The Highlander
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE
For the week of Monday, March 1, 2021
VOL. 69, ISSUE 18
est. 1954
NEWS
UCR Academic Senate strikes down proposal to convert the business administration major from a two-year upper division major to a four-year major
NEWS
CHASS to sustain 11% budget cut that will result in less student support, less staff and less funding for research and graduate students
THE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS’ PROPOSAL TO DEPART THE BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MAJOR FROM BEING HOUSED UNDER THE COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ULTIMATELY FAILED AFTER A VOTE IN THE ACADEMIC SENATE.
DEPARTMENT HEADS SPEAK OUT ABOUT THE SYSTEMATIC UNDERFUNDING OF UCR AND HOW IT WILL IMPACT FACULTY, STAFF AND STUDENTS.
AMANI MAHMOUD Editor-in-Chief
On Feb. 23, UCR’s Academic Senate struck down a proposal to convert the business administration major from a two-year upper division major to a fouryear major. UCR’s School of Business drafted a proposal to convert the business administration major at UCR to a four-year major by allowing applicants to UCR to apply directly to the business administration major. The pre-business administration major at UCR is currently housed under the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS) and serves as the primary entry to the business administration major in the School of Business. This proposal would have allowed students to apply for direct admission into the business major as freshmen, instead of applying first to CHASS. The official proposal states that since 2009, the School of Business has conferred the undergraduate degrees in business administration. The proposal aimed to complete the process started in 2009 by bringing the entire business administration major under the School of Business. In converting the business administration major to a four-year degree, in which students begin their college experience as School of Business students, the School of Business claimed that they would improve the student experience in key areas including recruitment and admission, academic advising, studentship and career preparation. The proposal states that by converting the business administration major from a two-year major to a four-year major under the School of Business, the program would be able to grow in numbers and in reputation. In an interview with The Highlander, Subramanian Balachander, the academic chair of the School of Business and a professor of marketing discipline, stated that he felt the School of Business presented a compelling case for the proposal. “The four-year major would have provided for superior advising and co-curricular experiences to undergraduate
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business students from day one of the freshman year. It would have also made our program more in line with the majority of competing programs who provide such a superior experience to students,” stated Balachander. He claimed that in particular, the School of Business’s benchmarking studies revealed that 73 out of 87 competing undergraduate programs offered a four-year business administration major. UC Irvine is one of the 73 schools in their benchmark study. The School of Business’s proposal presented survey data that illustrated that a substantial majority of UCR undergraduate business students agreed that a four-year major would enhance their undergraduate experience. According to Balachander, the School of Business has made significant changes to the curriculum in recent years, including offering new electives. Another opportunity the School of Business has recently offered is allowing students in their sophomore year to take a core business course in order to ready them for internships early in their studies. “The improvement in the advising and co-curricular experience was the one remaining piece that would have made this a truly great program all around,” stated Balachander. While students would be directly admitted to the four-year business major under this proposal and would be advised by the School of Business from day one of their freshman year, students who were unsure about their plans to study ► SEE BUSINESS PAGE 3
SILVIA FERRER Managing Editor
“What matters more is … making sure UCLA is funded at 11,500 bucks a year (per student), making sure that Berkeley has its funding untouched. Instead, we’re going to cut the most racially diverse campuses, we’re going to cut Riverside, we’re going to cut the brown campus. It is absolutely and clearly a way of saying, ‘Whatever it is you’re teaching matters less than what is being taught at UC Berkeley. And the people that you’re teaching matter less than people being taught at UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz,’” said UCR Department Chair of Hispanic Studies Jacques Lezra of the budget cuts the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) can expect for the following two years. The department heads and program directors of CHASS are anticipating faculty shortages and a reduction in resources for undergraduates and graduate students alike in the face of a permanent 11% budget cut. An open letter to UC President Michael Drake and the UC Board of Regents signed by department chairs across the college states that “this abandonment by the president’s office and the Board of Regents is a demoralizing example of structural racism.” Financial Planning & Analysis released the Final Budget Reduction Decisions that will be in effect during a two-year period, from fall 2020-21 to fall 2021-22. Although
the budget cut of 11% is unilateral across several different organizations, CHASS is incurring one of the largest diminutions in dollar amount. CHASS currently has an adjusted core base of $93,920,172 and will incur a budget cut dollar amount of $10,331,219. It comes second only to the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS), which has a budget cut amount of $11,506,122 in comparison to a core base budget of $104,601,112. However, while CNAS has 6,173 undergraduate students, CHASS is the biggest college in UCR, boasting a selection of over 60 majors and more than 10,000 students. The open letter states that 98% of CHASS’s overall budget is composed of salaries and benefits. In an interview with The Highlander, Melissa Wilcox, professor and department chair of religious studies, stated that an 11% budget cut will result in an inevitable reduction of staff and teaching assistants as CHASS will no longer have the budget to sustain people on payroll. CHASS is only able to guarantee three years of graduate funding, so graduate students must rely on teaching assistantships for the remainder of their graduate schooling, which can range anywhere from four to eight years. “There are no contracts in place … This is direct financial impact now, not next year, not in the future. People will have to take out loans or leave their graduate program altogether.” She went on to state that, “What led to this letter is all of us, looking around at each other thinking about all the people that we work with, whose paychecks CHASS pays, and thinking, 1 in 11. One in 11 of those people is gone.” According to Steven Helfand, professor and chair of economics, this could mean that the number of lecturers is reduced and the size of sections is increased. However, department chairs have been asked to plan for different size budget cuts. He added that as the size of the budget cut rises, more lecturers will lose work and some graduate students won’t find work as TAs. ► SEE CHASS PAGE 3
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