Year-round plan's funding problematic

By Ryan May
Daily Forty-Niner

With half of the Cal State University system moving toward year-round schooling in the summer of 2000, state funding is needed making the summer semester as affordable as the fall and spring.

"The system has committed to a goal that the state is not necessarily willing to pay for," said Keith Polakoff, associate vice-president for Academic Affairs.

Cal State Long Beach is one of four campuses, including San Diego State, Cal State Fullerton and Cal State San Francisco, proposing to convert directly to year-round operations, said Polakoff, who called the conversion a "fairly expensive" process.

The funding will reimburse universities for the reduction in from the state legislature to offset a mandatory reduction in student fees and compensate faculty choosing to continue teaching through a third term.

The decision on funding may not be made until as late as January, Polakoff said, and given the expense, only one or two of the four campuses hoping for funding may receive it.

"It's a very intensive planning process," Polakoff said. The conversion was originally intended to take place over five years but was recently cut down to two.

"Unfortunately, this thing is on a fast track Ö we have no idea where it's headed," said Hamdi Bilici, chapter president of the California Faculty Association at CSULB.

Ken Swisher, spokesman for the Chancellor's Office, cited possible options that would provide financial compensation for faculty during a summer term. Among them, Swisher said, are hiring new full- or part-time faculty or further compensating existing full- and part-time faculty for teaching the summer term.

The decision concerning faculty would be based on the needs of the individual campuses, Swisher said, as well as the varying needs of departments within those campuses.

"The only negative feedback we've had is based on something that isn't going to happen," Swisher said, explaining that faculty will not be required to work without extra compensation.

Year-round operation is not currently a part of the contract the CFA has with the CSU system. The issue will be added to a much larger list of on-going negotiations between the CFA and the Cal State system, Bilici said.

"Any mistakes that are made in doing this will be extremely costly," Bilici said.  "The problem is, nobody knows what's on the table."

The issue goes beyond just having the facilities available during the summer, Bilici said. More importantly, it encompasses the quality of education provided.

"If buildings educated students, we wouldn't need faculty," Bilici said.  "How [would students] like to be taught by faculty members who are just brought in for the summer session?"