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Legislative Analyst's OfficeAnalysis of the 2003-04 Budget Bill |
As in the past, we recommend the Legislature fund higher education capital outlay based on year-round operation, statewide priorities and criteria, reasonable construction cost guidelines, and appropriate utilization of existing facilities.
In previous years, we have recommended the Legislature fund capital outlay for higher education based on:
Last year, we examined the efficiency with which the segments were utilizing their existing instructional facilities. We found that the University of California (UC) utilized their classrooms and teaching laboratories substantially less than the Legislature's standards. We also noted that the California State University (CSU) and California Community Colleges (CCCs) were not tracking and reporting their utilization to the Legislature. We look at this issue again this year in light of new information received from the segments.
This year we also review the amount of research space at UC campuses—and its cost to the General Fund. We find that UC has substantially more research space than its peer institutions and that it comes at a high cost to the state.
The Legislature has previously indicated its intention that the segments operate their instructional facilities at nearly uniform enrollments year-round—including summer term—in order to increase access for students, accelerate their time-to-degree, and avoid or defer the need to construct new classrooms and teaching laboratories. The CSU and UC have made progress in increasing their summer enrollment, but they still have a great deal of underutilized instructional capacity in summer term. In spite of this underutilized capacity, CSU and UC capital outlay plans continue to include construction of hundreds of millions of dollars of instructional facilities. Many of these new instructional facilities would not be needed if existing classrooms and teaching laboratories were fully utilized in summer term. In our discussion of the individual segments, we recommend the Legislature direct CSU and UC to delete construction of new instructional space from their capital outlay programs in future years if the space is justified solely on the basis of enrollment growth and a campus could accommodate the growth by higher enrollment in summer term.
We have not been able to determine the full extent to which the 108 CCCs have been utilizing summer term because of the limited availability of summer enrollment information. We recommend the Legislature direct the community colleges to provide more complete summer enrollment information so the need to construct new instructional facilities can be assessed.
For the past five years, we have recommended the Legislature fund construction of higher education facilities based on statewide priorities. Our recommended priorities have remained about the same from year-to-year, with some adjustments to reflect new information or conditions. This year we have introduced a new category for research facilities (applicable only to UC) to reflect our examination of the amount and cost of UC research facilities discussed below. Our recommendations are shown in Figure 1 (see next page).
We recommend these priorities be applied on a statewide basis, that is—across segmental boundaries. Implicit in this is our continuing recommendation that available funds not be arbitrarily allocated among the three segments based on predetermined percentages or amounts for each segment—but on the merits of individual projects.
As we have done in prior years, we recommend the Legislature provide funding for construction of new buildings on higher education campuses using construction cost guidelines to control costs. We use construction cost information from a number of sources to determine the range of costs for comparable buildings constructed elsewhere in the country. We have adjusted these costs for inflation and geographical differences and use them in preparing our recommendations. Our data base currently consists of 85 classroom, 191 teaching laboratory, 419 research laboratory buildings, and 80 office buildings.
The CSU and CCCs use construction cost guidelines. The CSU increased its guidelines about 15 percent to 20 percent in the last year in order to fund more durable materials and systems that are estimated to be more cost-effective on the basis of a building's life cycle. We have examined CSU's life cycle studies and believe the methodology used is sound. We have compared these higher CSU guidelines, and the CCC guidelines, to the cost of comparable buildings constructed elsewhere and found them to be reasonable. Accordingly, we recommend the Legislature fund CSU and CCC facilities in accordance with their respective guidelines.
The UC does not use construction cost guidelines. Based on our examination of cost information from the three segments and comparable buildings constructed elsewhere in the country, we recommend the Legislature fund construction of new buildings at the UC using the guidelines in Figure 2.
We recommend the Legislature not fund construction of new instructional facilities (classrooms and teaching laboratories) that are justified solely on the basis of enrollment growth at campuses that are not utilizing their facilities at least as intensively as the Legislature's standards. The state's legislatively approved utilization standards for station use (such as a desk in a classroom or workspace in a teaching laboratory) are shown in Figure 3 (see next page).
Utilization at both CSU and UC is less than the legislatively approved standards. The CCCs have not provided sufficient information to determine how well they are utilizing their existing facilities. Utilization is discussed further in the analyses of the individual segments.
This year we examine the cost of research facilities at the UC and the amount of research space at its campuses compared to the Legislature's standards. We also look at the amount of research space at comparable institutions elsewhere in the country. We find UC has substantially more research space than allowable under the Legislature's standards—and compared to its peer institutions. Peer institutions are the top 100 (exclusive of the eight UC general campuses) universities in the country in research expenditures, as measured by the National Science Foundation.