On November 21, 2025, UC Merced’s CFO Schnier and Provost Dumont announced a three year plan to make drastic cuts across the campus’ divisions. These are steep, untenable cuts. They will result in dramatic reductions in instructors, graduate students, and staff.
Chancellor Munoz, CFO Schnier, and Provost Dumont benefit from offering no leadership and pushing decisions down to the schools and faculty. Since the “budget stabilization” plan has started, faculty have spent countless hours in meetings, frantically trying to protect their programs. Schools and departments have been left to squabble over limited resources. Departments cannibalize one another’s majors and student credit hours. Campus leadership’s job is to deliver a high quality education and support research excellence. What we are experiencing is not shared governance; it is a dereliction of duty and failure of leadership.
This is the wrong approach.
UC Merced Faculty Association calls on campus leadership to:
Fund learning. Fund the mission.
- Prioritize and protect instruction and research
- Deliver comprehensive budget transparency
- Engage faculty as budget planning partners
Faculty are the university. Instead of being pitted against one another, UCMFA aims to build a collective faculty voice across disciplines, departments, and schools. We inform, engage, and empower faculty with knowledge and tools to be advocates for the future of teaching and research at UC Merced.
Check out our activities:
- Follow the Money! Town Hall. Slides available here: Town Hall Slides.
- Use this list of resources to learn more about UCM’s budget.
- Memo on UCM’s Spending on Instruction, Dec. 12, 2025, https://ucmfa.org/2025/12/memo-on-university-spending-on-instruction/
- Summary of Budget Transparency Town Hall, Dec. 2, 2025, Townhall summary
A recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Why Your University Has So Many Administrators“
To read more about Chancellor Muñoz’s pay increases, see pages 4 and 11 of the UCOP Governance Minutes below, or review the excerpts pasted beneath them.
The Regents of the University of California Meeting Minutes, May 20, 2020 (p. 4)
The Regents of the University of California Governance Committee Meeting Minutes, September 19, 2024 (p. 11)
