4:00pm | After what was easily the most difficult year in the 61-year history of the California State University at Long Beach, school President F. King Alexander can take solace in at least a few achievements.
First of all, despite a 23-percent slash in the overall 2009-2010 budget, CSULB is on pace to graduate about 9,200 students this month – about the traditional yearly number, which is frankly amazing considering that the university was forced to enact a handful of furlough days throughout the year and instituted a 10-percent pay cut across the board for faculty and administrators.
Secondly, CSULB was recently named one of the nation’s fifteen best public universities in helping their students graduate by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). CSULB was by far the largest institution recognized amongst a group of mostly smaller universities.
And thirdly, President Alexander will today accept the award of “President of the Year” from the California State Student Association for his ability to guide CSULB through recent financial emergencies and for his help in bringing the CSSA in touch with federal issues to secure additional funding. For instance, many CSU schools will receive Stimulus money this year, and CSULB alone has about $3.7 million coming its way.
“We feel President Alexander represents the next generation of college presidents,” said Chris Chavez, CSULB Associated Students president who nominated Alexander for the award. “You have to deal with political, economic and development issues at a university while at the same time respecting shared governance among its different constituencies.”
Alexander also helped draft a condition that prevents states from cutting education to a certain point, or they will risk giving up Stimulus money. California was one of about twenty states to cut right up to the line, ensuring that there will at least be no further cuts to public education unless the state is willing to risk losing much-needed federal funds.
“The good news is that Washington has been very helpful and Sacramento hasn’t,” Alexander said in a phone interview last week.
“I want to thank our faculty and staff. Our campus has probably handled it as well as you can under the circumstances. Looking back we’ve had great news for our efforts in Washington D.C. and the Federal Government has certainly helped, but we’ve had nothing but chaos in getting any kind of assistance out of Sacramento.”
It was largely due to the faculty’s willingness to accept furlough days and pay cuts that allowed the university to continue providing a quality education, Alexander said. Otherwise, he estimates that about 2,100 classes would have been cut for students. The issue rings relevant today, as the Long Beach Unified School District – another local education system that has received extensive national praise – recently entered a tentative agreement with its teachers’ union to have five furlough days next year.
“I know the Superintendent’s having to send out 800 pink slips at a time when we are ranked as one of the best – if not the best – urban school districts in the United States,” Alexander said. “It’s kind of tough on everybody to be doing so well and our rewards have been so drastically damaging.”
With budgets shrinking and few options for saving money, CSU schools across the state were forced to turn away many prospective students that would have qualified in the past. In two years, CSULB will have shrunken from 38,100 students to about 33,500 this Fall.
“Access has been severely restricted for our students,” Alexander says. “People can’t forget that everyone on our campus has been living with the furloughs and the ten-percent pay reduction so everybody has been doing their jobs amazingly well under the circumstances. California has slashed the public higher education budget worse than any other state in the country did, and by taking 20-23 percent of your budget overnight certainly doesn’t portend to a commitment to any kind of educational value or principles.”
Alexander and other university presidents across the state are awaiting new reports this month that could forecast the future for public education. Meanwhile, he’s hopeful that the Governor will make good on his public desire to restore about 38-percent of the money that was slashed from higher education budgets last year.
Though he’s concerned that the university is graduated a high number of students that may not be able to find employment in what is still a struggling economic climate, Alexander says he’s proud that CSULB has been able to weather the budget storm so well. A lot of hurdles have been passed and there are still more to come, but there are bright spots and CSULB may be able to accept as many as 2,000 transfer students next January after being forced to deny them this year.
The improvements will keep coming, he says, and it sounds like others are starting to take notice.
“Everyone says that we need more college graduates,” Alexander says.
“Well, we’re doing it.”