Campus News
Budget update: Progress and planning for the year ahead
UC Santa Cruz has made significant gains toward closing its budget gap and building a stronger financial foundation. That effort continues this year, as the campus focuses on increasing revenue, controlling costs, and planning for long-term success
UC Santa Cruz made significant gains this past fiscal year toward closing its budget gap and building a stronger financial foundation. That effort continues this year, as the campus focuses on increasing revenue, controlling expenditures, and planning for long-term success despite the continuing challenge of rising costs.
Through development of the FY25-26 budget, the campus achieved $41 million in ongoing savings, bringing the two-year savings total to $71 million. For the current year, UC Santa Cruz is operating a $1.03 billion budget while managing a $79 million core funds deficit. Budget Analysis and Planning recently released a budget overview to provide a deeper understanding of the budget for the coming fiscal year. The actions taken to date reduce the core funds gap nearly in half and demonstrate progress toward a sustained commitment to fiscal responsibility.
“By keeping our core mission and values at the forefront and taking advantage of where we have growth potential, we will be positioned to be a stronger university going forward,” Amber Blakeslee, associate vice chancellor of Budget Analysis and Planning said.
The campus is guided by principles that keep the mission of teaching, research, and public service at the forefront, while prioritizing realistic revenue opportunities, sharing regular budget updates, and ensuring a student-focused, people-centered approach.
Looking ahead, the university is focused on balancing cost reductions with identifying new sources of sustainable revenue. Areas of potential growth span enrollment, research funding, summer session offerings, and philanthropic support. The call for campus “Big Ideas” also surfaced proposals such as creating new graduate programs, rethinking Silicon Valley offerings, and streamlining academic and administrative processes.
To support long-term stability, several planning improvements have already been put in place. The annual budget process has been enhanced, the carryforward process updated, and budget allocation shifted more directly to divisions. Together, these changes provide greater clarity, increase transparency, and strengthen financial planning.
UC Santa Cruz has developed a multiyear framework to balance the core-funds budget, setting spending reduction targets across four categories: central, instruction, strategic, and divisional. The campus will review the framework each year and adjust as needed, should expenditure or revenue projections change, such as from impacts of state and federal spending and policy decisions.
The campus community will need to continue to work together to achieve the outcomes that will put the campus on more sound financial footing. Making these reductions and maintaining the discipline to follow through will be challenging, but the campus has already shown it can make steady, intentional progress. In addition to recently releasing the 2025-26 budget, the 2024-25 core funds year-end report has also been published highlighting core funds budget to actuals performance over the previous year. More information and regular updates are available on the Budget, Planning and Analysis website.