Dorothy Leland: Gray’s actions will help UC Merced grow

University of California students have much to celebrate in the 2015-16 state budget approved in Sacramento last month. The budget provides UC enough funding for systemwide tuition to remain flat for the next two years, which would mean six consecutive years of no tuition increase for our undergraduate students.

In other good news for UC Merced, and for our region, a technical change to an existing statute championed by local Assemblymember Adam Gray, D-Merced, gave us and other UC campuses more flexibility with respect to how we can pay for new academic and research buildings. Although this technical change was not flashy and did not make headlines, it will be of significant benefit to UC Merced as we seek to add new buildings to our campus in the absence of traditional means of support from the state for capital expansion.

Thus, I thank Assemblymember Gray for his work on behalf of UC Merced during the current legislative session. He recognized that our 2020 Project, which will enable the UC Merced campus to grow to 10,000 students and bring significant economic impact to our region, would benefit from this technical change and was instrumental in making that change happen.

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 11:33 AM with the headline "Dorothy Leland: Gray’s actions will help UC Merced grow."