The state's ongoing budget crisis demonstrates one way the University of California has made itself vulnerable by establishing outreach programs focused on K-12 school reform, says an associate professor of education at the university's Davis campus.

Thomas Timar of the School of Education says that, with the decision in 1997 to expand into partnerships to improve low-performing schools, the university assumed responsibility for something it wasn't prepared to undertake, created expectations within the Legislature for results over which the university has little control and subjected its programs to the whims of line-item funding in the state budget.

"The university was pushed into activities that are outside of its traditional institutional role," he says.

The professor is lead author of "Examining the University of California's Outreach Mission" in the current issue of the Review of Higher Education. His co-authors are education professor Rodney Ogawa of UC Santa Cruz and doctoral candidate Mary Orillion of UC Riverside.

In response to the prohibition of affirmative action in admissions by its Board of Regents and Proposition 209, the university -- long engaged in student-centered outreach such as tutoring and mentoring -- expanded into school-centered programs such as curriculum reform to increase the diversity of the pool of students eligible for admission.

But the legislative politics that, in the name of equalizing educational opportunity, ballooned the funding for UC's systemwide outreach and K-14 improvement programs -- from under $32.5 million in 1997-98 to $328 million in 2000-01, Timar says, now makes the programs victims of budgetary retrenchment. State funding for school-centered programs was eliminated in 2002-03, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has eliminated outreach funding in his budget proposal.

Timar says that school reform is beyond the mission, expertise, authority and resources of the university.

"The university can and should be a strong voice for school reform in the state and should provide direction and guidance to both policy makers and practitioners," the authors wrote. "While reforming schools may not draw on the university's strengths, training, research, and policy development certainly do."

Outreach programs are important, says Timar, adding that he hopes money can be found for them through the governor's proposed restructuring of categorical or designated funding within the K-12 education budget.