On February 18, CUCFA delivered the following letter to President Drake, Provost Newman, Academic Senate Chair Cheung, members of the APC Workgroup, and the Division Senate Chairs.

February 18, 2025

Dear President Drake, Provost Newman, Academic Senate Chair Cheung, members of the APC Workgroup, and Division Senate Chairs:

We write to share the grave concern by a wide section of UC faculty regarding the Academic Planning Council (APC)’s convening of a joint Senate-Administration workgroup focused on the possibility of a common systemwide calendar.

CUCFA has recently surveyed UC faculty, and the results of the survey overwhelmingly indicate opposition to this initiative, based on its lack of credible supporting evidence for the claims made in the background paper, the lack of faculty consultation and expertise-involvement in evaluating the initiative’s rationales before it was even conceived, along with serious concerns about the lack of meaningful consultation with faculty and violations of shared governance. An unprecedented and extraordinary number of faculty responded to our survey, demonstrating without a shadow of a doubt that they consider this issue of primary concern for their work conditions, research productivity, and pedagogical practices. You can access the over 1,240 responses (as of 2/13/25) generated by faculty in response to the survey in their entirety here, and you can access a qualitative and quantitative summary of the comments by our Common Calendar action committee here.

While the charge refers to a “common” calendar, UCOP’s background paper makes clear that the impetus behind this initiative is to make seven campuses that teach on a quarter system switch to the semester system adopted by two of them. The impacts of such a change—logistically, administratively, and financially, on student learning outcomes and faculty/staff working conditions—are potentially massive. Faced by unfulfilled promises of budget increases by the State, and a cut of 8% to its 2025-26 budget, we question the wisdom of even considering such a costly enterprise in these perilous times. Where would the money to compensate faculty and staff for the extra work to implement the conversion come from?

Meanwhile, we are deeply concerned that there is no guaranteed opportunity for faculty to accept or reject these changes since Systemwide Senate leadership has further confirmed that the workgroup’s report and recommendations will not be put to a vote by each divisional Senate.

The background paper provided at UCOP’s website is silent about research proving the negative impacts of semesters on student educational outcomes and time to graduation, hints at potential increases in faculty productivity without any supporting evidence, and is silent about the right of all faculty (not just the systemwide Senate) to be directly involved in the process, as sanctioned by the California Public Education Relation Board (PERB)’s explicit provision that higher education employers negotiate with the interested parties any matter related to “work hours.”  On its part, the APC Workgroup statement provides no evidence to support the claim of “increasing research productivity” as  “an important potential outcome of semester transitions” (p.2).  Nor is any evidence provided for the claims that a semester calendar could “promote academic excellence, reduce gaps that arise from inequalities…support timely graduation, and enable fulsome preparation for post-graduation life” (p.2). On the contrary, this peer-reviewed research article demonstrates that switching from a quarter to a semester calendar negatively impacts students’ on-time graduation rates, potentially leading to poorer academic performance, lower grades, and decreasing the probability of enrolling in a full course load.^[1]

Moreover, at none of the meetings of the Academic Council (on July 24, September 25, October 23, and November 20, 2024) or the Committee on Educational Policy (October 7 and November 4, 2024) was any evidence presented in support of the conversion. In fact, the little information provided was critical of the move. Additionally, as the APC Workgroup documents themselves acknowledge, many prior attempts at conversion to semester calendars have been resoundingly rejected by divisional Senates in the past, including at UCLA, UCI, and UCSB, where students also voted by a large majority to retain the quarter system.  Finally, no mention is made in any of the above documents of who precisely will bear the burden of this massive transition or how faculty and staff will be compensated for the additional workloads and costs stemming from this transition.

In conclusion, we demand the following: UC leadership should NOT proceed with any implementation planning – instead, Senate leadership should form a faculty committee in charge of collecting or commissioning reputable scholarly literature on all aspects of a common calendar operation and making it available to faculty along with appropriate summaries.  Meanwhile, town halls should be arranged across all campuses for faculty to exchange ideas.  Finally, each campus’ divisional Senate must decide whether to authorize the formation of a mixed faculty and administration committee in charge of coming up with a suitable implementation plan within a suitable time span (1-3 years). If the plan were to be authorized, it must be submitted to the approval of all UC faculty, and that vote should be binding.

The CUCFA Board

^[1] This research, published in the American Economic Journal (2022), analyzed data from hundreds of institutions, finding that such transitions reduce four-year graduation rates by an average of 3.7 percentage points. The study highlights mechanisms such as lowered first-year grades, decreased likelihood of enrolling in a full course load, and delays in major selection as significant contributors to these outcomes. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the adverse effects are not temporary but persist well beyond the initial cohorts affected by the change.