Budget Questions

Last Wednesday, Chancellor Frenk circulated a statement on a variety of campus issues including the budget. We reproduce the budget section below:

Budget Model

We are undertaking a comprehensive assessment of our financial model to ensure UCLA remains strong for decades to come. This work includes developing a new budget model while reviewing capital planning and major administrative functions.

Financial Update: Building a Stronger Financial Future for UCLA

In March 2026, we shared a projection that the central account would close FY26 with a deficit of approximately $220 million. I am gratified to report that the actual year-end deficit was significantly lower, at $58 million.

This improvement reflects a series of concerted measures taken throughout the year. While we implemented permanent reductions in many areas, a significant portion of the FY26 improvement resulted from one-time measures. At the same time, we assumed new recurring costs, including mandated wage increases and additional funding necessary to support critical operations. As a result, the $58 million year-end deficit is positive news for FY26, but it does not represent a comparable reduction in our ongoing structural imbalance. The underlying central structural deficit therefore remains in the range we previously reported (https://mcw4-bg0jt18s-ppxrgd5mn-5zq8.pub.sfmc-content.com/l5iciwkzaq5), giving us reason to persevere in our efforts.

It is also important to note that these figures refer specifically to the central account. Several campus units continue to operate with expenditures that exceed revenues, including UCLA Athletics, where a significant financial gap persists. I recently asked Tim Harris to serve as our new CEO and director of UCLA Athletics.

He is taking a disciplined approach to addressing the department’s structural deficit, with a clear commitment to greater financial accountability, aligning expenses with available resources and building a sustainable operating model.

We will continue to identify annual solutions that mitigate the immediate impact of these structural gaps. At the same time, we are developing the financial and operational changes necessary to achieve sustained budget balance. Ultimately, our solutions must both close the central structural gap and ensure that units across the campus operate within their available resources.

Source: https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/framework-for-uclas-future.

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Here's the problem. There is no definition of "deficit." We know that whatever it means, it doesn't include UCLA Health, a very big chunk of the campus budget that seems to be run autonomously from Murphy Hall's budgetary process. If deficit means revenue < spending, the difference has to be coming from somewhere. There are only two sources for that kind of deficit: running down reserves and/or borrowing. What are the revenues? What is the spending? What reserves do we have? If the "structural" deficit is $220 million and that remains valid, but the actual deficit was $58 million, there must have been a lot of one-time cuts that presumably can't be maintained on an ongoing basis. (If they could be maintained, presumably the structural deficit would be reduced to $58 million.) So that raises the question of what is meant by "structural deficit."

There is reference to a new "financial model." It is unclear what that term means. Is it some kind of budget forecasting program? Or is it just basic accounting software that allows quick data retrieval? Does it mean that we will eventually have timely publication of the budget? Right now, the latest budget available is 2024-25, not the budget for last year to which the $58 million deficit applies. Yet there must be budget numbers for last year since we know what the deficit for that year was.

Climate Change?

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk (front row, center left) and Tamir Sheafer, president of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (front row, center right), sign a memorandum of understanding between UCLA’s Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and Hebrew University, surrounded by representatives of the two institutions and friends and supporters. The two leaders also signed an MOU creating a framework to jointly pursue biomedical research.

UCLA Newsroom, September 23, 2026

UCLA has signed two memorandums of understanding with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, opening new avenues for collaboration in biomedical research, teaching, scholarly exchange and other academic activities.

The agreements were signed Sept. 22 at UCLA by Chancellor Julio Frenk and Hebrew University President Tamir Sheafer.

One calls for the joint development of a UCLA–Hebrew University Biomedical Research Collaboration, which would identify research priorities, encourage interdisciplinary projects and create opportunities for learning, discovery and scientific exchange. The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA will manage this effort on UCLA’s behalf.

“By bringing together complementary expertise and resources, we can help accelerate discoveries that benefit patients far beyond our own institutions,” said Dr. Steven Dubinett, dean of the Geffen School of Medicine and associate vice chancellor for research. “Establishing this framework is an important first step.”

A separate five-year agreement between the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, a constituent part of the UCLA International Institute, and The Hebrew University lays the groundwork for a broad range of academic activities, including faculty and scholar visits, graduate and professional student exchanges, joint conferences and research programs, and cooperation in postgraduate education and training. Specific activities will be developed as funding, space and other resources become available.

“I am delighted that with this MOU, the Nazarian Center and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem signal their formal intent to work together on a broad variety of mutually beneficial academic activities,” said the center’s director, Steven E. Zipperstein. “We are thrilled to launch this collaboration with our colleagues in Jerusalem.”

Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-hebrew-university-expand-academic-and-research-ties. 

Straws in the Wind - Part 478

From the California Post: The tech elite of Silicon Valley are spending millions on a new college alternative that they hope will be an incubator for top talent, encouraging students to build AI models instead of taking science classes or doing homework. Venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is spending $35 million on an unaccredited two-year alternative to traditional college based in San Francisco. It’s aimed at students ages 16 to 22 with the goal of cultivating the “world’s most ambitious young builders.” The undertaking has raised another $7 million from founding partners including Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe, according to Andreessen Horowitz, which is also known as a16z.

The Horowitz Andreessen Academy will technically operate as an independent business, not a school, run by Gagan Biyani – the co-founder of online-learning platform Udemy – while a16z partners Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg will join him on the board. Investors are hoping young eggheads will enroll in the academy instead of dropping out of college to launch their own start-ups, so they can get first dibs on the next generation of AI talent. Some of the most valuable AI start-ups are run by teens and 20-somethings who have raised millions of dollars. Each student will have access to more than $50,000 worth of access to coveted AI computing power from the founding partner companies, which will open their networks to enrollees and advise on the school’s curriculum. Students will also receive a $5,000 travel and exploration budget, access to a16z’s investors and instruction from guest lecturers including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Steven Sinofsky, the former head of Windows, according to a press release...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/09/22/business/tech-elites-launch-college-alternative-for-next-generation-of-ai-geniuses-raises-42m/. 

Quantum Funding

UCLA computer scientists take key roles in $75 million quantum computing efforts

The NSF initiatives aim to overcome critical barriers between today’s quantum systems and practical computing

UCLA Samueli / UCLA Newsroom

Two UCLA computer scientists will help lead major national efforts to address some of quantum computing’s biggest challenges, serving as co-principal investigators for separate research institutes backed by five-year, $37.5 million grants from the National Science Foundation.

The two institutes are among eight NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes receiving more than $290 million in new funding to advance U.S. quantum science and accelerate the development of technologies with practical applications. UCLA Samueli School of Engineering professors Jason Cong and Jens Palsberg will each help lead one of the initiatives.

Cong is a co-principal investigator for the newly established Institute for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Systems, Architectures and Applications, led by Harvard University with UCLA Samueli and MIT as co-leads. Researchers will work to make quantum computers capable of performing useful calculations reliably despite the errors and noise that plague current systems. Cong will head UCLA efforts to develop software, algorithms and AI-based tools to improve their reliability and efficiency.

Palsberg, meanwhile, is co-principal investigator for the NSF Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation, a UC Berkeley–led research network that includes UCLA Samueli, UC Santa Barbara, Caltech and Stanford. Renewed with a five-year, $37.5 million grant, the institute will investigate the capabilities of quantum computation and develop new quantum technologies and applications. Palsberg, co-director of the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering at UCLA, and the UCLA team will focus on overcoming bottlenecks in current trapped-ion quantum computing systems and developing software that can compare different quantum technologies.

“Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are out of reach for today’s computers, but we still have a lot of work to do to get there,” Palsberg said.

The UCLA researchers hope their work will help identify where quantum computers can ultimately make the greatest difference.

Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-computer-scientists-take-key-roles-quantum-computing.

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Background from the Daily Bruin:

...The federal government suspended $584 million in UCLA’s federal research grants in July 2025, alleging that the university allowed illegal affirmative action, “men to participate in women’s sports” and antisemitism. Chancellor Julio Frenk denied the federal government’s allegations... Hiring freezes across labs also reduced research opportunities for postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. Some researchers who were already working in research labs lost their salaries until their grants were restored later in 2025. A federal judge restored most of the grants in August and September 2025...

“This grant really cements UCLA as a leading player in the whole quantum computing field,” Palsberg said. “Out of the eight institutes that are going in the second round of QLCI (Quantum Leap Challenge Institute), two of them have participation from UCLA. There are not so many universities that can say that.”

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/26/ucla-receives-75-million-in-nsf-grants-for-quantum-technology.

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing / Blog Song

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

==

And here's a little song, based on the information above, composed by Gemini:

"Sharp and Clever Pen":

Or https://archive.org/details/sharp-and-clever-pen

Verse 1

I scroll the screen looking for some light

A voice that cuts right through the noise

They talk about the taxes and the spin

But Dan Mitchell has a different kind of truth

He talks about the spending and the waste

The parallel blogs that keep us truly free

Independent channels are the only way to go

To find the analysis the mainstream never shows

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Verse 2

He analyzes policy with a sharp and clever pen

Decentralized and honest, standing on his own ground

You don't need their filters and you don't need their spin

Just some liberty and facts to help you really win

Bookmark the connection and let the truth begin to flow

A parallel alternative to the status quo we know

Fiscal sense and freedom are waiting on the page

The perfect antidote for a confusing modern age

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Outro

Yeah, find the facts for yourself

Dan Mitchell's blog is out there waiting

Just click and subscribe and see the difference

Get free and stay informed always. 

Straws in the Wind - Part 477

From the Harvard Crimson: Former Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana criticized the December 2023 congressional testimony of three university presidents on campus antisemitism — including then-Harvard President Claudine Gay — saying none of them could explain what a university is for. The remarks, delivered in a lecture at Cornell University last week, are Khurana’s most direct public comments on the backlash that ended Gay’s presidency and set off two years of federal scrutiny of Harvard.

Khurana delivered the Milton R. Konvitz Memorial Lectureship in American Ideals on Thursday, an annual Cornell lecture named for the civil liberties scholar who taught there for four decades. His talk — “From Institutional Mission to Administrative Means: The Bureaucratization of Universities” — argued that universities have grown too heavy with administrators and lost institutional legitimacy. Khurana earned his bachelor’s degree at Cornell...

He named one only as a school in Connecticut — an apparent nod to Yale University that drew laughs. Between 2003 and 2021, its human resources department jumped from 11 staff to 192, and its development staff spiked from 71 to 333, while the faculty went from 610 to 675...

Khurana said rising inequality had also reshaped how universities raise money, pushing them toward a small number of very large gifts... That arrangement held, Khurana said, only as long as donors asked for nothing in return — and it has not survived the collapse in public trust. Donors now style themselves as “impact philanthropists” who want a say in how their money is spent...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/9/21/khurana-criticizes-gay-testimony/.

Tempest in a Teapot? Still Boiling.

Blog readers may recall our earlier post on this matter of Sept. 4. From the Daily Bruin:

Seven current and former UCLA employees alleged in at least 22 separate whistleblower and retaliatory reports that the university’s head of strategic communications fostered a toxic work environment and mismanaged department funds, according to court documents. Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications since 2019, filed a lawsuit against the UC Board of Regents on Aug. 26 to block the release of an investigative report that she claimed would damage her reputation. The investigation – which was conducted by Grutman Law, P.C. and commissioned by the UC Board of Regents – includes details about Osako’s conduct and workplace relationships, according to court filings. 

UCLA posted in its whistleblower portal Feb. 20 that Grutman’s investigation substantiated multiple allegations brought forth in the whistleblower reports and that they forwarded the findings to Chancellor Julio Frenk’s office, according to court documents. Osako has remained in her position since... Paul Rigali, Osako’s lawyer, said in an emailed statement on behalf of Osako that the accusations are false and that Osako has not faced any disciplinary action. He added that Frenk’s support of Osako “speaks volumes.” ...

During the spring 2024 pro-Palestine encampment, Osako removed a team of strategic communications staff from UCLA’s emergency response center due to personal disagreements with other leaders, Wileen Wong Kromhout, associate director of operations in the strategic communications department, alleged in an April 2025 whistleblower report... “This directly impeded information flow and essential team coordination during a high-risk campus event that turned out to be one of the worst crisis in the university’s history,” Kromhout said...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/19/a-narcissist-ucla-employees-alleged-top-administrator-misused-funds-bullied-staff.

Although the reports leaking out are unclear, one wonders whether what occurred is connected to the campus events of 2023-24.