California...where to cut, where to cut...

Here are some statistics I've found today.

First, the Governor's budget for 2009-2010 has these two items:

The University of California system has 85,702 Employees and receives $3,304,441,000 (3.3 billion) in state funds

The California State University system has 46,069 employees and receives $3,014,703,000 (3.0 billion) in state funds.

According to statistics on the UC website, the UC system has a total enrollment of 226,040 students (2008). That includes undergrad, grad, and medical residents.

With 85,702 employees, that works out to: 2.64 students for each staff member. Some of that, though, might be things like a university hospital, including nursing, cleaning staff, administrators, etc. It probably also includes researchers who are essentially paid from whatever grants they get (that's what my brother is at his University.) Researchers have to hand over a sizable chunk of their grant money to their institution, so they often make the university money, instead of costing it.

The CS system does better. In 2006 they had a total of 417,112 students, but some of them are part-timers. Their website has a handy "full-time equivalent" column, which rates those numbers in terms of full-time students (for example, 2 half-time students = 1 full-time equivalent). That comes to 343,199 students.

With 46,069 staff members, it works out to 9.1 or 7.4 students per staff member (depending on which student number you use.)

Do you think that maybe...just maybe...a whole lot of those jobs--especially in the UC system (Fewer than 3 students for every staff member?!!!!!)--might be cuttable?