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opinion:
letters
Response to Reed
profile
As the Cal State Long
Beach chapter president of the California Faculty Association,
I appreciate the relatively even-handed article on Chancellor
Reed's business-like approach to managing the CSU system. In
fact, for faculty the issue is Reed's business approach. It
is not whether Chancellor Reed is, as reported, "honest
and direct," nor is it primarily his insensitivity to faculty
and students ? which he has demonstrated on several occasions.
Rather it is his
imposition of a corporate model of education on the California
State University system. Specifically, this has meant replacing
full-time, tenured faculty with a low wage, contingent, part-time
work force on the pretext of "flexibility, efficiency
and accountability," all code words for cheapening the
costs and diminishing the quality of education for California's
citizens.
Reed is working
to achieve this transformation of the CSU system by offering
faculty only meager salary increases, an unfair and divisive
so called "merit" pay plan, corporate sponsorship
of educational supplies, equipment and facilities, and a curriculum
driven by numbers rather than educational goals. In the last
three years his approach has led twice to the breakdown of
contract negotiations, the imposition on faculty of the Administration's
terms of employment, and now, as of July 16 an impasse in
the current round of bargaining a new contract with the CFA.
The On-line Forty-Niner
article indicates that the Chancellor was hired four years
ago at a salary of $254,000. As of July 2000 his salary has
increased over $50,000 to $305,340. As is the case with corporate
CEOs his salary is nearly five times that of the average faculty
salary, which during the same four-year period increased by
only 1/6 that of the Chancellor's.
--
Martin Fiebert, psychology professor
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