Committee on Planning and Budget Analysis
Proposal to establish a UCSC Regional Center in the Santa Clara Valley

The Chancellor's proposal to establish a regional center cannot be separated from academic planning on this campus. It is, rather, part of a plan -- already underway -- to increase UCSC's enrollment by over 60% in the next decade. Governor Davis has included $1.1m in next year's budget to plan a "Santa Clara Off-campus Center" in the expectation that it will help UCSC (and therefore the entire system) absorb an estimated 16,900 students by 2010-11 -- a number significantly higher than anticipated in the LRDP for the present campus.

UCSC already has a significant (and valuable) presence in the Santa Clara Valley, but this is both heterogeneous and scattered, granting academic credit in some cases and but not in most. CPB believes at this point, however, that the anticipated need to accommodate an enormous increase of enrolled students, either on this campus or elsewhere, eclipses all other issues in deciding whether and how to extend UCSC's presence into Santa Clara Valley. The crucial questions now concern the kind and the quality of degree program that UCSC could offer at a satellite campus, and whether establishing such a program would threaten the quality of what UCSC offers here at Santa Cruz. To plan for Santa Clara Valley under currently accepted scenarios is also to plan the educational future of the present campus. It is not enough simply to acknowledge this and to restate our commitment to first-rate education. CPB urges everyone at UCSC to think long and hard about our collective future.This bulletin sets forth CPB's seven major concerns about the educational and financial impact of academic planning for Santa Clara valley on the future of UCSC as a whole.

1. Justifying the Academic Plan: The Academic Plan must be produced before programs are instituted and it must (a) specify the target student body, (b) outline a framework of instruction and (c) propose means of delivering this instruction that will convincingly address the anticipated demographic "bulge".

Questions: How far will the enrollment at the Regional Center in degree-related programs go toward meeting any excess enrollment over the LRDP for the UCSC main campus? Where would the targeted student population otherwise go?

2. Adequacy of facilities: The academic plan for the regional center must provide a close match between the needs of the segment of UCSC students who will be educated there and the facilities that will be provided.

Questions: what levels of physical plant and support structure will be needed for the targeted student body? Will providing it in the Santa Clara Valley be cost-effective relative to the main campus? Given UC’s dire shortage of funds for capital improvement, to what extent will any such funds applied to a regional center reduce what remains for UC in general and UCSC in particular?

3. Preserving the financial base of the main campus: The Chancellor has stated that the Santa Clara Valley Regional Center must not be funded out of revenues generated by enrollment growth on the main campus The Chancellor has referred to this principle as a "budgetary fire-wall," under which UCSC's instructional activities at the Regional Center will be entirely funded by the additional funds brought in by students actually enrolled there.

Questions: Can "forward-funding" of the Regional Center from the main campus’s budget be avoided? How can maintenance of a "fire-wall" be guaranteed, in what categories of expenditure and for how long?

4. Maintaining standards: EVC Simpson, in his consultations with CPB has readily agreed that any programs mounted at the Center must fully adhere to the academic standards and values of the UCSC campus. The meaning of a "UCSC degree" should not diminish in any way whatsoever, nor be blurred by the encroachment of any other qualification based on the difference between the satellite and the main campus.

Questions: are programs proposed for UCSC-enrolled students at the Regional Center consistent with the present academic mission and vision of the main campus, and of their sponsoring departments? If programs at the proposed Center change our educational mission, rather than simply extending it geographically, by what process should those changes be considered and evaluated?

5. Preserving faculty, teaching-assistant, staff and student rights: All UCSC employees and our students have well-established expectations of conditions under which they work. The Center should not affect these adversely in any way.

Questions: How should these conditions be protected? Can students be assured of the opportunity to study with faculty engaged in active research in the manner that defines UC? Can the proportions of student FTE taught by ladder and non-ladder faculty approved as now appropriate be maintained at the Regional Center and at UCSC as a whole?

6. Relationship to Initiatives in general: The proposal for a Center is not only a particular kind of initiative, it is also running parallel to our new "Initiative Process." They may both play a major role in defining the new campus that will emerge from a growth of over 62%. EVC Simpson has reassured the campus (see his {memo on budgetary allocation}, p.), that no "Initiative" that is explicitly and specifically directed towards the Center will be approved in this year's process.

Questions: once initiated, how will balance in planning a multi-campus organization be maintained? Would the development of the Regional Center have a negative effect (even initially) on the discretionary resources available for academic programs on the main campus?

7. Planning and approving the academic program: The EVC is in the process of appointing a task-force to develop an academic plan under principles that it will be establish as its first order of business. Investigation of real estate and discussion of administrative plans has already been proceeding for several months, and it has been announced that a task force pursuing these issues will be formally appointed soon.

Questions: how, under what conditions, and when will the Senate and its standing committees choose to exercise the plenary power delegated by the Regents to supervise the quality of the curriculum and maintain academic standards?

CPB believes that the Senate as a whole must have a full opportunity to discuss and vote on a comprehensive academic plan for the Regional Center before the necessary approval of its elements by relevant committees, and before the Regional Center begins operation as a site of regular instruction for UC-enrolled students. To this end, CPB is consulting with the other senate committees and expects that the Senate will be presented with a recommendation as to how such discussion and approval should take place.

2/9/00