By Jeff Overley
Daily Forty-Niner
Its appetite only briefly assuaged by a feast of CSU budget cuts and tuition hikes, the gaping state deficit may now be setting its sights on the pocketbooks and futures of potential collegians.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent proposals for further closing California’s fiscal chasm include cuts that would virtually eliminate University Outreach and the Educational Opportunity Program.
Outreach employees, both students and faculty at state universities, travel to middle schools, high schools and community colleges to recruit students and provide information about college and the availability of financial aid. Additionally, Outreach provides scholarships to especially promising youths.
Valerie Bordeaux, director of University Outreach and School Relations, said that “thousands” of students are influenced by the program and noted that Outreach visits 200 to 300 schools a year and sends over 10,000 e-mails to young pupils.
Bordeaux suggested that the benefits of Outreach trickle down beyond the immediate individuals who participate.
“The programs and services we provide [ensure] that students entering college will be ready, which then has an impact on the strength of the state,” she said. “It’s a very broad-based mandate.”
The EOP focuses on giving admissions assistance, financial aid and academic support to first-generation college students with a family history of low income. Robyn Mack, associate vice-president of budget and resources management, noted that the EOP at CSULB awards $1.3 million in grants a year.
Last year, CSULB’s program aided about 2,450 students according to Andy Espinoza, assistant director of the EOP.
“Any situation in which a student can lose financial aid can affect their ability to be educated, just as any fee increase can affect it,” he said.
Indeed, the specter of a fresh round of tuition hikes looms over CSU as well.
Patrick Lenz, assistant chancellor for budget development at CSU, said that CSU officials are working to avoid a mid-year fee increase between fall 2003 and spring 2004, but as for rate spikes after that, “there’s no doubt about it,” Lenz said.
The proposed cuts to Outreach and EOP total $74.6 million, of which $15 million would come from Outreach and $37 million from EOP. The remaining amount would come in the form of unallocated cuts.
Lenz said that in the event of cuts he and Chancellor Charles Reed would prefer all reductions to be unallocated.
If not specifically earmarked, cuts could be made where they would be least painful. They could be achieved by maintaining vacant faculty and administrative positions and reducing travel expenses, among other things, Lenz said.
If the cuts were to be enacted, they would be in addition to more than $300 million dollars worth of cuts currently in place this year. These current cuts have affected instruction by reducing the number of courses offered for identical classes, thereby increasing class sizes, Mack said.
Also, a 5 percent reduction in the operating expenses of such non-instructional disciplines as sports and administration has had a “large impact,” Mack said.
Lenz said that he had spoken with members of the state legislature who indicated that the Schwarzenegger’s proposal would not be considered until the release of his budget on January 9.
“Some cuts are likely coming,” Lenz said. “The magnitude of them remains to be seen.”
