The UC Merced administration is sacrificing student education and faculty livelihoods to service a debt they created through the mismanagement of funds. Already this year, course, lab, and discussion sizes have gone up, while TA support has been slashed and lecturers-- whose sole purpose is teaching-- have been laid off.

The leadership apparently thinks of UCM students as cash machines, and second-class citizens who, perhaps because of their demographics, do not deserve the educational resources of the wealthier UCs. To wit, the maximum enrollment for writing classes at UC Berkeley is 17 students, with some as low as 14. Currently at UCM, writing classes are capped at 20 students, already overburdening lecturers and reducing the time they spend with each student.

Now, Provost Marjorie Zatz is demanding an increase of 10%-50% to these already-stuffed classes, which would water down the core skills that help students succeed, and would result in more of lay-offs of writing lecturers. Spark classes, which increase student retention and success, have already been gutted under this scheme.

Merced students deserve better!

Following the austerity playbook--gutting the core undergraduate classes--while investing only in shiny new programs, executives, and million-dollar statues of cats, devalues a UCM degree and prolongs inequity in education.