The 2025-26 Budget: Higher Education Overview

Feb 6, 2025 - Recommend Signaling More Realistic Budget Expectations for CSU and UC in 2026 ‑27. To balance the budget in 2024 ‑25, the state applied small General Fund reductions to CSU and UC. At  the same time, the state provided a clear signal to CSU and UC that they were to begin planning for deeper base reductions in 2025 ‑26.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4957

The 2023-24 Budget: California State University

Feb 7, 2023 - Recommend Also Signaling Enrollment Growth Intentions for 2024 ‑25. Given the timing of the admissions cycle, we recommend the Legislature also signal any intent for additional enrollment growth in 2024 ‑25 in the 2023 ‑24 Budget Act .
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4671

The 2025-26 Budget: California Student Aid Commission

Feb 28, 2025 - When the state has added new authorized positions, it has added associated funding. For example, in 2023‑24, the state augmented CSAC’s state operations budget $1.1 million for the additional positions, along with a few hundreds of thousands of dollars for other things (new high school toolkits and additional Cash for College efforts).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4994

The 2021-22 Budget: University Capital Outlay

Mar 5, 2021 - The provisional language in the 2019 ‑20 Budget Act focused on authorizing a “medical school project. ” Riverside ’s project focused primarily on adding more instructional space for its medical school students.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4395

The 2025-26 Budget: Overview of the Governor's Budget

Jan 13, 2025 - The Governor has signaled interest in changing the state ’s reserve policy by: (1)  increasing the cap on BSA required deposits from 10  percent of General Fund taxes to 20  percent of General Fund taxes, and (2)  excluding the state ’s reserve deposits from the state appropriations limit.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4951

An Analysis of University Reserves [Publication Details]

Nov 10, 2020 - To help address these challenges, the 2020-21 Budget Act signaled the Legislature’s intent that the universities begin drawing down their core reserves for academic programs. Prior to the pandemic, the most recent data available showed that core reserves totaled $1.7 billion at CSU and $1.2 billion at UC.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/4295

UC Merced at 20: Campus Developments and Key State-Level Takeaways

Nov 7, 2024 - UC Riverside and UC San Diego, however, each added nearly as many students over the same period, growing by about 7,300 and 7,100 resident undergraduate students, respectively. Adding Capacity at UC Merced Has Been Relatively Costly.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4937

The 2022-23 Budget: Student Housing

Apr 8, 2022 - This action would better signal legislative intent that campuses, rather than the state, bear the risks of their projects. (We also note that UC, CSU, and CCC campuses already tend to cover cost overruns from nonstate sources for their state‑funded academic facility projects.)
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4589

The 2025-26 Budget: California State Library

Mar 7, 2025 - Adding a sunset date would provide the Legislature the opportunity to reevaluate the fee structure and make modifications. Historically, the state has set a sunset date of January 1, five years after the account is reauthorized.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5013

Assessing Community College Programs at State Prisons

Jul 1, 2024 - During these visits, students shared their challenges, such as having instruction disrupted by prison security incidences that required them to return to their cells and encountering technology glitches (such as having difficulty finding areas of the prison with a strong enough Wi‑Fi signal for their laptops).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4913