In the next few months, UC-AFT will be working with members and staff to get out the message that the University of California has enough money to support undergraduate education, and that the only problem lies with the priorities of the UC administrators.

While the university would like people to think that a cut in the state budget means that undergraduate courses and library funding have to be reduced, we know that the university only gets about 16 percent of its funding from the state, and that recent cuts in the state budget have been more than made up by increases in student fees and other sources of revenue.

To get our message out, we plan to work with student groups and to undertake a coordinated public relations campaign. We want the people of California to know that class sizes are being increased and the number of faculty are being decreased as more students are being admitted to the UC system. We also want the public to know that although UC is a public institution, it continues to have a non-transparent budget.

UC-AFT believes the taxpayers of California should be concerned about how the UC system is actually spending its increased unrestricted funds and all of the other money it gets from corporate and federal sources. While we are strongly against any cuts to the UC budget, we are equally concerned about how the money that pours into UC coffers is actually spent.

Ironically, it is because the state funding has moved from 60 percent of the total UC budget in the 1970s to only 16 percent today that the university has had to seek external funds that somehow never make it to the classroom. The overall result is a wealthier institution but a poorer delivery of undergraduate education.