Quick Take
Two UC Santa Cruz students are concerned that university budget cuts are stripping resources from the beloved residential college system and weakening the student support networks that have benefited them and defined campus life since the campus’ inception. Alex Santiago and Isaac Belloso say staff layoffs and reductions in provost positions are eroding mentorship, belonging and academic success and implore university leaders to reconsider the cuts and include students in the decision-making process. These relationships, they say, shape opportunity – especially for first-generation and low-income students.
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Recent downsizing and budget cuts at UC Santa Cruz are harming some of the most important relationships we foster as UCSC students – a connection with our residential college.
Since spring 2025, UCSC has laid off several key staff in the 10 residential colleges by eliminating positions and placing a hold on rehiring. These positions included people who provided student advising and direct student services. The loss of people who are responsible for cultivating college life has left students like us without vital resources that promote our success.
Cuts to the staff of the college system are also damaging one of the most distinctive characteristics of the campus and removing one of the main appeals UCSC has for students. As two of the countless number of students who have benefited from the college system, we can say that the cuts are undermining our sense of belonging on campus.
One of the most integral and most visible positions being reduced is the college provost, who serves as the head of each college. Historically, the provostship has been a position of connection; provosts oversee academic residential life at the college, but they also interact with students by hosting dinners and collaborating with students to improve the college experience.
This year, UCSC administrators made the decision to reduce the provost position from nine provosts to five, further stretching resources for provosts and their ability to get to know the students in their college.
As two UCSC students, we’re worried about the quality of life on campus and are directly affected by UCSC administrators’ choices to diminish the colleges’ role on campus.
We each have a slightly different experience with the system and we thought it might be useful to share our thoughts with the community as a conversation.
Alex: As a low-income student who struggled to access higher education, staff members of Stevenson College gave me a foundation to build confidence in my first year on campus. The college and student-facing staff helped me to find a community that led to my success. Those staff and college mentors are the ones who knew me well enough to write letters of recommendation, which have enabled me to win nationally ranked awards, programs and fellowships and be competitive with students from private institutions who have a disproportionately greater degree of individualized mentorship.
These mentors have also helped me become the first in my family to pursue graduate school and hopefully the first lawyer in my family’s history. I know with certainty I wouldn’t be the same student without the time they dedicated to getting to know me, guiding my journey, and overall supporting my success as a student. Removing these people and overextending remaining staff, who are now taxed with far more roles and responsibilities, is undermining the ability to give students the key support and care I was lucky to receive.
Isaac: I agree. Faculty at the colleges, for me, and the relationships they foster are the reason why the colleges are special. These faculty and staff are the ones who are always open to student input – not because it’s needed, but because it’s wanted. They’re the ones who provide spaces for students to be heard when, for example, they need feedback on an essay or have concerns about their future careers.
They’re also the ones I’ve gone to with questions about managing college life – including how to succeed academically and how to take advantage of the resources here. It’s not only academics. I’ve talked about so many things like personal projects and questions about life over a cup of good coffee. They’re the reason the colleges give students a sense of well-being and belonging on campus.
Alex: Not only this, but college identity is also a conduit to alumni. I have connected with numerous alumni because of our shared connection to our residential college. Sharing a residential college distinguishes the UCSC experience from other large public schools.
Personally, I find it painful to see how administrators are attempting to present the reduction of these roles as beneficial to students. Fewer staff, simply put, translates to less student support. There’s no way to repackage that.
Isaac: These changes also challenge the very core of the original Santa Cruz dream. UCSC from the beginning was imagined as different from the universities of the time, and this was to be done by focusing on liberal arts and on the colleges and their faculty. I’m interested in this idea and I’ve done research on it.
The dream, developed by Clark Kerr (president of the University of California 1958-1967) and Dean E. McHenry (founding chancellor of UCSC), set out to create a campus influenced by liberal arts colleges, such as Oxford University, and with a singular focus on undergraduates. It was supposed to maintain a “small school” feel even as the university grew, for the purpose of creating close relationships between students and faculty. To these founders and the rest of the founding faculty, the undergraduates and the connections to them were at the heart of UCSC.
We see this dream in a 1966 Stanford University film made a year after the UCSC campus opened. Here, faculty can be seen not in offices or in inaccessible locations, but among students. They’re with students talking, eating and sharing ideas with them.
Alex: It’s an amazing piece of history. It feels weird to think about now, at this critical time, when it’s the lowest-ranking UC school, and when the campus is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on recruiting high-level administrators and cutting student-facing staff. Decision-makers, like our chancellor, need to think where they want to place their greatest investment: in high-level administrators making well over half a million dollars? Or the staff who actually are the backbone of the university?
UCSC loves to talk about “belonging” as a central tenet of the institution. But how will students belong if the very people who work most closely with students and know our viewpoints disappear? Now is not the time to be sacrificing student success in the name of budget cuts. Students’ quality of education, housing and basic needs have already been sacrificed as a result of UCSC’s budget crisis.
Removing student-facing roles is not the answer.
It’s in this question that lies the future of UCSC: as either a diminished institution that forgoes the cultivation of its students or as one that can substantiate its legacy as an institution that emphasizes college culture, student belonging and success. Without the individualized support and connections I made with college staff and resource center mentors, I wouldn’t have achieved the same level of success as a student.
Is UCSC willing to sacrifice that experience for more students?
Isaac: A student in the film mentions how at UCSC there was a “we” whenever students would talk about the university. That “we” is what UCSC should strive for.
UCSC should focus and facilitate student identity, using students’ voices as a strength, as it historically did through the colleges for more than 60 years. Students should not find out impactful changes, such as the reduction in college provosts, through news articles. That choice should belong to students who, after all, are the ones undertaking the college experience.
As we undertake our education, it is important to recognize that students have largely paved the path for the institution UC Santa Cruz is today. As a result, incorporating student voices into these decisions is critical, now more than ever.
We’re calling on Chancellor Cindy Larive, interim Campus Provost Paul Koch and newly appointed Campus Provost Jennifer Johnson-Hanks to invite student voices into the discussion involving the colleges. The university has nothing to lose and everything to gain from it.
Isaac Belloso is a proud Oakes College affiliate and a second-year legal studies major at UCSC. He currently serves as the travel coordinator for the mock trial team at UCSC and has a strong interest in UCSC history.
Alex Santiago is a proud Stevenson College affiliate and a third-year politics and Latin American studies student at UCSC. On campus, she served as a student representative in the Stevenson Student Council and as legislative director of the Student Housing Coalition, and is the founder of La Sociedad of Latine Pre-Law Students. She plans to attend law school to become an attorney focused on indigent tenant defense and housing advocacy.