What will happen when the five years of funding UCSD is guaranteeing are up?
It’s true that university budgets generally lack transparency. But universities everywhere require semi-independent programs like Clarion to find a way to pay for themselves (the “semi” being that we need an institutional home that can administer the program; the “independent” being that we run our own teaching and admissions and have complete creative control). All of Clarion’s problems at MSU stemmed from the fact that the workshop could never bring in enough money to cover what it cost the university to run it. Even with the increased fees to students (which, by the way, would have happened whether we stayed at MSU or not) Clarion still faces a serious funding gap at its new home — somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of total costs. To address this issue, UCSD’s offer includes two special commitments: first, they will raise funds to bridge the revenue gap; and second, they will provide complete transparency, sharing annual revenue and cost figures with the Foundation so that we are
