The California State University board of trustees met yesterday to discuss the budget and make recommendations for the 2010-11 academic term.
The trustee financial committee is calling for an increase of $884 million in the 2010-11 budget from the governor and Legislature, raising it from $2.3 billion to $3.2 billion. The full board of trustees is expected to approve the budget proposal today.
“This is a very ambitious budget in these very challenging times,” CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed said in a press release. “We are asking the state to not only restore funding of one-time cuts that were imposed for this year, but to also provide the needed revenue for mandatory costs, compensation increases, as well as fund our collective bargaining agreements for the past two years.”
In order to hold off on large fee increases, Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Jeri Echeverria offered a plan to manage the CSU system’s student population by reducing enrollment.
“We are trying to maintain diversity on our campuses, while at the same time we are looking to reduce enrollment by about 40,000 students,” Echeverria said.
In the 2008-09 year, the CSU system attempted to limit enrollment by 342,893 students but went over by 14,000 students. For the 2009-10 year, the CSU system was under its limit by 2,000 students. The ultimate goal is to reduce the number of students enrolled to 310,000.
Tactics to reduce students included reducing enrollment for the the spring 2010 semester, enforcing student disqualification and probation, and requiring that “super seniors” graduate.
The challenge to reducing enrollment is that there is an increase in applications for fall 2010, an overcrowding in high-demand courses, and enrollment in general is at an all-time high, Echeverria said.
Another suggestion was to crack down on the number of ineligible students who do not meet every standard for admittance. The suggestion lead to a plea from trustee Melinda Guzman to reconsider the proposal.
“Do not target those deemed ineligible,” Guzman said. “We have had students that did not meet the standard on immediate arrival but by the end of the semester, they were more than adequate.”
The California Faculty Association will be holding a rally today at the chancellor’s office in opposition to the restructuring of the CSU campuses. The rally will be composed of students, faculty and staff who feel that the permanent elimination of classes will lead to short-term gain and only compromise education in the future.
The budget will be put to a final vote today at the last meeting of the board of trustees until January 2010.