Cuts bite in California

摘要

The ten-campus University of California (UC) system - a national star of US public universities - has begun haemorrhaging top researchers as its financial crisis escalates.rnOn 16 July, the UC board of regents voted to give its president Mark Yudof the power to force university staff to take unpaid leave through a furlough plan. The cuts are meant to help the system offset about a quarter of its US$813-million drop in state funding this year. The measures would affect 108,000 full-time UC employees and would follow a sliding scale according to salary, with the lowest-paid faculty members drawing 11 unpaid days off- equivalent to a 4% pay cut - and the highest-paid staff drawing 26 unpaid days, or a 10% cut.