CFA to discuss solutions

The California Faculty Association will hold its second in a series of hearings Tuesday discussing solutions to the problems facing the California State University at Cal State Los Angeles.

The CFA is a labor union representing about 20,000 CSU faculty, librarians, counselors and coaches.

Among those participating are community, academic and student leaders who will share ideas on how to deal with topics such as CSU's enrollment explosion and funding problems. The goal is to find suggestions the university can eventually use to deal with problems it faces in the future.

"We've watched overall funding for higher education in the last 30 years fall dramatically in proportion to the overall state budget," CFA President Susan Meisenhelder said.

Between 1970 and 1997 higher education funds fell from 5.16 percent of the state budget to 2.7 percent, according to the CFA report.

Eventually the CFA plans to put together a document to present to the CSU and state legislators, Meisenhelder said.

Since faculty members are on the university's front lines daily, the CFA has an obligation to be part of the solution, said Hamdi Bilici, the Cal State Long Beach chapter president of CFA.

"Somebody has to figure out what's going on with the country's largest state university system," he said. "Hopefully, out of all this, we can make a CSU education a better learning experience for all students."

Accommodating the ever-growing enrollment will be a major topic at this hearing, which begins at 9 a.m. The university has a current enrollment of 359,716, with 12,000 to 15,000 new students expected to enroll in the next decade, according to a CFA report.

And while there is enough space at most campuses to accommodate extra students, the money to hire extra faculty to teach them is hard to come by, Meisenhelder said.

Meisenhelder stressed public awareness of the university's problems because of its importance to the state. About half of the bachelor's degrees awarded in California come from the CSU, she said.