April 6, 2011
As reported in news media, Governor Brown has not yet been able to get sufficient Republican legislators to agree to a June ballot to seek voter approval of the tax extensions that are central to his January budget proposal.
At this point, we cannot know with certainty what this might mean for the next fiscal year. The Governor might still succeed in getting the legislature to pass something close to his January budget or the legislature might pass a budget that includes even larger reductions to state programs including the CSU. The campus and Academic Affairs have been planning for both possibilities.
A great deal of Academic Affairs planning has focused on protecting access to courses students need to make progress to degree. Department offerings of graduate, major, general education and service courses are all equally parts of departmental responsibilities and we must focus our resources on classes that students need to make progress to degree.
The Chancellor announced plans to reduce system enrollment if cuts to the CSU become larger. However, since our fall enrollment planning is largely complete, these enrollment cuts – if they occur – will have to come in spring. We do not expect layoffs of tenured or tenure track faculty even in the “worse case” scenario. Enrollments are increasing and we expect lecturer hiring to be consistent with the classes that need to be covered. In a “worse case” scenario, staff impacts are as yet uncertain.
The new Student Excellence Fee will help ensure that we can focus on supporting students. In all scenarios, we expect to be using temporary funding next year to buffer reduction impacts (as explained in the several public budget presentations that have been made recently). While this is much better than taking the full impacts of reductions immediately, it does mean that next year we are likely to be planning for additional reductions unless the state budget outlook brightens considerably.
The hard work of faculty and staff is what has made “The Beach” a special place. We take just pride in the excellence and student success that we have fostered in recent years. Although we are facing tough times, the campus remains committed to excellence and student success and to supporting the hard working faculty and staff who have created these achievements.
Submit an idea on how Academic Affairs can reduce costs and generate revenue.
