Legislative Analyst's Office Analysis of the 2002-03 Budget Bill

University of California (6440)

The University of California (UC) includes eight general campuses and one health science campus. The university is developing a tenth campus in Merced. The budget proposes General Fund spending of $3.4 billion in 2002-03, an increase of $40.2 million, or 1.2 percent, over estimated expenditures in the current year. (The Governor's current-year estimate assumes passage of his November Revision, which reduced current-year spending for UC by $36 million.) Major augmentations include $63.8 million for increases in budgeted enrollments, $47.6 million for a general 1.5 percent increase in the university's base budget, $14 million for increased costs of annuitant health and dental benefits, and $8.4 million for increased state support for summer instruction at the Davis campus.

The budget also proposes ongoing reductions of $30 million in 2002-03. Of this total, $17 million comes from General Fund support for campus-based financial aid. (This reduction is based on slightly reduced average financial need, due to earlier reductions in student fees.) The remaining reductions occur in various K-12 outreach programs. Figure 1 summarizes the various changes in UC's budget.

Partnership Funding Reduced. In 2000-01, the Governor initiated a four-year "partnership" agreement with UC and California State University (CSU). In this partnership, the Governor committed to provide UC and CSU with annual 5 percent base increases, plus funds for enrollment growth, capital needs, and high-priority initiatives. During the 2001 May Revision, the Governor—citing limited state revenues—proposed reducing the base increase from 5 percent to 2 percent. Similarly, the 2002-03 budget proposal is below the partnership level.

The 2002-03 budget proposes a base increase of 1.5 percent or $47.6 million. The UC indicates that most of these funds will be applied toward various salary increases. The Governor indicates that he intends to resume his commitment to the 5 percent base increases when the state's fiscal situation improves.

Enrollment Growth of 4 Percent. The budget assumes that UC will serve 7,100, or 4 percent, additional full-time equivalent students in 2002-03. The budget provides UC with $63.8 million to fund the "marginal cost" to serve the additional students.

No Increase in Resident Student Fees and No Fee "Buyout." The budget does not propose any increase in resident student fees, nor does the budget propose General Fund support in lieu of raising resident student fees. (The UC estimates that the "foregone" fee increase is 7.8 percent, which is the estimated increase in per-capita income lagged for two years.) Fees for resident undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students would remain at current levels. The proposed fee for a full-time resident undergraduate is $3,859 and the proposed fee for a resident graduate is $4,914.

The supplementary fee for nonresident students would increase by 4 percent—from $10,704 to $11,132. (When the supplementary fee for nonresident students is combined with educational and other fees, the increase in the total nonresident undergraduate charge is 2.9 percent.) We discuss student fees in more detail in "Crosscutting Issues" in this chapter.

Crosscutting and Intersegmental Issues Involving UC

We address several issues relating to UC in other sections of this chapter. In "Crosscutting Issues—Teacher Support and Development," we discuss the Governor's proposal to continue the $6 million current-year reduction to the California Professional Development Institutes and make a $4 million budget-year reduction to the California Subject Matter projects. We recommend that the Legislature approve the reduction, but do so as part of a broader effort to streamline existing professional development programs for K-12 teachers. Specifically, we recommend the Legislature shift the two programs into a formula-based teacher support and development block grant. Additionally, we recommend the Legislature create a competitively based teacher support and professional development block grant. The block grant would fund consortia to test pilot programs and conduct research on teacher training and professional development.

In the "Intersegmental" section of the chapter we discuss:

• The UC's student fee policies. We recommend the Legislature adopt a fee policy for UC that is consistent and predictable.
• The UC's state funded institutional financial aid programs. We recommend the Legislature create a consistent statewide financial aid policy and shift state
• funds from institution-specific programs to the statewide competitive Cal Grant program.
• The Governor's proposal to provide UC with $7.4 million to expand summer operations at UC Davis. We recommend the Legislature approve the augmentation but continue to link the funding to summer enrollment growth.
• The UC's and CSU's joint doctoral programs in education. We recommend the Legislature ask the systems to report on their new funding and fee policies.

Funding for Faculty Hiring For Unopened Campus Unnecessary

We recommend deletion of $4 million in one-time General Fund support requested for hiring faculty for the Merced campus, which is not scheduled to open until 2004-05, because the University of California can recruit and hire faculty using existing resources . (Reduce Item 6440-004-001 by $4 million.)

The Governor's budget requests $13.9 million for support of the Merced campus, which is not scheduled to open until 2004-05. Of this amount, $4 million is provided to hire faculty. The requested amount is in addition to $2 million in one-time General Fund support that UC received in the current year for the same purpose.

Since 1998-99, the state has appropriated $43.5 million for support of the planned Merced campus. The Governor's budget proposes an additional $13.9 million for 2002-03—$9.9 million in "base" spending on start-up costs and the $4 million specifically for hiring faculty. Budget bill language specifies that the entire amount is for planning and startup costs associated with academic programs and ongoing support for the unopened campus including academic planning activities, faculty recruitment, and ongoing support for faculty and staff.

Current-Year Funding Will Not Be Spent. To date, the university has not hired any faculty. The UC plans to hire 20 permanent faculty beginning in 2002-03, and an additional 20 faculty in both 2003-04 and 2004-05 (for a total of 60 faculty when the campus opens). Although initial recruitment for the first 20 faculty has begun, UC informs us that it has not yet spent the $2 million it received for the current year, and expects to carry most of this funding into the budget year.

Proposed Funding Not Urgent; Recommend Deletion. Even without the proposed $4 million in new one-time funding, UC still will have $2 million (in carried-over current-year funding) and $9.9 million (in budget-year baseline funding) for planning and startup costs at the Merced campus. We believe this amount is sufficient given that the campus is not scheduled to open for more than two years. Accordingly, we recommend the Legislature eliminate the augmentation, for a savings of $4 million.

K-12 Outreach Programs

The state administers a number of K-12 outreach programs that focus on preparing students from disadvantaged backgrounds for college. We find that for a variety of reasons these programs may not be achieving their goals. We review the current structure of K-12 outreach programs and recommend steps for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the system.

The state has long supported "traditional" K-12 outreach programs that focus on preparing students from disadvantaged backgrounds for college. Student-based academic development programs such as the Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP) and the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program have been in existence for over 25 years. However, both the scope of outreach programs and the level of funding for outreach have expanded significantly since 1996.

Majority of K-12 Outreach Funds Directed to UC. The majority of K-12 outreach funding is appropriated to UC. However, a number of other state agencies, including the CSU, the Student Aid Commission, the Department of Education (SDE), and the California Community Colleges (CCC), also administer K-12 outreach programs. Estimated K-12 outreach expenditures in 2001-02 for all these entities total $127 million. Almost all of this spending is supported from the General Fund.

Proposed K-12 Outreach Reductions. The proposed budget includes approximately $63 million for UC's K-12 outreach programs—almost half of total state spending on K-12 outreach. This is a reduction of $4.2 million (General Fund) from the current year. The reductions effect eight UC outreach programs, some of which are relatively new and others which have been recently expanded. We believe it would be helpful to consider the Governor's proposal in the context of the performance and effectiveness of the state's entire portfolio of K-12 outreach efforts.

In the following sections, we:

• Review the central objectives of outreach and how various K-12 outreach programs are funded.
• Explain existing programs and evaluate how well programs are aligned to outreach objectives.
• Recommend options for improving achievement of outreach objectives.

Purpose and Priorities of Outreach

There are three basic obstacles that can restrict students' access to higher education: inadequate academic preparation, lack of information concerning the accessibility and purposes of a college education, and lack of information on and assistance with financial aid. We believe that an effective outreach strategy should address all three of these areas.

What distinguishes outreach from other programs that address the academic performance of disadvantaged students (such as compensatory education programs) is that outreach programs ultimately seek the enrollment of disadvantaged students in higher education. Along these lines, the stated goals of UC's outreach efforts are to (1) contribute to academic enrichment by increasing the diversity of UC's student body and (2) improve opportunities for California's educationally disadvantaged students to more fully participate in higher education.

Expansion of UC K-12 Outreach

In 1995, the UC Regents approved SP-1, a policy that prohibited campuses from using race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin as criteria in granting admission. The policy became effective January 1, 1997. In 1996-97, largely in response to the new environment created by SP-1, UC began a major initiative to improve and expand outreach efforts at the university. As part of the new effort, the Regents established an Outreach Task Force (OTF). The OTF proposed the following four-point strategy for UC's K-12 outreach, which the Regents adopted in 1997:

• Improve K-12 systemically through school-university partnerships.
• Help prepare disadvantaged students for higher education through academic development programs.
• Help students plan and prepare for college through informational outreach and recruitment programs.
• Research and evaluate the root causes of educational disparity and the effectiveness of outreach programs.

The UC received substantial augmentations to its K-12 outreach budget for implementation of this outreach strategy. Prior to the implementation of the OTF strategy, UC spent approximately $14 million on systemwide K-12 outreach in 1997-98. The majority of this money was used to support K-12 student academic programs and informational outreach and recruitment. In 1998-99, UC's K-12 outreach budget received a major augmentation of about $40 million—almost quadrupling its K-12 outreach budget to $54 million. The UC's K-12 outreach was augmented again by $20 million between 1999-00 and 2000-01. These augmentations allowed UC to expand student academic programs and to implement a number of new initiatives which broadened the scope of K-12 outreach.

Existing Outreach Programs and Funding Levels

As discussed above, a number of state agencies engage in outreach activities. Figure 2 lists state K-12 outreach programs by agency, provides brief descriptions of each program, and indicates proposed funding for 2002-03. This list is not exhaustive but includes major K-12 outreach programs by department. (The figure does not include programs or funding for professional development for K-12 teachers because professional development programs generally do not focus on outreach as we have defined it.) Generally, we find that most of the state's various K-12 outreach programs address one or more of our three stated objectives.

In addition, a number of federal and private programs also provide K-12 outreach services (see Figure 3). Furthermore, individual UC, CSU, and CCC campuses conduct a variety of K-12 outreach efforts of their own. Although this analysis focuses on systemwide UC programs, the existence of many federal, private, and campus level outreach efforts increases the complexity of outreach options for a K-12 school.

Problems With Current K-12 Outreach Programs

Our review identified a number of concerns with the current structure and funding of K-12 outreach.

Programs Often Overlap and Provide Duplicate Services. As Figure 2 shows, there are multiple K-12 outreach programs with many similar components targeting similar populations. For example, the Faculty-to-Faculty Alliance portion of CSU's Collaborative Academic Preparation Initiative (CAPI) program shares similarities with CSU's California Academic Partnership Program, and with UC's K-12 School-University Partnerships. While slightly different in academic focus, the EAOP, MESA, Puente, and Educational Opportunity Program all offer academic development programs, academic advising, and informational outreach. Indeed, UC notes in its 2001 status report on educational outreach that schools often participate in one or more outreach programs simultaneously. As a result, the same student may be participating in multiple outreach programs such as EAOP and MESA that essentially offer the same service (academic preparation, parental involvement, and academic advising). Because different programs include the same student, it is difficult to ascertain the extent that involvement occurs in multiple programs or to estimate how many additional students could be served if program inefficiencies and duplication were reduced.

Interaction Among K-12 Outreach Programs Is Typically Not Well Coordinated. Prior to the program expansion of the mid-1990s, there was frequently a lack of coordination and collaboration among outreach programs at UC campuses. The UC has made efforts to centralize outreach programs systemwide and at individual campuses to address this. For example, in 1999 UC formed the EAOP, MESA, and Puente (EMP) collaborative with the goal of strengthening the connections among the three programs statewide and regionally. It appears, however, that there is still a considerable lack of coordination between state outreach providers and local school sites. The burden of trying to coordinate and integrate various K-12 outreach programs typically falls to the school site. The UC notes this phenomenon in its 2001 status report: "The number and variety of these program is such that many teachers and principals have reached a point of initiative fatigue, as managing these efforts (coordinating various outreach programs) can be a demanding job in and of itself." Generally, the report is descriptive, identifying the unexpected challenges facing the university's outreach efforts, but it provides little substantive data on program effectiveness.

Outreach Services Focused on Certain Geographical Locations. Another limitation of providing the majority of outreach funding to higher education institutions, especially UC (which has eight general campuses statewide), is that schools far from UC campuses tend to have less access to outreach services. For example, UC currently has partnerships with 72 high schools—which is only about 8 percent of the state's public high schools. The UC's student academic programs (EAOP, MESA, and Puente) tend to follow a similar geographic pattern—the programs tend to be in schools that are close to a UC campus. The CSU generally is able to serve more high schools than UC, largely due to the greater number of CSU campuses. For example, CSU's CAPI program works with about 223 high schools.

Preliminary data indicate that many schools that potentially could benefit from outreach do not receive these services. Using data from the 1999 school year provided by the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) and SDE, we estimate that approximately 20 percent of schools scoring in the lowest two deciles of the Academic Performance Index (API) were not served by major outreach programs. It is unclear whether these schools did not participate in outreach because of location, lack of cooperation with the higher education segments, or other reasons. The data also indicate a number of high schools in the highest two API deciles were served by at least one outreach program, although it is not clear if these programs were targeting pockets of disadvantaged students. Thus, providing outreach funding to the higher education segments may result in many schools and students not receiving services.

Focus on Yield Efforts Is Misplaced. In addition to improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged students, a goal of UC and CSU's K-12 outreach is to improve the "yield" of already-qualified underrepresented students attending their respective institutions. This approach may work against the state's outreach efforts. This is because rather than increasing preparedness or awareness among disadvantaged students, yield-focused efforts typically work to convince already qualified or eligible students to choose UC or CSU over some other higher education institution. For example, UC campuses may compete for stu dents and use outreach resources to try to convince a potential student to choose a particular campus or to attend UC rather than CSU or a private institution. In our opinion, the chief goal of outreach should be to increase the eligibility and qualifications of students for higher education, rather than directing already-qualified students to a particular campus within the segment.

Little Evidence of Program Effectiveness. The university has been provided about $1.5 million annually for the last four years (approximately $6 million since 1998-99) for the purpose of evaluating its outreach efforts. The UC now indicates that its studies of programmatic outcomes and cost-effectiveness will not be complete until the end of the 2003-04 academic year. Consequently, little is known about the effectiveness of the state's K-12 outreach programs. Without reliable data on program effectiveness, it is difficult for the Legislature to determine which outreach programs are most successful in achieving the important objectives of increased awareness, preparation, and access to undergraduate education.

In addition to continuing funding for UC's outreach evaluation, the Governor's budget provides $150,000 in one-time funds for CPEC to complete an inventory of state-funded outreach programs for high school students. (The total cost of the inventory is $300,000; CPEC received half of this amount in the current year.) A comprehensive outreach study could be a valuable tool in identifying program overlap and duplication of services. (We recommend approval of this funding, contingent on the adoption of budget bill language in the "CPEC" Item elsewhere in this Chapter.)

The CSU only recently started trying to measure the effectiveness of its outreach programs. The Supplemental Report of the 2001-02 Budget Act directed CSU to assess and annually report on the effectives of the CAPI program, including data reflecting changes in student achievement and quality of services provided to teachers in high schools. However, the first of these comprehensive annual reports is not due until December 2002. At present, there is little substantive data on the effectiveness of state outreach programs.

How Can the Legislature Improve Its K-12 Outreach Efforts?

Principles for K-12 Outreach

We first offer the following principles that we believe can guide the Legislature in developing an effective K-12 outreach program.

Outreach Efforts Should Focus on the Needs of Students Rather Than Higher Education Institutions. Local school sites are in the best position to assess students' needs, provide services, and avoid duplication of services. Outreach programs that actively involve school-site teachers, administrators, and districts in the design of outreach programs are more likely to succeed than those that do not. Too often, the segments take a top-down approach to outreach that stifles local innovation and ignores variation in schools and populations throughout the state.

K-12 Districts and Schools Should Have Greater Control Over Outreach Activities. Schools are generally as qualified as the higher education segments to provide certain outreach activities, such as tutoring and parental involvement. Moreover, because teachers and staff at school sites interact with students almost daily, they are generally quite knowledgeable about local students, their families, and the community. For these reasons, K-12 schools and districts should have greater control and increased flexibility over how certain outreach programs are provided for their students. Schools should have the option of collaborating with higher education institutions to provide these services. However, they should be provided increased flexibility and choice in making such arrangements.

We recommend several actions the Legislature can take to better improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its K-12 outreach programs consistent with the principles outlined above.

Approve Outreach Reductions Proposed in Budget

We recommend the Legislature approve the Governor's proposed reductions for K-12 outreach because the majority of these programs do not provide direct services or increase preparedness of students.

Figure 4 lists the Governor's proposed reductions to UC's K-12 outreach program in the budget year. The majority of these programs focus on research or yield activities and do not provide direct services to students. For example, the Urban Community-School Collaborative, Presidential Grants, and Research focus on research activities. Student-initiated outreach and many graduate and professional school outreach activities focus on yield activities rather than academic preparation.

Given the focus of these programs, we recommend approval of the Governor's proposed reduction.

Ask UC to Report on Evaluation Efforts

We recommend the Legislature direct University of California to report at budget hearings on the status of its evaluation efforts.

Data on program effectiveness is vital to understanding the value of outreach efforts and whether outreach is in fact changing student outcomes. This information is critical for assessing whether current programs are achieving their goals and how outreach programs and coordination could be improved. The UC should explain the current status of these evaluation efforts and possibilities for providing effectiveness data prior to 2004.

Consolidate Existing Programs

We recommend that the Legislature consider consolidating existing outreach programs to reduce inefficiencies and administrative overlap.

The Legislature should direct UC, as well as the other segments, to report at budget hearings on the potential for consolidation or integration of existing outreach programs. Consolidating many of these programs and integrating outreach services into regular school programs could lead to increased efficiency and effectiveness and has the potential to better meet the needs of local schools and students. Not only would program consolidation make it simpler for schools to use outreach resources effectively, consolidation would benefit the segments as well, since less effort would be needed to administer different programs.

In the current outreach system, it is difficult to identify who is responsible for student achievement—schools or the agencies providing the outreach. Integrating and redirecting funding for outreach more directly to schools, in line with the principles outlined above, would make it easier to identify the party responsible for student achievement. Schools and districts would become the focus of accountability.

Target Funding Depending on Type of Outreach

We recommend that the Legislature consider redirecting funding for certain outreach programs to schools and districts.

Directing the majority of outreach funding to higher education institutions tends to result in: duplication of services, lack of coordination, decreased school choice, and schools receiving services based on location. For these reasons, we believe that the Legislature should consider providing resources for some components of outreach—such as academic preparation, tutoring, and parental involvement activities—directly to schools. We believe that redirecting a portion of K-12 outreach resources directly to schools could result in increased efficiency and improved academic achievement for educationally disadvantaged students throughout the state. We believe it is appropriate for UC, CSU, and CCC to continue providing other components of outreach—such as information on financial aid, college advising, and summer residential programs.

For example, the state could provide funding to local education agencies (LEAs), which could then develop interagency agreements with local colleges or academic service providers. These agreements would specify how outreach services would accomplish measurable objectives. Another option is to create a K-12 outreach/academic preparation competitive block grant administered by SDE. The LEAs could apply directly or form collaboratives with higher education institutions with priority given to low performing schools or schools with high percentages of students currently ineligible or underprepared for higher education.

In conclusion, we believe that these steps could help improve K-12 outreach and better prepare disadvantaged students for higher education.