California State University officials are coping with uncertainty after Gov. Jerry Brown announced a $500 million cut to the CSUs in the proposed 2011-12 budget.
“It was worse than we thought,” Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander said. “This will not help the state out of its economic woes, it will just create less educated graduates to go into the economy, which is the exact opposite of what California needs.”
Recent budget woes
In 2009-10 school year, the CSU received a rapid drop in state support, leading to faculty furloughs, campus closure days, enrollment cuts and steep tuition hikes. Within the last decade, CSU tuition has more than doubled and students and faculty responded with protests.
In 2010-11, partial funding was restored and furlough days were canceled. But Gov. Jerry Brown announced another round of cuts earlier this month. The state faces an estimated $28 billion budget deficit, according to calstate.edu. Brown’s new budget attempts to close the gap with $1.2 billion cut from higher education, as well as billion-plus cuts from Medi-Cal and CalWORKS, the state’s welfare-to-work program.
The $500-million cut represents a “best-case” scenario, according to calstate.edu. The current budget relies on the extension of three taxes on a June special election ballot. If voters don’t pass the tax extensions, the situation could get “worse from there,” Alexander said.
Future outlook
Alexander said CSULB was 43 percent reliant on the state for funding a few years ago; that figure has since dropped to 26 percent. This represents a shift from being “state-supported to student-supported,” a trend that’s bad for the economy, he said.
“We’ve made the case that this state incarcerates people for about $50,000 each and to educate them we get about $6,000 each for our students,” he said. “We thought that this state was going to reprioritize, but apparently that’s not part of the budget.”
Erik Fallis, a representative from the CSU Chancellor’s office, said options like furloughs and layoffs are again on the table. He also said a higher enrollment target set in October may no longer be sustainable with the new budget.
“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster, hasn’t it?” he said. “Unfortunately that’s part of the challenge we at the university face when we’re trying to do long-term planning. The state often changes its mind on budget priorities.”
Fallis said the CSU is looking at everything from decreasing travel to increasing energy efficiency in buildings to try to streamline the budget.
What students can do
Alexander urged students to get involved to stop further cuts.
“They need to certainly help in June when they vote,” he said. “But more importantly, they need to let their legislators know that students have already taken massive reductions.”
Alexander said the budget picture will become clearer in the next few weeks, and CSULB will “fight every way possible” for a better budget than the current one.
“The CSUs and campuses like ours are massive economic engines for the state and to view us as nothing, but an expenditure is what I consider pretty bad foresight,” he said. “Education is an investment.”
Disclaimer: The Daily 49er is not responsible for Postings made on www.daily49er.wpengine.com. Persons commenting are solely responsible for Postings made on this website. Persons commenting agree to the Terms of Use of the website. If Postings do not abide by the Rules of Conduct or Posting Regulations as listed in the Postings Policy, the Daily 49er has all rights to delete Postings as it deems necessary. The Daily 49er strongly advises individuals to not abuse their First Amendment rights, and to avoid language suggestive of hate speech. This site also encourages users to make Postings relevant to the article or other Postings.