COMMENTARIES ON CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES : Wave of Cutbacks Threatens to Sink State’s Higher Education : Budget cuts that dilute quality teaching are causing faculty to bail out of a system in which they are losing faith.

A few weeks ago I handed one of UC Irvine’s best faculty members a top honor for teaching in 1993. He has since left for a position at a well-known Eastern university.

Another award-winning professor who has been on sabbatical leave has decided not to return to UCI.

The loss of top faculty is not a unique occurrence at UCI or any UC campus. Perhaps it is not surprising that our faculty increasingly are being courted by institutions beyond California’s borders. What is surprising is the reason many of our best faculty are starting to pay attention to these overtures: they are losing faith in the future of the University of California.

And why not? Never mind the frozen salaries, an impending 5% salary cut and the loss of valued colleagues through a series of early retirement programs.

More damaging are the continuing budget cuts to all UC campuses that are rapidly eroding the ability of our faculty to provide a quality education to our students--as well as faculty’s ability to produce leading-edge scholarship so important to the county, state and nation.

How bad is it? The faculty in one UCI school have lost their telephones. Clerical and research support for faculty in several other schools has shrunk, forcing the faculty to spend increasing amounts of time on administrative functions.

In the College of Medicine, seven department chairs remain unfilled, and recruiting efforts to replace faculty in other departments are frozen.

Since there are fewer faculty and no major decrease in students, class sizes are increasing.

The opportunities for faculty to work individually not only with graduate students but also especially with undergraduates, a hallmark of the educational experience at UCI, increasingly is being eroded.

Lost in the scuffle for dwindling state funds is the message that the state--including Orange County--benefits enormously from having one of the greatest university systems and research networks in the world.

These scholars, including student scholars, contribute to solving social issues as well as complex scientific and engineering problems.

UCI’s economic impact on Orange County has been calculated at more than $1 billion for the last fiscal year--enough to support about 19,637 households at the county median income level of $52,200.

Students in turn plug some $96 million into the county’s economy through expenditures for housing, books and supplies, transportation and food and personal items.

UCI researchers brought approximately $100 million in research funding during 1992-93, much of which is funneled into the county economy.

These faculty include those who helped locate the gene for Huntington’s disease, invented the world’s smallest battery, discovered the ozone hole and warned the world of pollution’s threat to the global environment.

California cannot compete in the global economy with yesterday’s accomplishments. The new environment depends increasingly on a highly educated work force and every indication is that more, rather than less, education will be necessary to compete in the 21st Century.

The University of California has accepted the challenge to create that work force.

We know all too well that to accomplish our goals and those of the state, we must continue to streamline, to restructure in an effort to become more efficient, to be held accountable in our mission to provide excellence in teaching, research and public service.

But we cannot be successful if funding is relegated to low priority.

We must face the challenges of tomorrow with planning, funding and support for higher education today.

For the sake of our future--the future of our state and the future of our children--higher education must again become a statewide priority.