|
opinion:
CFA responds to
Reed
This column is in
response to Cal State University Chancellor Charles Reed's column
in last week's Daily Forty-Niner.
Reed's misstatements
are unfortunate and suggest an effort to deceive the CSULB
community. Below is a point by point fact sheet prepared by
Professor George Diehr from CSU San Marcos indicating the
facts which are clearly different from the misrepresentations
by our chancellor
On salaries: "[CSU
faculty] average annual salary of $72,000 is 20 percent higher
than the national average."
The California
Post-secondary Education Commission (CPEC) reports average
salaries for full-time CSU faculty of $69,068, not $72,000.
Furthermore, the national average he cites includes faculty
in all of higher education, including two-year institutions.
For perspective, the average salary of University of California
faculty exceeds $90,000.
Average salaries
of CSU faculty are about 4 percent below average salaries
at a comparative set of 20 institutions developed by CPEC
using data provided by the Chancellor's Office.
"Over the
past four years, the CSU faculty salary increases total 23.5
percent, compared to the national average of 14.9 percent."
Over the past four
years, the CSU was funded by the state of California for faculty
salary increases of 23.5 percent. But, as reported by CPEC,
the actual average salary increased only 16.4 percent from
its 1996/97 level of $59,317.
"Last year,
the CSU [faculty salary] increase was 6 percent compared to
the national average of 3.5 percent."
Last year, the
average salary of full-time CSU faculty was $66,281. With
this year's average of $69,068, the increase was 4.2 percent,
not 6 percent.
On hiring tenure
track faculty and student-to-faculty ratio: "You may
hear union activists claim that only one tenure track position
has been added in the past five years. However, the fact is
that the more than 2,300 tenure track faculty hired over the
past five years have helped maintain our low 18:1 student
faculty ratio."
CSU data show 9,681
tenure track faculty in 1995/96 versus 9,640 today - a decline
of 41 jobs. That decline coincided with enrollment increase
of 39,045 full-time equivalent students.
Effectively, the
CSU added a San Diego State (25,000 students) and a Chico
State (14,000) supported entirely with contingent and primarily
part-time instructors. The student-to-faculty ratio in the
CSU has not been as low as 18:1 for over a decade. It is now
about 19.6:1.
Over the past decade
the proportion of budget the CSU spends on its primary mission
- "instruction" - declined by 7 percent to a level
less than half of the total budget.
The CSU Board of
Trustees has a responsibility to conduct an investigation
of these issues and hold the CSU administration accountable.
Finally, Reed states
that since half of the faculty who retire have entered the
early retirement program, the CSU is prevented from replacing
them with full-time tenure-track faculty.
They are paid,
at most, 50 percent of their previous full-time salary. Thus
two of the faculty in the early retirement program obviously
free up more than enough funds for one full-time tenure-track
position.
To verify the data
presented by Professor Diehr, information is online at either
the CPEC Web site, www.cpec.ca.gov, or at the CSU's website,
www.calstate.edu.
Hamdi Bilici
is the CFA chapter president at Cal State Long Beach.
|
