Governor Gavin Newson presented his 2020-21 state budget proposal last Friday. The full budget summary is here. The detailed budget is also online, and the UC portion can be found here.

UC Board of Regents Chair John Pérez and UC President Janet Napolitano quickly put out a statement thanking the Governor, concluding: “UC appreciates the governor’s strong continued support of higher education and looks forward to our ongoing partnership.” But this gives a false impression that UC is being generously funded. Let’s look at a few facts.

First, California public universities are provided less funding per student than any state except, sometimes, Florida. See the total education revenue per student data at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association: State Higher Education Finance Report.

Second, Governor Newsom pointed to a 5.8% increase in the general fund base support for UC to try to make this budget proposal look generous, but that ignores that the 5.8% increase refers only to the general fund, whereas in past budget years the state also provided UC with substantial one-time funds – such funds were substantially less this year. The result is that the overall increase in state funding to UC relative to 2019-20 is actually 1.3%. This compares to a 3.5% increase in state revenue overall, and a 2.2% average increase in state spending across all departments, indicating that UC is not a priority in this budget, barely keeping up with inflation.

Third, while funding is growing modestly, enrollment is growing more quickly. University-wide student headcount grew from about 200,000 in 2015 to 222,493 in 2018. State funding for UC would have to grow at least as fast as enrollment if we were just to maintain the current funding per student (and remember, California is 49th of 50 states on this metric). This is not happening.

Fourth, the budget numbers above don’t consider big portions of UC’s budget that the state has walked away from since the recession: namely, paying for UC’s pension (see page 160 at the link) and facilities.

Thanking Governor Newsom for his generosity may be good politics, but it’s bad economics – California public universities have long had to do more with less, causing real long term damage, and this budget proposal is continuing that trend.

A version of this article was published in the BFA newsletter, That was the Week That Was, #137.