F. King Alexander was prepared to make budget cuts. The president of California State University of Long Beach, President Alexander was expecting the state to reduce funding to the CSU system, and had planned to make the necessary adjustments by taking measures such as cutting classes and eliminating Spring enrollment. But none of that prepared him for the massive $42 million cut handed to him on Tuesday.
“A $42 million hit in a budget of $200 million after the year has begun is the worst we’ve ever faced,” Alexander said in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon.
“This state has decided to function, not only do they make drastic and harsh decisions that impact your students very badly, but they give you virtually no time to plan for those adjustments. So we’ve got about three weekends to put everything into effect for 2009-10, which is a budget that we’d already premiered and already had approved.”
President Alexander now faces decisions that are becoming increasingly more difficult, as he and other CSU campuses attempt to negotiate teacher furlough days – two per month – and severe enrollment cuts, denying thousands of normally eligible students the opportunity to attend his university.
“I think you’re seeing the slow defamation of one of the nation’s best systems,” he says.
Judging by their spirited protests outside CSU headquarters in downtown Long Beach on Tuesday, President Alexander’s students agree with him. Hundreds of students shouted, decrying CSU Trustees’ decision to institute a 20% fee increase across the system. But CSU officials have said that the students’ anger is misplaced, as the system had no choice after California legislators handed them slashed funding.
“I understand they’re frustrated, we’re all frustrated,” says CSU Assistant Vice Chancellor Claudia Keith. “I think some of the students, their anger is misplaced at our trustees, and unfortunately they need to really be looking at the Legislature and the Governor. The trustees are between a rock and a hard place when you have a $584 million budget deficit to fix.”
Alexander agrees, and counters that the CSU system is still one of the nation’s most affordable.
“If someone wants to go to another campus because of the fee increase, there isn’t one that charges less,” he said. Most states have resorted to raising student fees to cover the entire deficit amount, Alexander says. But the CSU didn’t go that far. If they had, tuition would have risen by 110%. Not 20%.
Either way, President Alexander says, the nation’s largest university system has taken a hit that will be felt for years.
“If California wants to take the vast majority of their budget cuts out of the hides of children and students, then California will pay dearly for that in the decades to come,” Alexander says. “In the long run, every Californian will negatively be impacted by the limitations of enrollment and the lack of our ability to serve more students. That will impact every Californian down the road.”
Keith agreed, and took particular issue with the funds cut from education (more than $9 billion) compared to the funds cut from the state’s prison system (about $1.2 billion).
“We are the largest public university system in the nation, but I don’t think that the state of California has invested in higher education or made it a priority,” Keith said, suggesting that further systemwide cuts and fee increases must just be over the horizon.
“When you look at how much we invest in prisons and how much we’re willing to pay for a prisoner, it’s about ten times as much as we’re willing to pay for a student at a California State University. So, it does make you wonder where the leadership’s priorities are.”
There is a little hope. About 42% of CSU students will not be affected by the fee increase because of unique grants, and Alexander points out that there hasn’t been a better chance to acquire Federal student aid since the GI Bill after World War II. But now that the cuts have been made, both Keith and Alexander must look to the future – however bleak it may be – and it doesn’t look good.
“I’m very much worried about next year,” he said. “We’ll certainly get through [the recession], but we won’t be the same institution when we started.”