The UCSD, faced with the federal cuts, will no longer guarantee funding for incoming graduate students

Removing hundreds of millions of potential budget cuts, UC San Diego has decided that he could not and does not guarantee that students graduate of the first year who are part this fall will obtain all their allowances and their tuition fees.

The university sends letters of admission to potential students with a newly added clause which says: “The funding commitment stated in this letter can be modified, reduced or canceled and is not guaranteed.”

This is a surprising departure for the UCSD, which made around 2.3 billion dollars last year in research and philanthropic gifts. The school has long guaranteed complete allowances and tuition fees for doctorate and master’s in fine arts.

The amount they are paid varies. But most of them get about $ 65,000 a year, the teachers said. Some students get as much year for three to four years.

The arrangement could be compromised by the cuts proposed with which the campus is confronted, which, according to many teachers, could interrupt research programs in areas such as cancer, climate change and exploration of depths – and that crowds of people proved on Friday to protest against the UCSD campus.

Some teachers do not occupy graduate positions this fall to fear having to let them go, because the university said to potential first year students that they may not obtain complete funding.

How if current students could be affected by the financing cuts to which the faces of the school were not immediately clear.

The UCSD said it expects a drop in the state budget of $ 55 million, based on the proposed budget of Governor Gavin Newsom, and at least $ 150 million in reduction of the National Institutes of Health. The campus obtains an average of around $ 50 million per month from the agency.

The financing of the National Science Foundation could also be cut, and the NIH began to cancel research subsidies active in the fields to which the Trump administration is opposed, reported the journal Nature.

The university, which has more than 41,000 workers, has already frozen most of the teachers and has done the same for staff, with the exception of those who work in the enormous university health care system.

Chancellor Pradeep Khosla refused several requests to discuss the school finances with the San Diego Union-Tribune.

A university spokesperson refused to answer questions to find out if the UCSD plans to reject the junior teachers who have joined the campus in the past year, or how many staff workers could undergo job losses.

The teachers say that the tremor of school financing could alienate existing graduate students and those he is trying to recruit.

The University currently has around 9,300 graduate students, a group whose work over the years has played an important role in fields such as medicine, helping to develop Biktarvy of HIV drugs from HIV and the treatment of ischemic blows known as TPA.

The fragility of financing alarm also the union which represents more than 7,000 university workers from the UCSD, most of them graduates who work as researchers or educational assistants or in other roles.

“UCSD’s decision will harm research, will harm students and undermine the university’s mission,” said Rafael Jaime, president of the UAW 4811, who represents 48,000 university workers through the University of California system. “If the UCSD wants to remain a leading destination for academics and brilliant researchers, it should be able to guarantee employment safety in terms similar to its peer establishments.”

The University of Pennsylvania is faced with similar budgetary problems, which led him to cancel the offers he had already done to graduate students who were to start the courses this fall. UCSD says he did not cancel the offers.

School’s financial concerns go beyond state money and federal research funding. In particular, the professors and administrators of the university and the hospital system are concerned with the cups of the Congress in Medicaid, which offers health coverage for low -income and disabled people and is financed jointly by the State and the Federal Government.

Patricia Mayese, CEO of UC San Diego Health, said that she had not yet taken a break by planning the main construction projects of the system, including the new hospital towers of several billion dollars on Hillcrest and Jolla hospitals. But with a cup large enough for Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in California, nothing is guaranteed.

“If we end up losing $ 100 million a year of reimbursement (Medicaid), you know, we have to change part of our strategy,” said Mayent. “If we did not have the level of demand that we have currently, I might be less aggressive – but because we do it, we must continue to find ways to serve patients.”

California Daily Newspapers