In this piece from the Santa Cruz Lookout, Hillary Ojeda describes a recently released report by two Faculty Committees — the Committee on Teaching and the Committee on Educational Policy — based on the results of their survey of their fellow faculty members about UCSC’s ongoing budget cuts. Citing an $81 million deficit, campus administrators have been slashing classes and instructional support, threatening sever damage to undergraduate education. As the authors of the report describe:
“These [findings] include poorer curricula with poorer delivery of classes, diminished and disappearing graduate programs, diminished levels of student success in ways that exacerbate inequity, threats to our R1 [universities with robust research capabilities] status, and impingements on senate authority over curriculum… Our highest campus administrators, our report finds, are communicating poorly in ways that exacerbate these negative effects.”
The Languages and Applied Linguistics Department has already announced the closure of 2 of its 11 language programs, and similar cuts are expected in other departments as well.
Read more about the report at the Santa Cruz Lookout.
