The UC and CSU system have been hit hard by the continuing fiscal crisis. The systems have had their budgets slashed, tuition hiked and their students stepped on.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau hopes to call upon state governments and private donors to match federal funding to public research universities in a new proposal.

Birgeneau stated at an August press conference that because of the decrease in state higher education funding, the federal government should increase funding to the country’s public research universities.

“The United States is now the only Western country where the federal government does not invest directly in its flagship public universities,” he said at the press conference. “Our great public universities … are a national resource, and … their support cannot be left to the states alone.”

The proposal, which is still in its initial planning stages, would redirect $1 billion in federal funds over the course of 10 years to support public universities and was announced at the campus Graduate Assembly meeting Thursday.

The proposal calls on states and private donors to match federal higher education funding for public research universities, which currently totals about $30 billion annually, according to a UC Berkeley News Center article.

Under the plan, the federal government would allocate up to an additional $130 million a year to California, up to $30 million of which would go to UC Berkeley, according to the News Center. This would leave $100 million for the other 9 campuses.

However, campus Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab said Birgeneau’s proposed plan fails to address the problem of why the state has limited funding for public education.

“It is a two-part issue,” Navab said. “There is the decreased funding for public education, but there is also a limited amount of revenue the state has, and until there is more money going into education, it will always be education versus something else.