Campus update from Chancellor Carol T. Christ

Dear Cal alumni and friends:

It is with tremendous pride that I share that David Card, the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics, won the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences last week. He is the sixth Berkeley economist to win the Nobel Prize and the university’s 26th Nobel laureate overall. Card shares the prize with Guido Imbens of Stanford and Joshua Angrist of MIT.

Card is best known for pioneering studies in the 1990s that remain acutely relevant today, as they questioned the prevailing assumptions about the impact of immigration on native-born U.S. workers and the effect of minimum wage increases on domestic job growth. His work has improved our understanding of labor markets and, according to the Nobel committee, “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences … challenging conventional wisdom.”

“Challenging conventional wisdom” is part of Berkeley’s DNA. It is what happens in our classrooms and laboratories; what leads to inspiration, discovery, and new knowledge; and what results in the kind of recognition we are celebrating today.

I also shared a budget update with the campus last week. The pandemic led to lost enrollment, reduced revenue in athletics and other enterprises, and a decrease in state funding, as well as increased costs for remote instruction and COVID-19 testing. While we were able to mitigate these impacts with such measures as a salary and hiring freeze and federal relief funds, we are still projecting an operating deficit for fiscal year 2021.

Looking ahead, state funding has been increased to 5 percent over pre-pandemic levels, tuition and fee revenue has recovered, and, for the first time in years, the UC Regents has approved a tuition increase. Beginning in fall 2022, incoming undergraduates will be charged tuition and fees on a cohort basis, in which rates will remain constant and predictable during each cohort’s time at Berkeley, with moderate increases for each subsequent, incoming cohort. The Regents also approved annual increases to graduate tuition and fees based on inflation. We are also relaunching a finance reform initiative to rebuild resources in the central ledger — from which we provide funds for essential operations, faculty salaries, capital expenses, and more — and to reconfigure how funds are allocated across campus. Please read the full budget update.

We are grateful to you for standing with us through our most difficult periods — and on our brightest days.

Fiat Lux, and Go Bears!

Carol T. Christ
Chancellor