Responding to the Budget Crisis in Research

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Responding to the Budget Crisis in Research
Graham Fleming Vice Chancellor for Research July
16, 2009
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VCR Charge

• To support and structure research at Berkeley to
  maintain excellence and enable world-leading
  contributions to the Grand Challenges of the 21st
  Century.
• To provide the service and compliance
  infrastructure needed to support world-leading
  research.

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We aim to be world leaders in

• Energy Research
• Environmental Research
• Health Science
• Social Research
• The Understanding of the Universe and Our Planet
• International and Area Studies
• Information Science and Technology
• Human Cultures

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Stark reality

• The drastic reduction in State funding requires
  consolidation and restructuring of our portfolio
  of research units.

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Whats the Berkeley campus situation?

• Trial by ten cuts (in millions)
• 2008-09 Temp Cut (Feb Act) 4.8
• 2008-09 Temp Cut (Midyear Cut) 9.4
• 2008-09 Temp Cut (May Revise Budget) 73.4
• 2008-09 Temp Cut (May 26) 29.9
• 2009-10 Temp Cut (Feb Act) 43.9
• 2009-10 Perm Cut (Midyear Cut) 9.4
• 2009-10 Perm Cut (May Revise Budget) 11.7
• 2009-10 Perm Cut (May 26) 24.1
• Unfunded Campus Expenditures 29.7
• UC Systemwide Initiatives 1.2
• One-time federal stimulus funding 92.2M
• Bottom Line we have a 145M shortfall
• Our revenue will only increase by 30M

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What Does this Mean for VCR?
We have a 21.1 permanent budget cut 4.4M We
have a block grant cut .4M We have an
additional (temporary) cut 1.6M For a total
2010 cut of 6.4M In addition theres the
furlough equal to 1.3M
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Constraints On What We Can Do
VCR permanent budget cut base is 22.3M. The VCR
budget contains high institutional risk
compliance functions serving research activities
for the entire campus that must be maintained -
RAC (ACUC, SPO, OPHS), OLAC, IPIRA, and
BIO. --they cost approx. 5M --will be cut
by 5-10 To protect the university and ensure
our ability to obtain external funding this means
that remaining cuts will have to be
deeper. Permanent cuts will average 27-28.
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Some Context
We can no longer afford individual programs/ORUs
to have their own business services. Very
difficult decisions will have to be made at the
Program Level including consolidation and likely
elimination of some programs. Programmatic cuts
and re-structuring of this magnitude should be
made by people most knowledgeable about the
specific research areas Some programs may be
more appropriately managed by a single Dean.
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Business as usual is not an option

• The situation is urgent and requires immediate
  action
• This leads us to a two part strategy
• Program re-structuring
• Administrative services re-structuring

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Program Re-structuring Plan

• 1) To implement such drastic cuts with minimum
  damage to program, programmatic groupings of
  units will be formed and budget cuts will be
  assigned at the group level.
• Several units with limited multi-disciplinary
  scope will have their budget cut and oversight
  transferred to a single Dean.