If there’s one thing our isolated campus is good for, it’s ignoring the nitty-gritty of the real world and drifting off in our dreamy collegiate paradise. After all, when the only real effects of California’s tanking economy visible to students are reduced hours at the UCSD Bookstore, it’s easy to forget the whole billion-dollar state deficit thing.
But now that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has released a budget that will burn a $531 million dollar-hole in the University of California’s 2009-10 budget, our cozy four-year bubbles are finally threatening to burst.
Come fall, when we’re freed from our coffee-fetching intern duties to make the trek back to UCSD, our academic instruction ‘mdash; not to mention practically every other useful service or program on campus ‘mdash; will be undeniably impacted.
UC President Mark G. Yudof said it himself. Schwarzenegger’s budget will force the university to raise student fees, increase class sizes and cut academic offerings.
Your professors will feel it too ‘mdash; pay cuts and furloughs for UC employees are by no means out of the question.
Though major cut decisions will have to wait until specifics trickle down from the powers that be over the next couple of months, some departments have already decided to shrink class offerings for the Summer Sessions and Fall Quarter. The Division of Arts and Humanities ‘mdash; which relies less on private grants than other departments ‘mdash; will endure an exceptionally painful budgetary burn, and classes with lower enrollment (such as language courses) will be especially vulnerable to the chopping block.
Until a serious game of telephone goes down between Yudof, the UC campus chancellors, the academic divisions and their departments, the severity of the cuts are uncertain. But one thing’s for sure: no matter how many eucalyptus trees you duck under, next year there’s no avoiding the apocalypse.