Proposed
cuts hit instruction hard
By
Monica Pardee
On-line Forty-Niner
Cuts
to Cal State Long Beach will hit classroom
instruction hard this year, despite proposed
fee increases and a large decrease to enrollment.
With no more fat to cut, administrators
set out to trim the muscle for another year.
Total
enrollment will be decreased by 16,747 throughout
the CSU system, according to a CSU financial
report outlining the 2004-05 governor’s
budget allocation.
According
to Janet Parker, director of Budget and
Human Resource Information Services, enrollment
of full-time equivalent students at CSULB
will be decreased from 27,740 for the 2003-04
year to 26,353 full-time equivalent students
for the 2004-05 year, a net change of 1,387
students.
According
to a memo from the Resource Planning Process
Task Force the total state budget deficit
was projected at $28 billion, part of which
is $12 billion in accumulated deficit for
2004 and $16 billion in the difference between
income and expense.
As
for the $15 billion in bonds approved in
the March California primary, the first
group of bonds will not be sold until May
or June, and according to David Dowell,
vice provost and director of strategic planning,
may only serve to help prevent further cuts
to the CSU, not alleviate the current cuts.
“Only
in the terms that they cover shortfalls
in the current year,” Rodney Rideau,
budget director of the CSU system said.
“If the bond hadn’t passed then
the governor and the legislature would have
had to come up with some other way to make
up for those shortfalls, and that could
have potentially meant additional cuts to
the CSU.”
The
CSU will take a total of $239.6 million
in systemwide cuts. The general fund budget
for CSULB will be reduced by $20 million,
plus an additional $4 million increase in
unfounded costs, according to a Resource
Planning Process memo.
After
the revenues from the proposed fee increases,
$9.6 million, the report that the impact
on CSULB will be $14 million.
“Because
we know the structural nature of this budget
deficiency we will do what we can to implement
the governor’s budget reductions,”
Rideau said. “But in order to achieve
those kinds of reductions we have to protect
the quality of the instructional programs.
“CSU
said they would have to take these kinds
of actions, which would include reducing
enrollment, adjusting the fee increase and
then the remainder would be an unallocated
cut that the campuses would implement individually,”
Rideau said.
According
to Rideau a portion of cuts will be considered
unallocated and left to individual campuses
and the task forces to decide. This means
that decisions regarding cuts to instruction
and students services are left, on the whole,
to campus administrators.
“We
have given them enrollment targets,”
Rideau said. “They have two things
to do: one is to maintain the targets as
identified, and then two, provide a quality
instructional program to the students they
enroll.”
“The
campus’ Resource Planning Process
has been working all year long and based
on the governor’s budget and the CSU
trustee’s response to such, we are
planning an across the board budget reduction
at the 8 percent level,” Parker said.
Resource
Planning Process hearings are confidential
until the final task force report is released
in May or June, Parker said.
For
the 2003-04 budget administrators shuffled
cuts to ensure that instruction was protected
as much as could be expected. In the end,
instruction took a 1 percent decrease in
funding while all other divisions took 5
percent.
These
actions were linked to the Supplemental
Report Language, legislation that encouraged
campuses to prioritize cuts around instruction
and to act accordingly. But this year the
CSU is hoping for a little more wiggle room,
William Griffith, vice president of Administration
and Finance said.
“The
CSU strategy is to ask Sacramento for flexibility
in deciding how we apply the cuts,”
Griffith said. “As a matter of strategy
the system is trying to talk them out of
doing that so that we have the ability to
make our decisions locally for what’s
best for the campus.”
“We
made all the low-hanging fruit type of actions
we could take,” Rideau said. “Meaning
we’ve already done all the stream-lining,
we’ve cut back our programs and we’ve
reduced operational fat. Now our only alternatives
are either in the areas of fees or access.”
This
also means that instruction will not be
spared this year, as the expected 8 percent
cuts will be taken from all divisions.
The
8 percent will manifest differently in each
division, said Griffith, because each division
represents a different percentage of the
university’s total budget.
The
Division of Academic Affairs represents
70 percent of the university’s budget,
the Division of Administration and Finance
represents 19 percent and all other divisions
fill the remaining 11 percent. This means
that academic affairs’ 8 percent will
be a far larger sum than other divisions
will stand to be cut.
Not
all funding within academic affairs goes
towards instructional costs though. The
division is separated into two parts, instructional
costs and non-instructional costs, which
include the library and academic advising.
According
to Dowell, cuts to instructional costs will
be roughly 10 percent or $9 million from
the total instructional budget of $90 million.
“We
are hoping the may revise doesn’t
further denigrate our financial position,”
Parker said. “There are fears that
we will have another 3 percent reduction
– tied to the state’s general
fund deficit.”
University
administrators are expecting an additional
$5 million in cuts after the may revise,
said Griffith. But according to Rideau the
CSU has not done any planning regarding
the potential cuts though the system stand
to lose another $72 million.
“We
won’t really know until they see the
April revenue numbers,” Rideau said.
“If the revenues come in short there
could be some additional cuts required.”
Parker
said the university expects the revised
budget information in roughly mid-May
“If
that happens without tuition rate mitigation,
CSULB will use one time money as a bridge
to FY05-06,” Parker said. “However,
we will then have to bear the permanent
consequences of that reduction during that
fiscal year, in addition to any other budget
cuts or mandatory cost increases.”
Meaning
that if the CSU bore the additional $5 million
in cuts without further increases to the
proposed fee hikes administrators would
be forced to use one-time campus savings
to cover the losses.
“We
can’t deliver the same amount of service,
and continue to take cuts,” Griffith
said. “We’ve already passed
that threshold.”
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