Long Beach State University President Jane Close Conoley announced the college is in a $15 million budget deficit as a result of the statewide deficit, during the Feb. 22 Academic Senate meeting.
On Feb. 20, California’s Legislative Analyst Office released an update to the budget deficit forecast from $58 billion to $73 billion. This update places the statewide deficit $35 billion below California Governor Gavin Newsom’s projected budget deficit of $38 billion.
In 2022, Gov. Newsom’s administration agreed on a compact to give all California State Universities with increasing graduation and enrollment numbers a 5% increase in funding over the next four years.
However, due to the statewide budget deficit, this year’s funds for the compact agreement have been delayed to the following fiscal year.
While Long Beach State has a higher spending budget for the upcoming academic year, without government funding, Conoley said it will immediately put Long Beach State in a $15 million deficit due to higher expenses needed for insurance, utilities, Title IX, faculty compensation increases, college programs and more.
Conoley said she remains confident that the Long Beach State community will find a solution to get through the deficit.
“We’ll be anywhere in 2024 [to] 2025 between a $6 million and $24 million deficit, so we’ll have to work together to figure out how to get through that,” Conoley said. “Now, I’m confident that we’ll do it and we’ve done it before, maybe not on this scale, but we’ll keep working on it.”
For 2024, Conoley said Long Beach State can be covered by reserve funds if needed. However, coverage for the entire year would empty the reserves.
Conoley said the Long Beach State administration has several plans and ideas to help the college recover from the budget deficit.
During the senate meeting, college deans raised the idea of evolving the college’s offerings to better support students beyond the 18 to 24-year-old demographic in a concept called lifelong education.
Dean of the College of Health and Human Services, Monica Lounsbery, led a presentation on how the lifelong education policy directive can help increase enrollment.
“[Lifelong education] is not always been the way that our campus has structured learning and the kinds of degree programs we have are really steeped in our traditions,” Lounsbery said. “It’s really about how do we build a campus environment that supports our traditional education approach and also lifelong learning.”
The lifelong learning concept is part of a large strategic seven-step action plan called Beach 2030. According to the webpage, Beach 2030 seeks to “reimagine” the campus and increase enrollment to 70,000 students by 2030.
Following the Academic Senate meeting, Conoley and Vice President of Administration and Finance, Scott Apel, met with the Daily-Forty Niner to discuss more plans to offset the $15 million deficit.
Another method to offset the deficit is the yearly 6% increase in CSU tuition over the next five years, beginning with the 2024 to 2025 academic year.
“This coming year, we’ll have a 6% increase in tuition, I know that’s not popular and certainly not something we wish, but it’s inevitable that had to happen,” Conoley said.
Conoley said that tuition and government funding are the two major sources Long Beach State relies on for expenses and without any government funding for the rest of the year, tuition will be the college’s biggest source of income.
The administration’s final plan to offset the deficit will be enforcing hiring freezes and cutting down the college’s operational budgets for certain programs and resources.
“Seventy-seven percent of all of our money is in compensation and benefits, so when you add that to the pool, you have to take away from other things, so certainly slowing down hiring… and we will be looking at programs and other places to cut,” Conoley said. “We’ll do our best.”
Apel said that the administration has all semester to come up with a more finite plan on how to offset the deficit for the upcoming academic year.
“We have always been a fiscally responsible campus and we have plans in place for issues like this,” Apel said. “I’m not panicking, and Jane [Conoley] is not panicking.”
Conoley said an event called “Reckoning with Relevance” will be taking place on April 25 to inform and discuss the Beach budget deficit with faculty, staff and students.
This is a developing story.