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news
CFA, CSU fight
unresolved
Staff Reports
The California
Faculty Association will be holding a "Teach-In"
Wednesday to address the issues that led to an impasse in
contract negotiations between the group and the California
State University Chancellor's Office.
With enrollment
increasing at a high rate and budget spending for faculty
and instruction decreasing, the CFA sees an alarming crisis
brewing for the CSU system.
CFA President Susan
Meisenhelder has pinpointed four separate parts to the crisis
that CSU is facing: higher enrollment, poor access, fewer
new tenure-track faculty members and money from the CSU budget.
"The combination
of sky rocketing enrollment and funding does threaten the
idea of CSU being the people's university," Meisenhelder
said in a telephone conference with representatives of CSU
student newspapers.
CFA has dubbed
the enrollment crisis "Tidal Wave 2." According
to CFA research, enrollment into the CSU system has risen
more than 18 percent from 1995 to 2001 to a total of 380,000
students. By the end of the decade, CFA analysts are projecting
enrollment to climb to over 480,000 students.
"We are finding
that our enrollment this fall has exceeded our planned enrollment
and our expectations," said Chancellor Charles Reed in
a recent teleconference. "Tidal Wave 2 is not coming,
it's already here."
As student enrollment increases so has the amount of new administration
and managers, but the hiring of tenure-track faculty members
has stagnated.
According to CFA
research, CSU has hired 719 new administrators in the last
five years -- up over 33 percent -- and at the same time has
hired only one new tenure-track faculty member, up only 1
percent.
"That takes
a fairly significant pool of money. We believe that at least
some of that money has come from instructional budgets,"
Meisenhelder said.
Reed disagreed
in his teleconference.
"I regret
that the budget was reduced by about 2 percent, which left
us for a 2 percent increase in compensation for all our employees,"
he said.
CFA research specialist
Andy Lions said he believes that this money flow into administration
shows how state lawmakers see CSU.
"Basically
this means that higher education -- and more specifically
CSU -- has become less important in the eyes of state lawmakers
and leaders," Lions said.
Initially, CSU
opposed the Teach-In, calling it a violation of fair labor
practice, according to the Associated Press. However, they
said they are no longer concerned.
"As long as the faculty union is not pressuring students
to attend, they are free to hold Teach-Ins or any gathering,"
Colleen Bentley-Adler, spokeswoman for the Chancellor's Office,
told the AP. "We would prefer, obviously, they do not
cancel their classes."
The Teach-In begins
at 10 a.m. at the University Theatre on upper campus.
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