work, but perhaps we need to find ways to support more of that.

I know that Chair of Higher Education, our colleague, Mr. Fong, has been working on the trying to bring back the Postsecondary Education Commission, something that I think is pivotal to informing us as policymakers as to how we support that integration of systems across the systems given the uniqueness in which how we fund community colleges and our two university systems.

So I think this is, while it's a challenging moment to me, it's also honestly a very exciting opportunity to think of how to do things differently and I think we have the right people at the table here to help us think through that, and hopefully over the next several months as President Drake transitions out, still gives us that feedback to be able to accomplish that.

So it is in that spirit that I ask my questions and I'll start first with the Chancellor of the Community College, Dr. Christian, the Credit for Prior Learning--and we are going to get, colleagues, we have a full set of hearings on proposals from the three segments and full day hearings on each one of them, so I won't ask too many specifics, but the one that I think rose to the top, while we have your colleagues here, is Credit for Prior Learning.

Really interesting initiative; I think definitely merits further discussion and support. I just want to ensure that what you're doing in terms of allowing students to receive that Credit for Prior Learning is going to be aligned to the challenges that we've had when it comes to transferring into UC and CSU. How do you see that working out or perhaps some of the challenges that you might see ahead?

First, Chair Alvarez, I'd like to say that in my lifetime as an educator, I feel that the concept of Credit for Prior Learning is really revolutionary, and when we talk about blurring the lines between the world of work and the world of higher education, Credit for Prior Learning is a tool. It's an efficient tool.

We're already well into the work of recognizing on-the-job work. So it's not just loosely defined credit for prior experience, but what happens in the job through job descriptions and experiences that happen, and we're focusing specifically, for example, on veterans, specifically for industry certificates, like Google certification, IBM certification. So it is universally sort of recognized.

These are not, you know, one-off. They are well-established credentials that are not within the academic enterprise. And we would be mapping them onto existing courses within the California Community Colleges. Our three segments, we already have systems in place, like for example, the tool assist, where we have courses already articulated.

So in my thinking, if a course comes in through Credit for Prior Learning into one of the California Community Colleges, and many of them are actually in career education, so when you think about the portfolio of what the UC offers, you know, being a research university, and then you look at our CSUs, you gotta calibrate the different types of learning that's happening.

But if, for example, there is a course that is articulated to a California Community College that is already articulated to the CSUs and the UCs, our hope is that that would automatically count for college credit, but recognizing that a significant number will be in career education.

No, I appreciate that, and thank you for making that clarification. That's exactly what the expectation is, right, for those certificated programs and makes sense, but I know that some of those students will be maybe with the desire to actually continue to get a bachelor's degree, which eventually likely means a transferring into one of our CSUs or UC, and so it was for those specific students that I asked the question. Do either of you have any thoughts or comments on that? Is there any--are there any concerns? I think speak now is probably the best thing.

We are already looking and working on Credit for Prior Learning because we know that this is something that's happening, quite frankly, nationwide, and we want to be--

So this is for your own Credit for Prior Learning, not the--okay.

Yes, but we're working with Chancellor Christian as well, so that if it's in a program, let's say they're going into business or IT, those, they work that into their courses and then they transfer in as a course.

Right.

And so that we would accept, right? Because they've already looked at the qualifications that are needed.

I think we'd be equally interested and flexible on this. It's new and what we love. I think it makes perfect sense in the appropriate circumstances.

Right, right. Thank you. On the issue of the five percent growth or--sorry, the 0.5% growth--Chancellor Christian, I'd like to--you described that there's been enrollment growth overall, but there are some campuses that are experiencing more growth and there are some campuses that are actually not growing and continue to decline.

So when you talk about needing more of growth, what would be an appropriate target given the trends that we've seen in the last couple of years and where this is headed?

I don't want to aim too low. A number we have been floating around in our office is 1.5% as opposed to 0.5, and we have a new addition to our team at the Chancellor's Office. His name is Chris Ferguson. You may recognize him. He's been at the Department of Finance before.

And when we had conversations, because of the Prop 98 funding that we have this year, there might be some opportunities that we would like to present proposals to to the staff of the Legislature for consideration of how we can accomplish supporting the growth and those opportunities for Californian while addressing issues for those colleges that may not be growing at the same rate.

Yeah, as someone who represents a system that is definitely growing and definitely received less funding than their enrollment growth, that's a concern and appreciate you looking into that and we will definitely exchange that. Thank you very much. Because the whole goal is, as you said, making sure that we have access for students that are seeking it.

And when we limit the financing that goes to specific districts where there is growth, which means then they have to offer less courses, that means we're limiting access, which is a transition to what we unfortunately are hearing, at least from our standpoint here, loud and clear, the message from UC and CSU that the budget proposal may in fact lead to that, to less access.

And I want to ask you, you've seen the numbers, you've seen what the proposal is. Current year--and I also want to talk about the out-years with you because that's, I think, an additional important conversation--but current year, how do you manage a triple digit significant reduction in funding and not impact student access to the university? How are you going to do that?

Very difficult. I'm going to be very honest. It's a difficult thing to do. We are looking at shared services. We are, as I said, we're doing every efficiency we could think of. We are moving resources from those institutions, are not growing because of the enrollment, and moving them to those institutions then can grow.

But 375 million's five percent for each campus, even for those campuses that are enrolled. They are holding back positions, they are holding back student support services, and so we are doing everything we can and not finding a way to be able to bring another one percent without increasing class sizes, and we're letting go of lectures.

Many of our faculty are being let go as we speak because of these horrific budgetary crisis that we're in. So we're looking at everything, but I'll be honest; with the 375 million, it is very difficult because we are holding back to the students that deserve it the most.

So I think that's clear. Less student services, much larger classrooms--that's what it means to students. Thank you. President Drake.

Yeah, of course--I mean the same things, of course. We--access for our classes and student access and our ability to support the students to be able to be educated and leave without a crippling amount of debt or things that we've been focused on, so those are squeezed by this very much. We've grown.

The 16,000 students that I mentioned, particularly the 12,700, we've been able to grow because of the Compact and because we increased the pathway and created funding pathways to support them going forward. When those are shut off, then that goes away as well. We also are squeezed. We have our student services that we provide.

We also do research and we, in fact, do quite a bit of providing of health services across the state, and one of the things that I see most is if I think of the questions I get asked in my position most by people who know me or people like you all, I get people call and say, 'I need to see a doctor and I can't get an appointment.'

Or I've called--family members of mine will call and say, 'I need to see a doctor. I called to get an appointment and it's August.' Now that would have been--I got a call from a family member I promised yesterday, saying, 'gosh, I need a knee replacement and they're telling me I can't be seen until this summer.'

And so we are really--the amount, the variety of services that we provide are really squeezed. The budget cut means we cannot address those things in the way that we, we wish.

Okay. Yes.

Chair Alvarez, one other thing I like to mentioned is the unfunded mandates and increasing costs that we're not talking about. Everything is going up for everybody in their home, but it's also going--insurance is going up for us, health insurance is going up that we pay much of it for our employees. All of that is also contributing to this budget cut, right, because we have to pay the unfunded mandates that we were mandated to do.

Can I ask you both about the question I asked the LAO earlier about the vacancies and sweeping the savings from that now? Chancellor Garcia, you mentioned you had some--achieve some savings. Can you talk to me about what you've done in the current year, given what was been advertised for now some time about the budget year?

In order to save dollars, they hold on to, they sweep those positions and hold on to them and use that to balance the budget. We are holding onto our position. So somebody leaves, that position is not rehired. And that happens throughout every one of our 23 campuses.

So do you have a hiring freeze?

We do. We have it, but for things that are necessary. So, for example, if we need an extra advisor for students or mental health because the students need it, they have to get permission from the president in order to get that position. There has to be a justification as to why you're hiring them.

Otherwise, there's a hiring freeze?

Otherwise there's a hiring freeze.

President Drake.

We're similar. We have thousands of vacant positions that we continue to roll vacant year after year and use that funding to be able to support the gaps that we have. The Chancellor mentioned that we have cost pressures. We have a large workforce. We want to be a fair, important to support our workers appropriately.

We have an outstanding faculty. We want to be able to support our faculty appropriately. We have the cost pressures that are going up to be able to support our people appropriately and continue to keep the lights on and the doors open. We have then thousands of positions that remain open year after year.

So the savings you've accomplished in the current year, you've put that into reserve and you're utilizing that reserve for the next year or what are you doing with the savings that you've accomplished?

That's how they balance the budget for the year and then they continue doing it for the following year, right? So what they're doing is kind of taking all of that money and saying, okay, how much, and then saving it for the next year if possible. But if not, they use it to balance their budget.

Okay, how about in the case of UC?

No, the same, and we've been looking at the unallocated reserves that we have there. They've been going down, but we do it. You, you skip over to the next year, then you have a budget crisis the next year and try and get through to June and then skip it over so that those numbers have continued to go down.

We work hard to find sources of revenue and, you know, we try to be creative and thoughtful about those things, but we've noticed our unallocated reserves dipping year by year as we move forward.

The last topic for this set of questions for myself, I point to page three. For my colleagues and the public on the agenda, there's a highlighted section that I think is important. I don't think any of us actually were here, with exception of Mr. Muratsuchi when there was a compact. We keep hearing about the compact.

A good reminder though here is that it was the Administration that announced this compact, but it did not have an agreement with the Legislature to do so. Now, that doesn't mean that the Legislature was opposed to enrollment growth. I think quite the opposite, but certainly, I think, gives us a framework for what we need to talk about going forward.

The administration has a couple of years left and there's deferrals in this budget for a couple years from now, which add up to quite significant amount of funding. I would ask you for your opinion. How do you ramp up that kind of funding from where you're expected to go now with the current budget proposal to over 1.6 billions combined? I know it's different for each of you--roughly half, but not exactly. That is a lot new money in just two years. Does that sound like a prudent way to budget cut you now and then say, well, you'll get a lot more money later?

You know, I was thinking about this over the last few days, and see if it makes any sense as I was thinking about it. We are committed to the Compact goals. There are things that we think are important. Narrowing achievement gaps, growing more opportunity for California students, we've really been dedicated to doing those things, making ourselves the best university we can be for the greatest number of students we can serve, serving the state broadly.

The Compact is like built--it's like we're driving on a bridge and the compact is building the road in front of us as we're driving, and so we got ahead of speed and we're planning on the bridge to be there when we, we get there. We're worried when it looks like the building is slowing down and we're still driving along, how we deal with it. If I can use another analogy quickly, I was thinking about our students.

We're already well into the admissions cycle for this year. So we don't want to take the life dreams of these students and then put them on hold. So for going into this year, what it's like is like holding our breath and going underwater. So we can do that for a while.

You know, we can get through much of a year with one class where we're underfunded, but you can't, you can't survive by doing that. And that's kind of what we're thinking of now. So now it's holding our breath, going underwater for as long as we can, but at some time you've got to come up for air, and stable funding into the future is the building of the bridge forward that we're looking into to continue to grow our programs. And that is of course, what's in jeopardy.

And I think, and you being one of the few people literally in the room with Mr. Muratsuchi were part of that conversation, that was the expectation that the continuity and the predictability of funding to do that.

You mean the conversation with your predecessors where they said, 'gosh, we want to do this'--and our conversation was great--'if you do this, it enables us to do that.' And we said, 'great,' shook hands, and we've actually done more of that than this that we were agreed to because we think it's a good thing to do, but if you take away the support, then the opportunities are gone as well.

Do you have thoughts on that?

And we managing more or less the same way. When you think about it, right, we're bringing in these students, we're cutting back on classes, your class sizes go up, and when you think about our students having, needing the attention that they need and the support services they need, it's really difficult for the students.

We are looking at also closing equity gaps, bringing in more students, but we want them also to be able to leave as quickly as we can. So we're doing the best we can in managing class sizes, bringing them in, and putting in the services that we can at a very minimal level, hoping that we can go onto that bridge in the long run.

Thank you. I'll turn it over now to my colleagues. We will start with Mr. Fong.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our colleagues here from each of the higher education segments. I'll start with the Community College Chancellor. Thank you for--in your remarks, I know you uplifted Cal Grant Equity Reform.

That's something that our Chair and myself have been very keen on, and this is something that's going to be another budget priority going forward, but I know that our community colleges and our higher education segments would benefit from the implementation of Cal Grant Equity Reform.

It's a challenging budget year, but I just want to uplift those comments and thank you for your work and efforts on student housing projects as well. I know in the past couple years we've tried to bring back the Student Housing Revolving Loan Fund program as well.

A similar line of questioning to the Chair is in terms of the unfunded FTE growth, you mentioned 0.5%, and then I think you mentioned your comments that it'd be 1.5%. Is that something that would be, would that make the system whole?

I'm not sure if it'll make the system whole. The calculation that our office had done was to look at the unfunded FTEs from the previous year and see if we can provide that support to the colleges and the president so they have confidence going forward and then looking for the next year to increase the number above 0.5.

My sense is that there are going to be districts right now--when we look at the percentage growth, many districts are in double digit growth actually far surpassing their pandemic level, the pre-pandemic level. So if those presidents are tuning in and they hear me putting out the number of 1.5%, they would say, 'no, you're not really supporting the growth that we are anticipating.'

But we do believe that with Proposition 98 funding that we could provide a proposal to fund, as much as we possibly can, the growth funding going into the future for next year.

Thank you for that context. Really appreciate that. Next question is for our UC system, and thank you, President Drake, for your leadership and service to the UC system and for everything you've done to continue, expand in state resident enrollment here in our UC system, especially now in our impacted universities, UCLA, UC San Diego, and Berkeley.

Are we, in terms of the scale of the reductions being proposed--I know you touched upon in your remarks--are we able to continue to increase the resident enrollment for in-state residents?

No, I would say that, again, the opportunity that we've been able to--the opportunity to grow has been funded. That's terrific. If we don't have the faculty, we don't have the staff, we don't have the workers to do this, we can't continue to grow at that same level.

But in terms of the 1% in-state growth for the impacted campuses?

So the impacted campuses, when we're able to grow, we try to, want to make sure we grow on all the campuses. The freeze in funding or cuts would impact our growth on all of our campuses. So that would be distributed among them, but it would impact the growth on all the campuses. Particularly the campuses that are growing the most, of course though, would have the largest impact.

Okay. Thanks for that context.

What are we doing to support Sonoma state and other CSUs that are facing these similarities Clinic challenges?

Well, we have been working with Sonoma. What has happened with the Sonoma State, I'm sure you are aware they have lost in a decade, 3. Over almost 4,000 students in a decade.

And so what we're doing now is the President is looking at a new plan that will be shared, that's looking at courses and programs that students want to enroll in. There have been some of the programs that were reduced or gotten rid of. There were no students involved. Students weren't enrolling them. Students want different outcomes.

They want a return on investment. And so the campus is looking at things like assessing and making sure they have programs that are really addressing it. Business, bioscience, et cetera, working with the community, listening to the community as to what is needed in that community in order to serve the students.

In the State of California, the system office has given them $2.5 million for marketing and public relations initiatives. We've also included Sonoma State in the Riverside County direct admissions program so that in the Riverside County, students can choose Sonoma. They get a letter saying, congratulations, you've been admitted to the CSU and you can go to these campuses.

And Sonoma is on that list. So we are working with them. We've worked with them to get them someone to help them with their strategic enrollment plan, to work with them on an academic planning and program evaluation. So we are supporting them as much as we can to lift them.

And as I said, there will always be a Sonoma State, but a different iteration.

Okay, thank you for that context, and I look forward to future conversations there as well. I know in the future maybe we'll have a deeper dive on the reserves and budget issues. I know last year we did.

And when we look at the reserves at each of the campuses, how are those reserves being tapped into in terms of addressing some of the budget deficit situations? zero, sorry. To the CSU champion.

We have exactly $777 million, which is about 34 days of reserves. The other rest of our reserves, which I believe is about 2.4 million, is really encumbered reserves. Reserves that we have to put aside. So we have $777 million for 34 days. It has been going down ever since.

Okay, thank you for that context. And lastly, in terms of the multi year tuition increase, how will that affect the multi year budget situation going forward?

That tuition increase is helping, but will never cover the loss of the compact. We were counting on the compact tuition increase to help us to continue on the journey to do what we needed to do, not only for our students, by the way, but as Dr.

Drake said, the faculties salaries and staff salaries that we must maintain as well.

So in terms of compact, similar to what the chair said, it's something that these catastrophic proposed cuts, up 375 million and nearly 400 million at the UC system would impact the direct services to our students to impact our enrollment, impacting the future of a lot of the education here in California.

So really appreciate the information here and updates in terms of how dire the situation is and what we can do to continue to uplift for UC and CSU systems during these very challenging times. So appreciate that. Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Senator Rogers.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And thank you so much for allowing me to sit in on this. Actually serve on budget sub 4. But as was noted by my colleague, Sonoma State 's a pretty significant issue, not just because I'm an alum, but also because my community depends on it.

So I have a lot of questions that are around that. First and foremost, I heard you say that Enrollment for the CSU system is up. Clearly for some locations like SSU, where you said there's a 38% reduction over the last 10 years in Enrollment.

Talk to me about which other campuses are seeing an increase and which ones are seeing a decrease.

Because clearly there's not the same. It's mostly the northern campuses because of the demographic shift. So if you look at San Diego State, San Marcos, Fullerton, I have to go back to go through. I have 23 campuses, so give me a minute. So I will go through them with you.

But out of the 23 campus, I will say there are about seven that are having some enrollment challenges not as drastic as Sonoma State.

So assuming the 8% cut was not there just baseline, do you anticipate that there will be cuts to other CSU similar to what we're seeing at Sonoma State? And it might be helpful, I think saying that there are cuts at Sonoma State is a bit of an undersell.

If you could also just share sort of what Sonoma State is looking at in terms of the current proposal.

Sure. They are looking At. Hold on. I will get that out to you. The 302 students will be impacted by the eliminated majors. 114 students are expected to graduate this May. 132 students can be placed on teach out plans that will allow them to graduate in their majors. 56 students will need to change majors.

Three programs proposed foreclosure were suspended before the 2025 budget plan. And seven program proposed foreclosure had no students in 2425. And they're eliminating division two sports.

Yeah. So all athletics. How many employees?

Sonoma State. Yeah, I'd have to get back to you on that one.

Yeah, I think I heard a laugh. I think that means that somebody else will fill us in on the number as well. But it's roughly 20 to 25% of the campus. Is that fair?

That's fair. However, what we're doing is reallocating the money in order to bring in programs where the students will register into.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I heard your comments about how you're working with the community on the plan.

Yeah. The President.

The President is. When were those meetings?

Okay. There was a meeting in fall 2023 with interim President Lee, who hosted a budget forum with the campus community to discuss the campus deficit and strategies for addressing it. The same year, the campus offered a second voluntary separation incentive program to stateside employees.

In 2024, the academic reorganization was taken into effect, consolidating five schools into three colleges. On October 2024, President Coutrera hosted a town hall meeting to publicly discuss a $21 million budget deficit. And the town hall was covered in the Santa Rosa press. So there you are. This has been going on for years.

So one meeting to meet with the community about the impact about what programs they need.

And she will be doing hearing sessions in the next six weeks or six months with the community to hear what the community needs.

Yeah, so that's where I'm going with this. And I apologize if we're going to see this at seven other campuses.

I hope that your office recognizes what a terrible rollout this has been to announce a 20 to 25% cut of a campus while you've suspended the search for the new President to a community that has no idea if you're trying to close the campus and then to say, in six months after we announce this, we'll talk to you about what the plan is moving forward.

And we can get into SSU a little bit more on Friday when we have the legislative hearing and talk specifics. But my concern as a CSU Graduate is that the chancellor's office does not appropriately value how much these campuses mean to the communities.

That just when you talk to employees, just when you talk to the campus community, that you've missed the businesses, you've missed the elected officials, you've missed the people that are alums, that are in the community. You were in my office three days before you announced the cuts. You didn't mention them to me.

You have a congressman that's represented the campus for 33 years. Got a phone call a half hour before the announcement. That's my concern, is that as you move forward and try to stabilize the CSU system, you view us as partners, not as an unnecessary hurdle, especially considering the concerns around a death spiral.

That if you're saying that these cuts are coming to the CSU system because of a lack of enrollment in certain areas, cutting 20 to 25% of the amenities is going to further that destruction in those areas.

And I'd love to hear a plan on how you're going to do a more equitable distribution, how you're going to increase enrollment, pull from other parts of the state. Because this not just for Sonoma State, for my district, but also Cal Poly. Humboldt's a success story where the CSUs have leaned in.

And so I don't know if you started to think about that a little bit or if you have anything that you can share.

What I will share with you is that the President is putting together a plan that will be shared with all of you in the near future.

Okay. Are we going to be part of creating that plan?

She will share that plan with you.

Yeah. That's kind of what I expected. There was a quote from the interim President, and granted, I understand that she's there to make unpopular decisions and then likely to re. Retire after, but her vice presidents offered to take a pay cut to try to help stabilize Ssu.

And her quote, and this is in the paper, was, if we took the cuts that our group volunteered to take, it would put pressure on other institutions. Frankly, our salaries are good. I'm not complaining about that, but they are well below the national average.

So the problem is that we would put undue pressure on other institutions to do the same thing when they are, in fact, underfunded in that area already. Do you agree with that comment?

What I would say is our people are paid. Our salaries are paid as equitably as possible. But, yes, our people are underpaid.

I believe that. But at a time where you're cutting a fourth to a fifth of a Campus. Do you think it's appropriate for us to look for cost savings not just in programs and staff, but. But also in the Administration?

We are cutting back administrators. Administrators have been let go.

And the salaries for your top administrators.

They have stayed safe, stable.

Okay. How big is the chancellor's budget? The chancellor's office budget.

Give me a minute. And we've. We're ready to take our 17 $1.0 million. Our Chancellor's office is taking a 17 $1.0 million cut, which is 8%.

Okay. What is your total budget?

I'd have to ask the total total budget. We'll have to get back to you.

All right. So what I've heard folks joke about is that the chancellor's Office is the 24th CSU and I'm just looking to see, are you doing a hiring freeze? Yes. Okay. And those positions, they're not coming back? If you approve them, we are.

We have to review. As a matter. I'm in the middle of an assessment. I'm in this job 14 months looking to see where we can have efficiencies. In the chancellor's office? Yes, we are.

Okay. And so if in the hiring freeze, I heard on other campuses the President can approve even through the hiring freeze. Are you freezing and then still approving hires within your office?

Depending on what the position is, right? If it's a critical position, then yes. If it's not, no.

Okay. All right. Well, I appreciate your comments. As I said, I'll have more on Friday when we talk specifically about SSI comments as well. But I am concerned that the chancellor's office does not appropriately view the Legislature as a partner or the community as a partner in this.

And I look forward to your commitment to do so in the. In the future.

And you have that commitment because I see the Legislature as our partner as well as the community. So thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Patel?

Yes. Thank you for your presentations today. I have a few questions for our community community colleges Chancellor. Christian, thank you for all the programs that you've expanded and increased working with. I am come from a school board, so working with dual enrollment as well as what we've heard with the apprenticeship programs, offering credits for those as well.

Very excited about those programs. Can you tell me about what percentage of your enrollment is related to apprenticeship collaborations and what percentage is related to dual enrollment with high school students?

Thank you for that question. Both dual enrollment and apprenticeships are two priorities for our office. Dual enrollment has been growing significantly. The number that comes to my mind this last year is that dual enrollment grew by 24% in terms of apprenticeships. There are apprenticeship programs that are also college.

They get college credit for courses and there are apprenticeship programs that do not. They are funded in a different way. So I'm not quite sure how to quantify what percentage would be apprenticeships. Some numbers that come to my mind are the Governor has set out 500,000 apprenticeships in the State of California.

We are at about 94,000 and our goal is, is to increase them to 200,000. And another significant part of our apprenticeship program is to have those programs that don't get college credit. Right. They're sort of standalone through credit for prior learning to be able to offer them.

And most of these courses will be career education courses so that then they can get a certificate. And if they wanted to, let's say 32 year old apprentice who is a construction worker at 32, you know, she is wanting to have a supervisor position.

By giving them credit for prior learning, they can then have college credit knocked out on their way towards, taken care of, on their way towards a degree for a supervisor position. So that's, that's an amazing part of the work that I wanted to highlight as well.

Thank you for that. When students are dual enrolled with the high school programs, how is, how does that take, how does that get accounted for in Prop 98 funding? Who gets the Ada?

So the dual part of dual enrollment is that both the high school gets apportionment and the community college also gets apportionment. So that would be counted towards our FTEs for the community college.

Okay, thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Those are great programs and it really does help our high school students get some Head Start as they enter into the UCs of the CSUs to help reduce that burden in those systems as well.

So I really like those programs and want to see them continue for our CSUs and our UCs going back to the compact because that is a really big concern. The Department of Finance representative explained that the compact is seen as a separate agreement.

And in my head I'm just kind of struggling with that because ultimately that's money coming out of your budget. Are you going to be able to meet those expectations of the compact with these budget cuts? And if not, what happens to the compact?

I'll just say that as I reflecting back on my silly analogy of kind of holding our breath underwater, we can do that for a while.

A silly analogy.

Okay, but so that, so that for this year we're going to go ahead and do our very best to admit the students that are already in the process. They'll be getting letters in six weeks. You've seen what it looks like when the, when they are opening or when they're going online to see if they're accepted.

They know their life changes. So we don't want to interrupt any of those life changing moments for this year. For next year, we'd have to decrease the number of slots that we were able to offer. We've grown. That's great. We would love to continue growing, but that's the partnership.

So do you think we'd still be able to make that 1%?

Well, this year I think we're gonna do the 1%. I mean, I'm just gonna say this year I think it's too late for us to stop and be fair to those students. They'd be the ones. So we'd have to figure a way to suck it up. That's the holding our breath underwater.

Next year we would be looking at different enrollment targets.

Okay, we're looking at our enrollment targets and of course we want to bring in the students that want to come into the CSU. But will it be very, very difficult? Yes, it's going to be very. Because as I said earlier, it's going to be the increased class size, it's going to be the support services.

It's all the things that the students need in order to succeed. And so that's our concern.

And all of this, just to help paint the picture more fully, is in the context of possibly additional cuts to higher education from federal programs, additional increase in cost due to labor trying to accommodate for cost of living in California, as well as increasing health insurance and medical costs in General for the ucs.

Medical costs for running your Institute, your medical hospitals, insurance costs. Everything. Everything. Yeah.

Yes, all those things very, very important. And let me say, the effects, the federal challenges that we hear are extraordinary. I mean, extraordinarily harmful for us, and we feel that, but really extraordinarily harmful for California and honestly for the world.

So those are very, very serious issues that we are thinking about, honestly, every minute as we go forward. The kind of squeezing that we have to do during tough times, increasing class sizes. We understand from the Administration that this is supposed to be a one year cut. We take them at their word. We have nothing more.

We are pleased to do that, but that's. Those are the kind of things we can do for a bit, but going forward, those decrease the quality and scope of our services. And that's what we have to be looking at moving forward.

And I think we're all working together to think about what would happen from the Federal Government. Because the threats are, if you don't do this, we'll cut your Pell.

Yeah.

And so imagine we are a system. We us alone is $1 billion that we, that our students receive in Pell.

Yeah. And a follow up question for the UC specifically, if there was a way for our Federal Government to cut the overhead reimbursement rates for R01 funding, for NIH funding, have we run any numbers on what the impact to the budget would be in that scenario?

Yeah. You know, we think about our country and the places where we're competitive, the places where we're the best in the world, and we're the best in the world, among other things, at biomedical research.

That's something that wonderful partnership between the Federal Government and universities coming out of World War II, actually seeing the impacts during World War II of science and technology and University research on changing the world order.

Coming out of that, there was a very prescient arrangement made to say we can partner with the universities on fundamental research that will change the world. And we've been the best in the world at doing this. And we've seen it happen year after year and move forward.

As we move forward, one of the things that we at the University of California are proudest of is that in the competitive research arena, where the best ideas come forward, the best experts sit together and judge those ideas and then award funding on merit, that the University of California continues and has been the leader in public research universities any place in this country and certainly more broadly in the world.

But that means that the partnership is with the Nih, the National Institutes of Health. We partnered with the United States government to make us the best in the world, and we're pleased to be there.

If you say, well, gosh, we'd like to all of a sudden change that, change that partnership, that would be devastating to our programs, more importantly, devastating to the leadership that we have on the cutting edge research that we've been putting out there to help with things. Again, biomedical research is what I'm thinking about with the Nih.

This has affected us in many other areas as well. So for us, in amounts of money, it's hundreds of millions of dollars in the adjustment, 400, $500 million depending. These are complicated formulas, but hundreds of millions of dollars in change, which means we'd have to dramatically decrease our research footprint.

We already have to provide additional funding, the funding that comes for facilities, administrative costs from the government as much as it is it's still not the full cost of these services. I know this from my days as an individual campus chancellor and President.

I'll say that in my non California campus that I worked at for a few years, took a little hiatus to work in another part of the country. We had about 28 to 30 $1.0 million a year that we had to use to supplement federal funding to cover the cost of our research. So that was our.

We had tens of millions of dollars of additional money we had to put in to close the gap that was left from the facilities Administration rates that we had. Same thing I'm sure is true in all of our campuses here, that we put in extra money to support these things and cutting this would be devastating.

I would add that we do a lot of applied research. We engage our undergraduate students in those research projects and so they get a feel of what it's like and become US researchers as they go on to graduate school, onto the UC and other places. We did add it up.

And for us, annually we get about $512 million from NIH and other grants. So we do put some money into that, but that would drastically hurt the research, the applied research that our faculty do throughout the 23 CSUs.

Yeah. As I was speaking about our resilient economy, we rely on our higher education systems to help support that. And one final question, if I may. I'm getting back to Sonoma State. It's a big concern of mine as well. Reducing opportunity is always a concern. This has been going on.

We've seen the declining enrollment for a few years now. And looking at what happened with Humboldt and shifting it to a Cal Poly system where Cal Polys are wildly popular across California for our students and our families. Has there been any discussion about transitioning possibly to a Cal Poly or a different kind of model? They are.

I don't.

They are talking about looking at a different kind of model. The issue with Cal Poly, when it was agreed upon, I wasn't here, but I heard they got $450 million to be able to go forward and $25 million every year ongoing. With that kind of money, it's absolutely wonderful that they can build the programs that they need.

And that came directly from the Governor and the Legislature. Right now we don't have that money for Sonoma. But what we're looking at is what are the programs that the community and the students need in order to be able to go into successful careers or go on to graduate school.

And so we're looking at those things like biomedical science. We're looking at technology, we're looking at business and those kind of programs which will attract students. And at the same time, we're helping them with the recruitment.

Yeah. And I would recommend that you also look at what kind of programs might benefit the region. Absolutely. That's part of it. Specifically. That's part of it. Like Pomona's is wildly popular in Southern California. It focuses on a lot on ag. Perhaps there's some kind of hospitality. Ag, winemaking.

Yes, that's part of that, too. They have that. I could go through the list. That's one of the things that they're looking at. So thank you for the question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

I mean, I was going to talk more about NIH funding, but we covered a lot of that. So I guess I'll just move on to my next question.

I know it's a challenging budget situation this year, but looking to the future, I was wondering, to the UC and CSU, what efforts are each of you making to expand your presence and perhaps even adding a new campus?

I'm going to be honest, we are not looking at adding a new campus at the moment because we have to make sure that we can help our campuses survive.

And that would take a lot of resources that at this point, even in the future, we want to stabilize where we are and make sure that they're serving the communities and regions of that they serve.

And let me say, happy to talk about NIH more if you'd like, but I'd say just a really, really critical issue for us these days.

You know, we've joined with the State of California and with 20 other states, 21 other states, and trying to do what we can to make sure that a more thoughtful and appropriate approach to the future is carried out. So that I think that's. So that's like a really important thing.

And I'm glad that you're concerned about it as we all are together. Expanding opportunity is something that we're really interested in doing. As I mentioned, we added about 16,000 students over this decade or since in the 2000s. So far, our goal is to add 20,000 FTE by the end of this decade.

So that's the equivalent of a campus about the size of Santa Cruz is 20,000 students. So we're adding more spaces on our current campuses. Our Merced campus is still new and growing. Riverside has room to grow, Santa Cruz, some room to grow there. Space constraints.

So we're doing what we can to provide more opportunity for students year over year without building another Physical campus, campus is very, very expensive to find, locate, build, et cetera. Billions of dollars to do that.

If we can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our campuses and creating educational opportunities for students without building a new bricks and mortar campus, that's a faster and more efficient way of doing things. So again, the 16,000 students we've added since 2020, Merced, again, a campus I'm very proud of, but started in, opened in 2002.

Students coming in 2004, early in those years, they're at about 10,000 students now. So it takes a long time to grow. I will say that Merced last week, I believe, was announced as in the newest round of R1 research, very intensive universities.

Merced made the leap from R2 to R1among the 150 or so top research universities in the country. They did that in 20 years. It's considered to be a 30 year minimum to get there. So they're there about a decade early.

And to be an brand new R1 University and also be ranked among some of the polls among the research universities as doing the greatest to help with social mobility. Having those two things happen together is really a great achievement for Merced. So we're happy for that growth and looking forward to it continuing. Great. Thank you.

I would say that working together, the three of us will also give lots of opportunities for opportunity, for access. Right. How do we really deepen our partnerships? And many different ways like artificial intelligence and all the technology that we can use to help students really use the entire system.

Well, I appreciate the response there. The reason I ask, I represent the 47th Assembly District, which is the Coachella Valley. The district south of me, the 36th, has Imperial county, goes all the way down to the California Arizona border. And we don't have a four year University in that entire area.

We appreciate both UC Riverside and CSU San Bernardino having satellite facilities, but for our students, the dream of a four year degree just so far away from their homes, their families. And I'd argue that if we are looking at expansion from either of you, that it should be focused on our region.

So as a Member of the Subcommitee, I want to help you solve immediate problems. But I'm also going to continue to make the case that the Coachella Valley should be next on the University expansion list. So appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Muratucci. Thank you.

I'd like to start off by first, first acknowledging my appreciation for our community colleges. I had an opportunity to teach at my local community college, l Community college this past fall.

And I really felt firsthand, experienced firsthand, why our community colleges are called the people's college, that they accept all who come, who are seeking opportunities to, to better themselves and to, and to advance their careers. And so I certainly want to continue to support our community colleges.

Having said that, though, I, you know, was looking at the LAO overview of our higher education budget and there's one graphic on page seven that talks about the tale of two budgets. And you know, I think this really highlights what the LIO was talking about.

The Prop 98 side of the budget and the non Prop 98 side of the budget.

And, you know, this reminds me of how, you know, our public higher education segments that are not covered by Prop 98, our University of California and our California State University are among the most vulnerable parts of our budget because it is not protected.

This just reminds me of how we devastated our most valuable assets here in the State of California, our University of California system and our California State University system during the Great Recession. You know, when we, you know, cuts had to be made, where did they, the cuts, where were the cuts made?

They were made at our UCs and our CSUs and that led to dramatic increases in tuition, that led to dramatic decreases in opportunities and access. And I'm afraid that, you know, we're, you know, seeing this playbook again.

And, you know, I just want to say to the Department of Finance in the room as well as, you know, hopefully watching on any monitor, it doesn't make sense to treat the University of California and the California State University just like any of the State Department.

I mean, again, the LAO highlighted, you know, the obvious differences between cutting 8% across the board for State Department departments versus our UCs and our CSUs. Our UCs and our CSUs provide opportunities for California kids. Our UCs and CSUs, you know, are the most successful institutions in the country in promoting social mobility.

You know, it's, it's investing in the dreams and aspirations of our California students. And we should not be treating it with this ham hock, 8% across the board cut, just like any other State Department. So, you know, I ask the Department of Finance to reconsider their priorities.

We want to make sure that we continue to support and protect, especially in these vulnerable times with the federal Administration freezing and cutting, you know, these valuable research dollars that now more than ever we need to support our University of California and our California State University. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi. Ms. Hadwick.

Hi. Thank you for coming today. I want to thank you for what you're doing. This is a heavy lift and a lot of decisions that are not easy to make. I represent District 1 in Northern California, so I have 11 counties. We do not have a State University, so I'm going to pitch what Wallace did.

Like, I have some places. Great. Our community college system is very strong. We have many counties that don't have a community college as well. I. You guys answered most of the questions I had. I'm most concerned about the deferral payments as we're facing unprecedented times in our future. What does it look like if those payments don't come?

Yeah, I'll let you go first.

Well, I think I kind of spoke about it in my remarks. It does mean less classes, less people. You know, higher education is supported by amazing faculty and staff that serve our students. You can't replicate that.

And not having the amount of staff that we need in order to serve the amazing students that are looking forward their dream, it'll be disastrous. I said it very easily. It's dire for the CSU. We have been efficiency our way out of this, and we're very lean. You saw what happened with maritime. We integrated it.

So we're going to have to look at, you know, imaginative ways to kind of deal with what we see coming before us.

You know, when it comes to research and healthcare, those two parts of what we're doing, the cutting edge is doing the most you can do for things that are critically important.

And we push ourselves to be on that cutting edge and to advance that forward 70% or so, depending on how it's calculated of our cost, our personnel costs, or people. So when you cut money, you're actually cutting people. And without the people to do the work, all we can do is recede again.

This is a place where we're the best in the world in a really competitive, ultimately competitive set of arenas. And we like being there, and we want to be even better. And I would say to Mr. Meretsucci's comments that to cut the horses that are pulling you forward means you slow down.

And I'm using my bridge analogy, which I like a lot. Another way of thinking of it is that if we're building a road in front of us to drive, unlike the partnership with the Federal Government on research, which has to be done years in advance, you can't build it right now when you need it.

You can stop it right now, but it takes that. Then you have to stop your progress, and it takes a long time to get those things started again and to Move forward. So we again have advanced forward as a country by this. The compact is the.

A similar arrangement that we have with the government to be able to provide the opportunity for us to move into the future. Cutting that means we lose that opportunity.

Not to mention the salaries of our faculty and staff. We are seen across the country. And I could say that I worked in Washington D.C. for six years looking at colleges and universities. This California State is looked at as a model across the country.

Country people want to come here to work here, and yet if we can't pay them the salaries to be able to live in California, they won't come. And we're looking for those who are really committed to research.

Yes, but to the mission of serving the students of California, the underserved, the students who are first generation, those that need them the most. And that's going to. That will hurt that as well.

I thank you because I think we're facing a huge workforce shortage as well. And you guys are producing our talent. I'm a first generation college grad from CSU and Shasta College, Community college, so I appreciate what you do. I am. The deferral thing really scares me.

I think promising money is a bad thing to do in our economic climate that we're facing right now. Have there been. You guys have expanded on your student enrollment? I know you plan years and years out. The expansion projects that you were planning, are those all halted?

Are you able to keep going with some of them for certain programs or that bigger picture? Thank you for going over what you've already cut and those things that have already been affected. I was just curious on the bigger picture.

I think what we're doing is bringing in as many students as we can as we go along and hoping that in the future we can actually get the funding we need in order to run a University that they so richly deserve to prepare them for the careers or going on to graduate school.

So we're doing the best we can as we look at our numbers and trying to project at a very difficult time. You know, people are no longer projecting five years out. People are projecting three years out because things are moving so crazy different.

And for us, I mean, the people for us means our faculty and staff that teach the students, that do the research, that treat the patients. And I know in all of our campuses, the campuses are exercising position control now based on the budgetary limits that we have. And the worse those are, the more they pull back.

And you know, as Chancellor Garcia was saying, we have these sort of relative freezes on Positions where we allow growth in critical areas or critical positions while we hold back on those things that are good, but maybe not critical, but actually, as the budget is worse, what we define as critical narrows and things that would have been critical last year, we say, gosh, we maybe can't do that this year.

And that's the level of planning that we're doing. I have budget meetings coming up with all the campuses starting actually next week. And what we're looking at now is how we're going to close those gaps, moving, moving forward, and it means pulling back on people.

So the UC extension offices are vital in my counties because we're very rural. So I would plea with you to help them, help support their budgets because they are the desired jobs and the work they're doing is so vital to rural living.

We have a wonderful plan, actually, to increase the collaboration among our extension programs and to increase the offerings that our extension programs have across the State of California, every county in the state. We also have been expanding the online opportunities that we have for people who are more placebo.

This is new over the last 10 years, five years in particular. So those are things that are on the shelf, ready for water to be added, for them to grow. That's great. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. I want to end today by attempting to acknowledge all the concerns raised by our colleagues here. Certainly a challenging time. I think, overall, no one wants to see less access for students. That leaves a very high task for you and for us, truly.

And we don't have 13 hearings just for the sake of hearing ourselves talk. The point of it is to go through some of the details to understand what makes sense going forward, what perhaps should be constrained a little bit more in tough times as we are now, and that's what we'll do.

I think that, you know, I hear concerns about access generally. I hear concerns about access in particular parts of the state. I note both of you have been responsive, you know, to those concerns I've had in the past, and I thank you.

CSU is talking about regional education centers as a potential, potential future model, as is used in other University systems throughout the country. We just heard about extensions being open more widely.

We're working with our community college system in order to create access to opportunity in the part of California that I represent that also doesn't have have a University.

So I think that is a major concern, and I appreciate the feedback, and I encourage those of you who have those challenges to engage with the systems in order to do that and accomplish that. I guess the only remaining question for me would be for both the campuses, sorry, the systems, UC and CSU with the deficits.

You've made it really clear that this is not sustainable if there isn't. If there really isn't the budget allocation in the future year. But I don't. I think we want to set up expectations that are realistic for Californians and for all of us.

If these cuts go into effect, they will drastically impact, going forward the access to Californians throughout the state into our system. And we need to be careful about that and be more thoughtful about that, which is why I think we need to look at things like potentially increasing revenue.

Last year we had a conversation for a little bit that we may want to reengage on, and that is on increasing the cost of tuition for out of state students and how to potentially find some resources for you to do what you need to do, not to backfill us as a General Fund, but really to help you, you continue to expand opportunities for Californians.

And so I ask you to look at that.

I ask you to continue to also look at, I don't like to use the phrase right sizing, but certainly identifying where the demand is, as the CSU system is doing and perhaps where the demand isn't at today, and making sure that students don't get left behind, but also that the status quo is not good enough.

We can't just continue to Fund what we Fund if the outcomes are not the outcomes that we want to see. The outcome should always be more students having access and graduating and entering the workforce. If there are places and if there are instances where that is not happening, we need to review what's going wrong.

We need to readdress that, and we need to provide the programming that is appropriate and adequate for those campuses to support succeed.

And we need to make sure that the campuses that have a high demand, because there are still several campuses that do both in the CSU and in the community college system, that we have the funding there so that the students can find a place and a seat in the classroom. And so that means looking at things differently.

I do, though, acknowledge, particularly Chancellor Garcia, as we do here, spending, you know, the time with the community to understand the concerns going forward. As you've identified, there's seven campuses that find themselves with not as high demand, if you will, is the way I'll put it.

And so we need to have those conversations very publicly and honestly with the community about what that means for the future. But I assure you we'll support the growth as long as there's growth happening at all of your campuses. That's what our job is.

Again, it's not to continue to the status quo just because we do something a particular way. It's not leading to more students graduating and entering the workforce. Then we need to rethink how we're doing things. So for those reasons, I would just ask you to think about those things as we go forward.

We'll be having more conversations, obviously, on the very specific programs that are being impacted at all of your systems. And again, I just want to thank you for being here, answering all the questions, and I hope that some folks have some continued questions and thoughts that you continue to engage with all of us as you go forward.

President Drake, may I indulge for a final comment, if I will? Two things to say. One, in speaking of our system, I spoke a lot about our medical care and our research, in addition to our teaching programs and what we do for our students.

We speak a lot in this body about opportunity for students, and that's critically important. I thought I was going to be a teacher of some kind when I was growing up a bit, and what I'm planning on doing next year or the year thereafter is becoming a teacher of some kind again.

But I'm going back to the faculty and doing that. I taught undergraduates until the beginning of the pandemic, so I loved it very much. It's something that's very, very important to us. But I changed a little bit and I became a medical Doctor and then became really focused on health care and patient services.

So I saw that part of the University of California and during my training, something I had not thought of before. I began to do research and became one of those people as well.

And so I saw the teaching as kind of my direction, expanding to medical care, which I loved as a career, but then learning about research and how we can continue to make things better. So they all fit together in our mission, and they're all extraordinarily important to us.

And I don't mean to over or under emphasize any part of it.

My comma, since I'm only allowing myself one sentence, my comma is that we are seeing real threats to higher education broadly across the country, where there are people who don't really have the same view of the value of the things that we have devoted our three lives to as we have and we're used to.

And to be honest, we see them as them as a challenge. I will say we have friends and supporters in this arena as well, people who are really working with us to help it be better. And I mean this with great promise, sincerity. You all have been those people.

You've worked very well with us as partners, critical about those things, we might do better, but really as partners in helping to lift up the value of higher education to the State of California and to the rest of the world. And so we really do appreciate that and appreciate your partnership.

Thank you. Again, we appreciate you and thank you for your work and look forward to the next six months of hard work that we all have ahead of us. And thanks to all of you for being here. We appreciate that. With that, we will now open it up to public comment.

We ask you to please line up here. We'll give you one minute to make a comment. Please state your name, your affiliation, so that we know who you're representing. That will be helpful for us so we can track your thoughts and comments. With that, welcome our first public speaker.

Good morning or good afternoon. My name is Noemil Lujan Perez and I'm representing the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

Reiterating a comment and letter we sent to the Governor on behalf of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities and the more than 172 Hispanic serving institutions in the State of California, we are here to express our deep concern regarding the proposed budget cuts to the California State University and the University of California.

21 of the 23 CSU campuses and 7 of the 10 UC campuses are recognized as federally designated Hispanic serving institutions. These public institutions provide access to higher education for first generation, Low income and underserved students statewide.

We respectfully request you reconsider the proposed cuts and explore alternative solutions that ensure the continued strength and excellence of California's higher education system.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, Chairman Alvarez, Committee Members, I'm Jason Rabinowitz. I'm Secretary Treasurer, Teamsters Local 2010, proudly representing 23,000 workers throughout California education, including 1100 skilled trades workers at California State and about 19,000 administrative and skilled trades workers throughout the University of California system. We're proud that our hard work makes California education work.

We believe, and I think goes without saying, that UC and CSU are critical to the well being of our state. The educational services, medical care, research, but also creating good jobs in our communities and being an engine of economic growth and success for our state.

And therefore, we urge the Legislature and the Governor to fully Fund the UCN CSU.

We appreciate that the Governor's proposed budget fully funds the compact, but we have serious concerns about these deferrals in the in the current year, we are seeing CSU, unfortunately, as we've heard about, take advantage of this situation to slash programs, layoff workers at Sonoma State. And also we're very concerned that.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Don Romsberg. I'm the Chair of Women's and Gender Studies at Sonoma State University. I'm a 20-year professor there and I'm losing my job.

You've heard a lot of big numbers here today and I want to give you a sense of the real costs in the national climate of attacks and erasures of ethnic studies, gender studies and LGBTQ programs, Women's and Gender Studies at Sonoma State began in 1970. We're a 55-year-old small but mighty program with a big impact.

We're laser focused on providing strong outcomes and student access to some of the SSU's most marginalized populations. There are LGBT students, women of color, first generation college students, and survivors of sexual violence. In addition to neurodivergent students who access our interdisciplinary curriculum focused on intersectional feminism, LGBTQ, and trauma informed pedagogies.

They will not be retained by the institution. If we ago, I want to also say that -

Last thought: your minute.

Oh okay. We are [mic cuts] in our community. Thank you.

Just remind everybody a minute goes by real fast.

Hello, my name is Sean Ramis. I use he/they pronouns. I'm a American Multicultural Studies student, WGS, Women Gender Studies, student and a Queer Studies minor at Sonoma State. I'm here to tell you that at SSU we are already living the consequences of these cuts. The faculty are at a loss. The students are devastated.

Sonoma State has lost its direction and is being pressured to become a narrow, focused for profit campus rather than a place of diverse understanding and broad education. The intern's president has said that they expect an additional 10% decrease in enrollment over next year. An additional 8 after that. How is they going to - how is Sonoma State going to recover? How is it going to bring people back after we have lost the heart and soul of our campus? The Sonoma State WGS department is a high impact department. The four tenured faculty interact with over 15,000 GE students. Since 2010, the WGS students have over 30,000 hours of community service within internships.

Students are leaving SSU and not coming back. They're not just transferring to other CSUs. They're leaving higher education because of this.

Thank you very much. Appreciate you.

Hi, I'm Sujatha Moni. I'm the Chair of Women's and Gender Studies Department at Sacramento State and I'm speaking on behalf of the chairs of all the CSU WGS programs across the state. And I also request the reinstatement of the Women's and Gender Studies program at Sonoma State.

Given all the threats to women's reproductive health, to transgender rights, and the federal cuts that are coming up, and the threats that our programs are suffering across the country. We request you to pass a similar legislation as AB 1460 for ethnic studies to protect women's and gender studies. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

I'm Matty Mookerjee. I'm a geology professor at Sonoma State University, and I learned about the elimination of my department through a mass email. Unlike what Chancellor Garcia said, my program has students. And in fact, we've been increasing in enrollment over the last two years, and we are at near pre-COVID levels in our classroom enrollment.

This decision was made without consultation, without transparency, and without regard for the critical role that geoscientists play in our community. It threatens to dismantle a vital pipeline of professionals who ensure public safety, manage water resources, and help mitigate the effects of natural disasters like earthquakes, landslides and wildfires.

California State law mandates that registered professional geologists oversee infrastructure programs, including build roads, housing, hospitals. We already have a shortage of geoscientists in California, and this rash decision makes this problem even worse. Eliminating this program endangers public safety and undermines California's ability to meet pressing housing shortages, environmental challenges, protecting our water resources and maintaining disaster prepared.

Thank you very much.

Welcome. Hi, assembly members. My name is Michael Lee Chang. I'm a student from Redondo Beach currently studying at CSU Sacramento. And I, in my first ever year of college as a freshman, there were 10 publicly reported sexual assault cases. And as a survivor myself, my only support system was faculty, being so far away from home. And for context, our university only spends $0.50 per student on sexual violence prevention. With these cuts, that could be at $0 per student. And our university raised fees, student fees, by 50% on top of last year's 34% tuition increase.

And we're seeing stable enrollment, yet they're merging colleges and departments on the level of Sonoma State. And so, what's the excuse there? And they say they have no money, yet they're building a near $300 million football stadium to try to get into the Pac 12. And so, we're urging you to demand more accountability.

And we're urging you to reject the governor's 8% cuts and ensure full funding of the CSU and our student's success because we should not be placing athletics over food pantries and our student success classrooms, faculty, the future of California. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Dan Durazo. I'm an IT worker at UC Berkeley and President of UPTE, which represents 20,000 healthcare, research and technical employees at UC. We have been bargaining with the UC system for eight months now in an attempt to fix a staffing crisis where we can't even fill positions that are unfrozen.

We will be striking for the second time in four months next week over UC's unfair practices. We don't want to strike, but UC's negotiators have left us no choice.

UC has given most chancellors more than 30% in raises over the last two years, additional vacation time, low interest home loans, while rejecting the same things for frontline healthcare research and technical staff.

So, I'm here to ask you to continue the funding UC and supporting public education, research and healthcare while it's under threat from the federal government but require UC to invest in its frontline workers in the same way that it's investing in its leadership. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hi. My name is Amy Fletcher and I'm a researcher at UC Davis, and I've been a UC employee for the last nine years. That's unusual because 67% of our researchers have been there for less than five years.

That level of turnover threatens the critical work that we do, such as researching Alzheimer's, pediatric cancer and climate change, which we know are important for not just the communities around them, but for all of California. Besides research, we also provide critical services.

For example, my colleagues are the only ones in the State of California that can do critical avian flu testing for the state's egg and milk supply during an outbreak. LA Times and Politico have covered this story and the short staffing that's persisted for nearly a year. But UC has refused to change course.

I'm asking you to fund the UC, but tie that funding to investments in its frontline workers the same way it does to its ever-expanding building projects. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Sonia and I'm a social worker at UC Davis. And I'm in touch with mental health workers at UC hospitals and student health centers across the state. Our workers are burnt out and disrespected, constantly losing skilled staff to Kaiser and other competing hospitals. Hundreds of thousands of students and patients deserve better.

The intentional vacancies that President Drake spoke about to balance UC's budget mean that few social work teams at the hospital are fully staffed. It means that I have to carry three times the number of patients as I should and have to decide who I don't get to see.

At the end of the day, those vacancies lead to unsafe discharges and readmissions. Our 20,000-worker union will be striking next week. We ask you to support us by funding UC and demand that they prioritize frontline staff. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hello. I'm Sharon Furtak. I hold a doctorate in behavioral neuroscience from Yale University. I'm a professor and chair of psychology at Sacramento State. I chose to come to this university because I believe in our mission. For the last decade, I've heard everything from do more with less, do less with less. We have cut unnecessary costs.

We have cut necessary costs. We have nothing left to cut. In preparation of these proposed cuts, we are already talking about reorganization of the entire campus. I am urging you, urging you, do not go forward with these cuts. It will change the way we operate. It will impact students.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Gabriel. I'm a student of the CSU. I come on behalf of all undocumented students at the CSU and can say affirmatively that we need your help. The past few months have been very difficult for undocumented students, but it will get a lot more difficult if this budget cut is passed.

We are under constant threat and live in fear. This fear and anxiety affect our classes and ability to learn, and these cuts will only exacerbate this even more. We need your support more than ever. I ask that you think of us when making these decisions. Our whole lives, we have been told no.

No to job opportunities, no to scholarships, no to so many opportunities that allow us to continue to dream. There's a lot of undocumented students who feel as if they don't have a voice. But you can be their voice and their hope during this time. So, I'll finally say, please reject the budget cut. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Sorry. My name is Catherine Hutchinson. I'm the President of California State University Employees Union. The CSU is the university for all Californians and all regions of the state. The impacts of potential cuts are not theoretical. Campuses are offering voluntary separation programs using their reserves.

And Sonoma State and CSU Dominguez Hills have done significant layoffs, with more campuses telling us they will be offering layoffs as well. As you review this budget, I urge you to reconsider the proposed cuts and analyze whether deferral the compact is appropriate. Also, respectfully request that the legislature provide oversight and direction to the CSU leadership.

We need CSU to keep its commitments to the legislature and labor by partnering with us to provide a statewide vision for CSU that supports the growing campuses and establishes turnaround plans for campuses that are struggling. Our students deserve all of us pushing to support them, regardless of what CSU campus they are enrolled in.

We need a fund at CSU that supports every corner of the state and its employees. And I look forward to working with you on this goal. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Sofia Santana Calderon. I am a student from San Jose State University and I'm majoring in Political Science. I came to Sacramento today to ask the legislator to reject Governor Gavin Newsom's proposal to cut the CSU budget by 7.95% and to fully fund the CSU.

The Trump Administration has hammered down on anything and everything that has to do with the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And the CSU has and is failing to adequately fund and maintain departments that revolve around these identities and histories of California's diverse constituency.

This proposed budget cut will only fast track the erasure of the culture and history of Californians and Americans from across the country. Even at growing campuses like San Jose, we are seeing cuts to college programs like our athletics department.

As leaders in California, I ask you to prioritize the investment of higher education, and I urge you to work with Governor Gavin Newsom to protect the people's University. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. My name is Marshall Nakatani, here with United Auto Workers Local 4811. I'm a graduate student at UC Davis and the political organizer for our local. UAW 4811 represents the 48,000 academic workers at the University of California, including 19,000 teaching assistants, 17,000 graduate student researchers, and 12,000 postdoctoral scholars and professional career researchers.

We are also deeply concerned with the proposed cuts to the UC's budget. Nearly $400 million is at stake and these cuts would harm students as well as our workers. Cuts would mean larger class sizes, less student support services, and a longer time degree for students. At the federal level, many have mentioned the cuts to federal grant funding.

UC is the number one recipient of NIH and NSF grant awards and hundreds of millions of dollars are currently at risk while we're still seeing these proposed cuts to the state budget. So again, we would urge you to reverse these cuts, and you'll hear from some of our members next about how this affects their work. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Samuel Goldberg and I'm a first year PhD student in the Department of Mathematics at UC Berkeley. In lower division math courses at UC Berkeley, it is often said that teaching assistants, or TAs, make or break the course.

Last semester I was a TA for Math 54, a fundamental course for engineering and science majors. Math 54 is demanding: it covers Linear algebra, differential equations, and Fourier series topics typically taught across three different semesters.

However, students manage to succeed and thrive in this class by approaching mastery of the content as an art form under the mentorship of an experienced TA. This dynamic does not exist in a lecture hall with 400 other students. Rather, it occurs three hours a week outside of lecture time and discussion sections with one TA to 30 students.

If the University of California's budget were to be cut, these critical learning environments could collapse. Less TAs would be hired, and with increases in enrollment, student TA ratios would jump. TAs would focus less on each student individually and resort to running their discussion sections more uniformly. Thank you.

This would entirely defeat the purpose of having discussion sections in the first place. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there. Thank you. My name is Emily Weintraut. I'm a 4th year PhD student at UC Davis over in food science. I'm here to advocate to not cut the funding or do any deferments for UC's budget. I've been a TA for years.

I've taught a variety of courses from intro food science courses to advanced hands-on lab courses where currently I'm teaching the malting and brewing course where, at UC Davis, we're using the cutting-edge pilot system for students to brew beer. It's a super great class. Enrollment's always really high and the students love it.

It's a cutting-edge program and I'm so grateful to have co-TAs and support staff because when, two weeks ago there was an electrical fire in the lab, there was no disruption to the students learning and everyone was safe. And I'm just so grateful for that.

And I'm just so grateful to have co-TAs so that we can give students quality education. And I'm really advocating for no cuts because then we're putting their education at risk. A lot of them are going into engineering and biotechnology and I'd really hate to see future classes not get that quality.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Adam Swenson. I'm a Professor at Cal State Northridge and I'm the Vice Chair of the Academic Senate at the CSU. And I'm here to ask you not to cut the CSU.

And I just really want to underscore a point that Member Muratsuchi made earlier, which is that we're in a position where we're starting to eat our seed corn. Basically, if you in any other organization don't need a geologist or economist on your staff, you lay them off. When you need them again, you hire somebody in their place.

But if you cut a program, as we're doing at Sonoma State, you eliminate geology and eliminate economics. You decide you want more geologists in your area, it will take years to recover from that. And a lot of other campuses are similarly on a precipice like that.

So, these cuts really will mean that there will be a loss of access across the state and more importantly, a loss of educational capacity, which will take a lot of work to rebuild. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Beth Stuffel from the Academic Senate of California State University, which represents the nearly 30,000 faculty of the CSU and system wide joint decision making. We share your disappointment and concern in the proposed budget cuts.

As faculty, we worked very hard to prepare students to be productive members of the State of California and the world, while increasing graduation rates and reducing time to degree.

If these proposed cuts go forward, it would reverse these gains and make it impossible to produce the necessary number of college graduates and educationally prepared workforce for California's economy to thrive. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, members of the committee. My name is Alex Martin. I'm a biology graduate student at Sonoma State. I'm also Vice President of UAW 4123, which represents 10,000 undergrad and graduate academic student workers at the CSU. At my campus, we're looking towards a proposed loss of core departments and majors that can only lead to further drops in enrollment.

While the administrators responsible have not provided any serious turnaround plan, I'm hearing from coworkers who are losing their departments, their majors, and being threatened with the uncertainty of knowing that they may not be reappointed to their positions in the fall.

I really, really strongly encourage you to reject the 8% proposed cuts and additionally, the crisis at my campus and at the CSU broadly is the result of a series of bad and predictable decisions made by management. I really, really encourage you to hold CSU management accountable for the decisions that have led to this point. Thank you.

Hi. Tiffany Mok. On behalf of CFT, Union of Educators and Classified Professionals. On behalf of our UC lecturers and librarians, we oppose the 7.95% cut and would prefer full funding for the 25-26 year for the compact funding to ensure student learning.

On behalf of the community college, we support $67 million of ongoing funding for part time faculty hours so that students can access part time faculty hours. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Chair Alvarez, members of the committee, my name is Elizabeth Boyd, and I am a faculty member at Chico State. I currently serve as the chair of the Academic Senate of the CSU. Speaking on behalf of the dwindling number of faculty in the CSU, I'm here today to first thank you, for all of your critical questions reveal the very real impact these cuts will have. These will end the deferrals. These cuts will lead a heavy bow to the CSU and will create a ripple effect into our state. A CSU degree is crucial to the social mobility of not just the students we serve, but to the local and state communities, as you know.

Please fully fund the CSU and prevent the loss of access and capacity to CSU. Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome. Good morning, members of assembly. My name is Ben Zacasa. I'm a first-year psychology student at Sac State and I'm a member of ASI Student Academic Senate, and a proud member of the Garden Scholars Program.

I oppose the cut to the CSU system as it breaks the state's commitment to higher education and threatens our students, communities and economy. I want to highlight the serious impact the proposed budget cuts will have on our most vulnerable students, students covered under the Makena Vento act and foster youths that's pursuing higher education.

The students face unique challenges including housing stability, including security and a lack of financial and family support. And this proposed budget cuts happens and the support system they rely on are often the first to go.

I urge the California government to uphold their commitment, protect education funding and ensure the CSU system remains a pillar opportunity for future generations. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Committee Members. My name is Colin Kemp and I'm a student at CSU Sacramento. I'm here to ask you to reconsider the 8% cut to the CSU system. The CSU system is a cornerstone of California, offering higher education at an affordable cost and driver of economic mobility, diversity and innovation.

However, cutting funding by 8% would undermine these efforts by exasperating existing problems, offering fewer classes, delaying graduation and causing faculty layoffs. And it would hurt the 460,000 students of the CSU system, many of them first generation.

The CSU system remains not only an engine of social mobility in the state, but also an economic engine, generating $7 for every $1 invested. Rather than rather than helping students succeed, the budget cuts risk creating significant barriers for their academic and professional futures.

For California to maintain its reputation as a leader in education innovation, we must invest in the success of our students, not hinder it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Stephanie Goldman. On behalf of The Student Senate for California Community Colleges, representing all 2.1 million community college students. We appreciate the continued dedication to our institutions by the Legislature and the Governor. We support the credit for prior learning initiatives as well as the proposed increased investment in rising scholars.

We'd also like to encourage greater support for our basic needs centers, support for construction of more student housing at our California community colleges, and we will continue advocating long term for the eventual adoption of the Cal Grant equity framework.

Thank you. Welcome.

Kimberly Rosenberger with SEIU here on behalf of my affiliates with CFA and CSU, we echo their concerns. We need to make sure we preserve a strong public option and also recognize we are in a difficult budget.

So we look forward to partnering with the legislation Legislature to make sure that we remain a state that leads in higher education and has an affordable and access for all higher education option. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. Carol Gonzalez. On behalf of the Cal State Student Association, the official Voice of over 460,000 California State University students, they respectfully reject the governor's proposal as It's a nearly 8% cut to the compact. The budget cut of this magnitude would severely impact students, education and future.

A reduction of funding would affect critical areas like instruction, academic support, student services, facility improvements, and all of which are vital to the student success. And we just want to ditto the students before me who highlighted some of those concerns. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you. My name is David Moore. I'm a professional Professor of finance at Sacramento State. Been there 14 years. First of all, thank you for taking time to listen to all of us here. This is a fifth largest economy on the planet. We have 5 $1.0 trillion corporations, over 2, $800 billion corporations.

And as a finance Professor, I'm hearing all these budget cuts, I'm wondering why are we doing that? Also, the CSU annual investment report which I have copied here, shows $7 billion in investment investments. Interest alone on that should be several 100.0 million. I keep hearing smaller numbers, but this is a report from their website.

So I'm asking Legislature, can you investigate where is this $7 billion? Why are the funds being charged such high fees? There's other places to cut costs. So I guess I'm asking, can we cut costs and increase tax collections in this fifth largest economy on the world with 5 trillion dollar corporations? Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Members, my name is Terry Wilson and I'm the Vice President for Finance for the California State University Employees Union.

As many of you know, I've been active for years in calling for reforms to The Title IX system Within the CSU, the Legislature and many Members of the Committee led efforts over the years to initiate needed reforms to the Title IX perspective procedures.

That effort took countless hours of staff and legislators to analyze the problems, identify solutions, and propose meaningful changes. In partnership with students and employees at the CSU, I believe that this type of effort is needed to make sure the critical funding for the state provides CSU is leading to the outcomes that we all expect.