UC Workers United

1 month ago

Cal State unveils plan for ‘long overdue’ review of campus finances
www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/csu-audit-campus-finances-21322767.php
By Amy DiPierro,
EdSource
Jan 29, 2026

California State University is increasing financial oversight across its 22-campus network after a pair of fiscal crises in the past 18 months led to severe budget cuts and restructuring at two of its campuses.

The increased financial oversight comes at a time when enrollment has dropped at some campuses even as others see gains. Sonoma State canceled academic programs, suspended its NCAA athletics program, and took other measures to close its budget gap. And Cal Maritime merged with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a larger and more stable peer.

At the CSU Board of Trustees meeting this week, early results of a new fiscal health monitoring process showed more campuses are facing financial risks, including in areas outside of core academic functions, such as housing, athletics and on-campus dining.
“This is long overdue,” said trustee Julia Lopez. “If we’d had this over the last few years, we would have saved ourselves a lot of headaches.”

California lawmakers in June required CSU campuses suffering “sustained enrollment decline” to submit turnaround plans to the CSU chancellor’s office as part of the 2025 budget act. The chancellor’s office will submit a summary of those reports to the state Department of Finance and Legislature by March 1.
CSU leaders, in addition, have asked all of their universities to compile detailed reports as part of what they call a “fiscal health monitoring” process. Launched in August, the financial early warning system aims to spot problem areas and highlight practices that could boost enrollment.

Falling enrollment, coupled with rising costs for salaries and other unavoidable line items, has left structural deficits on some campuses, leading to course cuts, hiring freezes and attempts to limit discretionary spending.
The hope is that rigorous and continuous monitoring will prevent unpleasant surprises in the future. Lopez said that in a few instances, “we’ve handed a new president a structural budget deficit that we didn’t really even know was there, but we sort of knew, but then they had to deal with it the minute they walked in.”

“That should just never happen,” she added.
At Sonoma State, campus leaders in January 2025 announced sweeping cuts, including the elimination of entire academic departments and all NCAA sports, measures they said were needed following years of shrinking enrollment. The university received a one-time lifeline of $45 million from the state budget, which was matched by another $45 million from the CSU system.
And Cal Maritime, the system’s smallest campus, is being integrated into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo after declining enrollment plunged the campus into a financial tailspin. By the time CSU’s Board of Trustees considered an unusual proposal to fold the maritime campus into Cal Poly in the summer of 2024, its president said Cal Maritime had already “taken a chainsaw to every expense on campus.”
Cal State officials presented their fiscal health monitoring plans following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal earlier this month, which would deliver a 7% increase in state funding to both the California State University and the University of California systems. That’s a welcome sign for Cal State, which estimates that its overall structural budget gap totals about $2.3 billion.
“This news is very positive — indeed, it is extraordinary,” CSU Chancellor Mildred García said in opening remarks to the board on Tuesday. But she warned that “competition for limited state dollars will be fierce.”
Planning turnarounds
Seven Cal State campuses with recent enrollment declines — Channel Islands, Chico, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Humboldt, San Francisco and Sonoma — were required to share turnaround plans with the chancellor’s office by the end of 2025. Those reports outline the campuses’ plans to improve enrollment and save money, as well as enrollment projections for the next five years.
Meanwhile, in October, all CSU campuses submitted plans with budget projections and a description of their enrollment and cost-reduction strategies. The chancellor’s office has started meeting with each university to discuss those plans, with more frequent follow-ups expected at campuses facing serious financial or enrollment troubles.
Trying new ways to attract — and keep — students
At the root of many campuses’ fiscal woes is fluctuating and sometimes declining enrollment. CSU leaders said declining K-12 enrollment and regional variation are among the drivers that have left some campuses with fewer students, even as headcount at other CSU peers surged.
To buoy enrollment, the university system wants to strengthen the pipeline of students transferring from community colleges, lure back students who cut short their studies, and recruit more adults.
Another promising technique is to redirect students who applied to the most in-demand campuses to other universities with the capacity to enroll them. Dilcie D. Perez, the deputy vice chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, said that strategy is already being used when there is “an overflow of applications” at one Cal Poly campus and other Cal Poly campuses have open seats.
And with the signing of a new state law this fall, CSU is expanding its experiments with direct admissions. Under Senate Bill 640, public high school students who meet CSU entry requirements will be automatically admitted and able to enroll at one of 16 CSU campuses.
Housing poses ‘elevated financial risk’
At some campuses, CSU leaders reported, housing programs have become a risky part of university finances.
A lack of funding for needed repairs and fixed debt-service costs have strained some university housing programs. Meanwhile, campuses are challenged to rent housing at a price students can afford, sometimes while competing with private alternatives. And when enrollment projections proved more rosy than reality, some campuses have been left with unoccupied beds.
At Cal State San Bernardino, for example, an internal audit in August found that debt service related to the construction of a newer dorm, Coyote Village, combined with slumping occupancy and the Covid-19 pandemic, had left housing operations with “significant net losses.” And at Cal State LA, CSU auditors in July projected a $3.7 million net loss for student housing in its 2024-25 fiscal year following a period of staff turnover and low occupancy.
Warning signs for sports, student unions and other auxiliaries
Some Cal State campuses are also significantly subsidizing their athletics programs, CSU leaders said at this week’s meeting, with growing costs outstripping limited revenue from sports. To keep sports programs alive, several campuses have increased student fees, and some programs are running deficits.
On Wednesday, CSU officials similarly flagged concerns among the system’s auxiliary organizations, which operate dining, research foundations and student unions. The organizations are often locked into paying fixed costs — including debt service and contracts — even when enrollment falls. Threats to federal research funding and a lack of staff expertise add to those pressures.
“Without effective mitigation, challenges in auxiliary operations could create broader financial exposure for the university and potentially compromise core campus functions,” a report shared with the board said.
Amy DiPierro covers higher education and the California State University system for EdSource, where this story first appeared.
Jan 29, 2026
Amy DiPierro … See MoreSee Less

Cal State unveils plan for ‘long overdue’ review of campus finances

www.sfchronicle.com

California State University is increasing financial oversight after a pair of fiscal crises in the past 18 months led to severe budget cuts and restructuring at two of its CSU campuses.

UC Workers United

1 month ago

My question to UPTE-CWA :
1. Where are the union’s Health & Safety Committees?
We used to have them. We also used to have a Peace & Social Justice committee which was also dissolved after Dan Russell became president.

2. Why did UPTE agree to a private company being used to evaluate safety instead of the state mandated & public agency OSHA?

2. Did UPTE file an Unfair Labor Practice charge against UC for violating Whistleblower protections by giving orders to employees to NOT TALK ABOUT THE INCIDENT without a UC Lawyer present? And if not, why not?

I am a retired UCSF medical interpreter/ UPTE member for 18 years and a member of CWA retiree council and a member of UPTE Members for Palestine. … See MoreSee Less

‘Salt to a Wound’: Social Workers Still Reeling in Aftermath of Ward 86 Stabbing | KQED

www.kqed.org

Ward 86 staff feel doubly traumatized by demands to stay silent and return to work amid an ongoing investigation into the recent stabbing at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the events th…

UC Workers United

2 months ago

The Unholy Matrimony of UnitedHealth with the University of Minnesota is Dangerous for the Future of Health Care
As the world’s largest health care corporation steps into the classroom, a new University of Minnesota Medical School elective blurs the line between medical education and corporate health care.
healthcareuncovered.substack.com/p/the-unholy-matrimony-of-unitedhealth?utm_source=post-email-tit…
DR. ALLISON LEOPOLD
JAN 14, 2026

Last fall, the University of Minnesota Medical School shifted the boundaries of its academic domain and opened its doors to UnitedHealth Group in a partnered launch of a pilot course entitled Leadership and Value. The company is headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, a mere 20-minute drive from the medical school campus. It is the world’s largest health care corporation by revenue, containing two divisions: UnitedHealthcare (health insurance) and Optum (health care services, data, and pharmacy benefit managers).
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The class was developed as an elective for fourth-year medical students who are interested in health insurance and health systems leadership. As two of the nine students who took this pilot course, we are concerned that the partnership of UnitedHealth and the university in medical education represents the insidious seedling of an unholy matrimony.

Syllabus for University of Minnesota Medical School and UnitedHealth Group’s pilot course entitled Leadership and Value.
To contextualize this concern, one must understand UnitedHealth’s corporate philosophy. The company prides itself on practicing a “value-based care” model, which ostensibly encourages more scrupulous use of health care resources to focus primarily on medical interventions that yield the highest benefit. This approach is not inherently concerning. It can uphold evidence-based recommendations of investing in primary care and focusing on disease prevention. However, it also shifts the bias of health care delivery toward withholding care rather than providing it. This benefits the patient when an intervention is superfluous, but it harms the patient when an intervention is needed. Disturbingly, it is not the patient’s doctor who is trusted to determine if an intervention is needed – it is UnitedHealth. And of course, withholding care saves the company money. Thus, the value-based care model — when practiced by a for-profit insurance company — has resulted in UnitedHealth leading the nation in claims denials.

With this context, we return to the pilot course’s origin. It arose out of a proposition from UnitedHealth, which approached Dean Jakob Tolar at the university to discuss initiating a relationship with the medical school. The company’s request was twofold: it proposed 1) a joint research project leveraging Optum’s considerable data resources, and 2) a pilot course at the medical school. Regarding the course, UnitedHealth pitched its curriculum as an opportunity to teach students about “winning the United way,” with a focus on training students to be “high-value providers.” This proposition was not entirely realized, as Dean Tolar ultimately negotiated a “balanced” curriculum in which UnitedHealth and the medical school would each direct half the course. UnitedHealth would preach the benefits of value-based care, and the school would host weekly debriefs, provide health systems education, and hold leadership workshops with faculty from the university’s Rothenberger Leadership Academy.

Students heard from UnitedHealth division leaders throughout the four weeks, with in-person sessions at Optum headquarters once weekly and debriefs at the university with faculty once weekly. On the first day of class, we met Dr. Omar Baker, a pediatrician and deputy chief medical director of UnitedHealth who had just flown in from Washington, D.C. Immediately, he relayed that “UnitedHealth Group is very misunderstood.” He offered students a framework for the course: “It’s no secret we’re a for-profit company. So the question is, how do we balance our fiduciary responsibilities to our shareholders with our clinical work?” He added, “Everything you guys learn, you should try to see it through the lens of the different stakeholders.” This framework was a stark shift from medical education, where students are typically asked to blend a scientific and humanistic perspective to provide evidence-based care without concern for financial imperatives. With this shift in mind, the four-week course began.

UnitedHealth Group’s Campus Guide For Medical School Elective Attendees forin-person sessions at Optum headquarters.
Students met with a dozen or so UnitedHealth employees throughout the four weeks. The pattern of these sessions was clear. For the most part, UnitedHealth employees would present a company-approved slideshow with graphics and slogans that ranged from vague corporate jargon to optimistic messaging about the future of health care. Then, they would open time for questions. Students would – either curiously or skeptically – challenge the corporate newspeak. This is where the bulk of the learning occurred.

As an example, one UnitedHealth lecture was given by an employee who worked in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office at UnitedHealth. She explained UnitedHealth’s definition of health equity: “Health equity is a state in which all people are able to live their healthiest lives. We work with communities, providers, and partners to address the barriers that result from the circumstances in which people are born, live, learn, work, and age.” During the Q&A session, students asked if the company ever sacrificed its bottom line for the sake of improving health equity. We were told that their office only invests in communities where they have large membership enrollment. “The disparity does have to align with a return on investment.” With further probing, we uncovered that UnitedHealth does not share its population health data with local communities or universities, nor does it provide long-term sustainable funding to health equity projects. Ultimately, we were told, “None of it is charity work, it’s all intentionally designed to improve outcomes in communities where we have members [patients] so that we get return on investment.”

This pattern of achieving transparency only upon student probing begs several questions. Would the learning objectives of these sessions have been achieved if the students had not been active participants or posed probing questions? Does the supposed “balanced” curriculum negotiated by the university rely solely on the preexisting knowledge and skepticism of the students who elect to take the course? And lastly, where was the expert voicing the opposition to UnitedHealth’s model? A balanced perspective is requisite in any university class, especially housed in a state flagship institution. Were it not for consistent student pushback, the UnitedHealth sessions would have amounted to corporate propaganda.
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While many topics in a medical curriculum do not warrant a discussion of opposing views, the topics of health care access and health care financing do, especially when UnitedHealth’s voice is at the table. UnitedHealth is a controversial entity in the American health care landscape, with 16 lawsuits in the past seven years regarding denial of care, upcoding and overbilling, patient privacy violations, and anticompetitive steering of patients and providers. None of this is discussed in the four-week curriculum. While this course may encourage students to think critically about the health care system, it also welcomes an onslaught of UnitedHealth corporate propaganda without a feasible means of counterpointing or fact-checking the company’s claims. Balancing UnitedHealth’s perspective with a more neutral academic one – while better than nothing – is not a “balance” at all.
This course represents the worrisome beginning of a budding relationship between UnitedHealth and the university’s medical school. One day at the company’s headquarters, we received a surprise visit from the (now former) CEO of UnitedHealth himself — Sir Andrew Witty. I asked what he envisions for the future of this partnership. “It just doesn’t make sense for for us not to be working together more…specifically with the university, you know with all relationships you have to start somewhere,” he said…”If you get something successful, that just motivates people to look for the next thing…because we feel like [this course] is going well, it will be an encouragement to then move to the next.” When asked what ‘the next’ may entail, he said, “It could be anything! It could be more in the education space, research collaboration…working with the medical school more directly in terms of collaboration on new ideas.” In other words, UnitedHealth has its sights set on the university, and it is eager for more intermingling.
Dr. Allison Leopold graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2025, and she is now an emergency medicine resident in Oakland, California. Her work focuses on harm reduction and substance use, street medicine, single payer health care, and arts in medicine. She plans to practice both emergency and addiction medicine in the public sector. … See MoreSee Less

The Unholy Matrimony of UnitedHealth with the University of Minnesota is Dangerous for the Future of Health Care

healthcareuncovered.substack.com

As the world’s largest health care corporation steps into the classroom, a new University of Minnesota Medical School elective blurs the line between medical education and corporate health care.