Cal State to Cut Enrollment by at Least 10,000

March 23, 2011, 4:23 pm

California State University officials announced on Tuesday that the system would enroll 10,000 fewer students next year because of an anticipated state-budget cut of $500-million, or 18 percent. The enrollment cut, which would get more severe if a package of tax extensions is not approved by California voters, would continue to shrink the state’s higher-education system. The system also plans to eliminate more faculty and staff positions and cut $11-million from the system office. A study released on Monday by the University of Southern California’s Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis says California should take steps to sharply increase enrollment at its private institutions to make up for the inability of public colleges to accommodate enough students.

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AbdulKareemaWheat

Time to occupy the President’s office again, eh?
czander

While sinking millions into sports and managerial compensation these public nonprofit and private institutions face financial exigency. So what will they do: Fire tenured faculty by using financial exigency, close departments that do not attract paying customers (Classics and Language departments are dropping like flies), eliminate and combine degree offerings, hold down salaries and by all means get rid of those high priced full time faculty and hire lots of adjuncts. As of 2010 poorly paid adjuncts with no benefits made up over 50 percent of the teaching faculty and only 30 percent of the faculty had tenure (20 years ago 70 percent had tenure) and what about the other 20 percent, they are made up of non-tenured faculty, clinical professors, teaching assistants and graduate students. Some predict tenure will be a thing of the past as conservative state and local politicians not only call for its end but also placing a cap on faculty salaries and the elimination of sabbaticals and an increase in teaching loads. While cost cutting decimates the ranks of full time teachers, administrators keep on building high tech student friendly campuses.
What about the students? They become the victims of this mess. According to Kiley (2010) the graduation rate for public universities after six years is 50 percent and for private nonprofits its 65 percent and it will continue to drop as more and more students walk away from the outrageous price tag. In addition, a study by Arum and Roksa (2011) suggests that at least 45 percent of undergraduates demonstrated “no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in the first two years of college, and 36 percent showed no progress in four years.” While faculty complain about grade inflation and the quality of education, administrator’s demand that seats be kept filled because it’s an economic necessity. The business model embraced by colleges and universities suggests their priorities are not focused on education but on keeping those games alive and executives happy. Quickly this priority is turning into a business model of survival.
lgrein

As a Californian I expected this, Jerry Brown and is bunch will in the next months tell us that schools will close, police and fire protection be cut and the sky will fall if we do not agree to new taxes. Then if we still reject the tax package they will claim to have some mandate to increase taxes anyway. We pay 10+ percent income and 9% sales tax and the polls say we have had it.
In a system as large as this one you can reduce the budget by 500 million by getting rid of the useless or past their time majors and programs that perpetuate themselves by mandate.
marietz

First: Not only higher ed is targeted in California. K-12 and the UC as well as the community college stand to lose so many faculty and teachers that the future of our students in California is in jeopardy. This is insane!

As to higher ed, the 23 campuses of the CSU which educate 60% of our teachers, nurses, and future business men and women. The CSU is the work horse of higher education. It educates mostly first generation students going to college. These budget cuts will limit access to higher ed to so many disadvantaged students who deserve a place in college!